With a solid draw against Manchester United in our last Premier League clash, Aston Villa were back on the road today and we made the trip to Stamford Bridge to face Frank Lampard’s Chelsea side.
Head coach Dean Smith has seen his side go unbeaten in two now in the top flight as we put defeats behind us, but Chelsea sit in fourth place in the table for a reason and were not going to be a push over.
They certainly weren’t, especially as we weren’t quite at the races as in more recent performances. Rather predictably Tammy Abraham scored their opener (with no celebration so credit due) but Trezeguet had us level four minutes before the break.
We needed a big performance in the second half with significant improvement and it just wasn’t forthcoming. Mason Mount restored their advantage three minutes in and that’s where the score ended.
Not great, but some improvements you could argue in terms of our response, but we need to cut out the avoidable errors as we’re being punished too often still and we definitely need to start seeing more from Wesley.
On to the next one.
Speaking to the BBC following the full time whistle, our gaffer said of our efforts on the night.
“I thought it was a fair result, the better team won. We’re not far away, I don’t want to keep using the word ‘competitive’, we can be as good as these teams, we showed that in pockets. We need to be more consistent in what we do and braver on the ball. We had pockets of play throughout the game but not enough relentless pressure. We didn’t start either half well and they put us under pressure. We gave the ball away too cheaply, but got back into the game and when we showed a bit of belief we showed we could give them problems. They had the initiative, we knew they would start well after losing a London derby on Saturday. You don’t get much from officials here and I wasn’t happy with their performance tonight. Jack Grealish must have been the most-fouled player on the pitch, there were five or six not given.”
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