Mauricio Pochettino criticised Chelsea’s soft centre after a bruising defeat in midweek but they showed some mettle to bounce back from a two-goal deficit and earn a creditable draw at Aston Villa. Noni Madueke dragged Chelsea back into the contest soon after the hour before Conor Gallagher, seemingly inspired by the captain’s armband, located the top corner with a beautiful strike with nine minutes of normal time to play. Axel Disasi then thought he had scored a stoppage-time winner for Chelsea only for it to be disallowed after a push by Benoît Badiashile on Diego Carlos was referred by the VAR.
Unai Emery banged the pristine red turf in front of the home dugout after Morgan Rogers scored Villa’s second goal on 42 minutes but his evening ended in frustration. Ollie Watkins skied a rare second-half opening, blazing over close to the penalty spot with a couple of minutes left. Villa can only hope they do not look back on this draw as a costly slip in the race for the top four.
“Birmingham, are you listening/ To the song we are singing?” was sung that little bit louder by the boisterous Villa supporters after they seized an early lead. No wonder, given their arch-rivals are at risk of dropping into League One next weekend, while Villa close on playing in the premier European competition for the first time since exiting the European Cup at the quarter-final stage against Juventus in 1983, the year after they lifted the trophy in Rotterdam. So impressive have Villa been this season, and Chelsea so frail, that there was little surprise at the half-time scoreline. Villa mean business under Emery.
Pochettino knows, such is the nature of the job, that the blame invariably lands at the manager’s door but this week he stressed that the finger should also be pointed elsewhere. The heat is on the co-owners, Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, and the co-sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, who have assembled a dysfunctional and imbalanced squad at a cost of £1bn. Injuries have not helped but such mitigation only runs so deep. Here Pochettino named five teenagers and two goalkeepers on the bench, with Disasi, one of three changes, the odd one out at 26. Trevoh Chalobah, Thiago Silva and Cole Palmer, after a reported illness, returned to the Chelsea starting lineup.
After the pummelling by Arsenal on Tuesday, Pochettino sought a reaction but his team trailed with fewer than four minutes gone. Villa shifted the ball from right to left and Pau Torres roamed forward to pick out Lucas Digne on the overlap. Digne cut a low cross back for John McGinn, whose first-time shot pinballed off Marc Cucurella, under pressure from Watkins, and trickled past Djordje Petrovic. Emery punched the air, Pochettino slapped his thighs in frustration.
Petrovic was fishing the ball out of his net again on 42 minutes as Rogers squeezed a shot inside the Chelsea goalkeeper’s near post to deepen the misery for Pochettino. Rogers picked up Matty Cash’s pass on the edge of the box, jinked inside Chalobah and sent a precise strike through the legs of the defender and into the bottom corner.
Aside from Nicolas Jackson heading a Cucurella shot against the upright, Chelsea struggled to penetrate the hosts in a one-sided first half. Jackson earlier had an equaliser ruled out by VAR for offside after Moisés Caicedo flipped a pass over the top of Villa’s high line. Pochettino did not celebrate and Torres and Ezri Konsa seemed confident they perfected their distances. Replays showed Jackson had gone too soon.
The hosts were forced into a change at half-time, with Emiliano Martínez replaced by Robin Olsen in the Villa goal owing to a hamstring problem. Chelsea needed to trouble Olsen more than they tested Martínez and Madueke always appeared the most likely to do so.
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He drilled wide of a post after superbly controlling Palmer’s cross-field ball with the outside of his right boot while flying down the right before breezing inside Digne. Silva saw a header cleared by Cash and then, with 63 minutes on the clock, Chelsea pulled a goal back, Madueke slotting in after Conor Gallagher hounded Douglas Luiz.
Madueke celebrated by grabbing the badge on his shirt and from there Chelsea went from strength to strength, Gallagher equalising with a peach.
