Neither Aston Villa nor Chelsea were entitled to take anything more than muted satisfaction from yesterday's draw at Villa Park. While Villa preserved their unbeaten Premiership League record and Chelsea avoided a second defeat after losing dully at Bradford City last Tuesday, the poverty of the football said little about the chances of these teams making a serious championship challenge.
An outstanding early goal from Luc Nilis, the Belgian striker making his first league appearance for Villa since joining them on a free transfer from PSV Eindhoven, promised Villa Park a treat that never ensued.
By half-time a header from Marcel Desailly, helped by another of David James's flat spots, had brought the scores level and there they were always likely to remain.
Since Aston Villa had not beaten or scored against Chelsea at home in a league fixture since Christmas, 1994 they were perhaps entitled to feel a little happier with the result. Yet the readiness of the home supporters to boo two of the players who have expressed a desire to leave, Gareth Southgate at the start and Julian Joachim when he came on for the last 20 minutes, suggested that Villa are going to have to work a little harder to please the fans. More is expected of Chelsea this season, given the addition of Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink to their attack and Christian Panucci and Mario Stanic to the defence and midfield. But yesterday their football functioned only in fits and starts and in any case Stanic went off after 25 minutes with the recurrence of a knee injury.
Normally the most consistently accurate passers in the Premiership, Chelsea kept wasting the ball through casual distribution and showed a depressing tendency to lump it high towards goal, which is not their style.
Yet they could and should have won the match in the penultimate minute when Eidur Gudjohnsen, the Icelander signed from Bolton, cleverly set up a chance for Tor Andre Flo whose chip beat James but floated wide.
While a win for Chelsea would have been hard on Villa, whose all-round effort could not have been faulted, it might have spared Gianluca Vialli some breast-beating after the game. Under pressure after the defeat at Valley Parade, the Chelsea manager complained that according to some people, i.e. the media, "unless we win the league by 25 points we are shit".
"We are here to do our best and give something to the English game, which is fantastic. But we've got no friends and that's the way it is."
After 10 minutes Dion Dublin nodded the ball out to Alan Wright whose centre from the left found Nilis nipping across Frank Leboeuf to gain possession before beating Carlo Cudicini with a superb left-footed shot on the turn. Cudicini had come into the Chelsea goal at the last minute for the injured Ed de Goey.
Early in the second half Cudicini did exceptionally well to push away a shot from Hendrie aimed towards the top far corner of the net, by which time Villa were rueing a lapse by James similar to the error which had led to Chelsea's winning goal in the FA Cup final.
As Dennis Wise swung over a corner a minute before the half-hour James failed to get to the ball and Marcel Desailly, just as he had done at Wembley, headed hard towards the net. This time, however, a finishing touch from Roberto Di Matteo was not needed.
ASTON VILLA: James, Wright, Southgate, Boateng, Dublin, Merson, Alpay, Barry, Hendrie (Taylor 88), Stone, L Nilis (Joachim 70). Subs Not Used: Ehiogu, Samuel, Enckelman.
CHELSEA: Cudicini, Panucci, Babayaro, Leboeuf, Desailly, Poyet, Hasselbaink (Gudjohnsen 77), Wise, Stanic (Morris 26), Di Matteo, Flo. Subs Not Used: Zola, Thome.
