Aston Villa's containment tactics at Stamford Bridge, where they lost 1-0 to Chelsea on Saturday, was hard to justify, although their manager John Gregory did his best. "We had to stop Chelsea playing," he said after the game.
"Technically they're the best team in the Premiership. They keep possession better than anyone else. If you give the ball away it can be a long time before you get it back." Fair enough: Aston Villa were entitled to a degree of caution after being roundly beaten by Chelsea three times last season. Yet Villa did lead the Premier League until last Christmas and can be presumed to have similar championship aspirations this time.
From that point of view, Saturday's concentration on restricting Gustavo Poyet and Dennis Wise needed to be backed up by something more positive than long balls to Dion Dublin. The disappointing aspect of Villa's performance was that, their defence having laid the basis for catching Chelsea on the break, they then failed to find a mainspring for counter-attacks.
In the end Gregory's defensive exercise merely allowed Chelsea to demonstrate their greater subtlety. Poyet might have been subdued by Ian Taylor and Wise matched by Lee Hendrie, but Gianfranco Zola revelled in the greater challenge to his ingenuity which the situation presented.
Watching Villa trying vainly to pin the little Italian down was like looking at men with rolled-up newspapers swiping blindly at a particularly evasive bluebottle. Zola is football's equivalent of a chess master in that he thinks several moves ahead and recognises situations in an instant. No wonder he thrives in a league which, for all its foreign influences, remains about as profound as snakes and ladders. However, Zola alone would not have been enough to win for Chelsea, even though he should have had a penalty following Ugo Ehiogu's clumsy challenge.
Chelsea's problem was that Chris Sutton, Zola's foil up front, does not appear match fit. Sutton still holds the ball up effectively and looks to find colleagues in scoring positions, but his reactions were sluggish and in the present Chelsea side he stands out like a man who has missed the bus.
The danger of Villa's tactics is that just when a team thinks they have marked the most threatening opponents out of a match along comes someone else they had apparently forgotten. From early on, Dan Petrescu was timing his runs to get behind the Villa defence and stay onside with the ease of the invisible man. Both Zola and Wise sent him through before half-time, and although neither of Petrescu's shots was on target, he was beginning to look a likely match-winner.
Seven minutes into the second half this feeling was borne out, courtesy of Ehiogu, who having headed a clearance straight out to Petrescu on the Chelsea right then diverted his cross-shot past James.
In the end, Chelsea should have won more convincingly against a Villa team unable to get into forward gear after falling behind.
Chelsea: De Goey, Ferrer, Leboeuf, Desailly, Babayaro, Petrescu (Goldbaek 77), Wise, Morris, Poyet, Sutton (Flo 77), Zola (Ambrosetti 87). Subs Not Used: Hogh, Cudicini. Booked: Poyet, Sutton, Leboeuf. Goals: Ehiogu 52 og.
Aston Villa: James, Ehiogu, Southgate, Calderwood (Stone 77), Delaney, Hendrie, Taylor, Thompson (Merson 71), Wright, Dublin, Joachim, Stone (Draper 89). Subs Not Used: Oakes, Barry. Booked: Taylor, Hendrie, Thompson.
Referee: N Barry (Scunthorpe).
