Aston Villa vs Chelsea pre-match thread

[PeterWithesShin]

Moreno and Zaniolo both unavailable.

[Nev]

The Managers approach to Europe and the League, compared to the domestic cup competitions is like chalk and cheese. The latter always appears rather half arsed, not quite focused and careless.
I'm hoping that this will see a vastly different approach and result.

[London Villan]

Agreed, i think it was a conscious decision ti take it easy in the domestic cups.

[Baldy]

Damian, Silva and Lopera? No wonder we lost with imposters like those.

Yep, I 'copied and pasted' it from some site.

Damian is Emi's first name.

'The Devil' 

[Somniloquism]

That cup defeat came at the point we were probably lowest all season. That's not the case now.

I would also argue that Chelsea were a cup team for most of the season. ie they can lift their game in the one off cups (final and semi final appearances this year when they finally failed) but not so much for the league games. Of course they could still do it for the occasional league game as well but we will see.

[Somniloquism]

Agreed, i think it was a conscious decision ti take it easy in the domestic cups.

We also fell foul to the any touch is handball whether accidental or intentional in the initial game.

[London Villan]

Which just three months later seems to have changed.

[Somniloquism]

Which just three months later seems to have changed.

Has it? The West Ham delay was to see if the ball had hit Bowen on the arm or if he had touched it at all after Soucek. Once it was determined he had the last touch AND it hadn't hit Bowen on the arm, then they had to send the ref to the screen for his judgement on whether Soucek had deliberately hand balled it, (which he obviously had but is not a VAR decision to make.)

[London Villan]

Grealish in the semi final?

[Lastfootstamper]

I don't think we've got a weaker back four available than the one that played in the Cup game.

[Drummond]

They are capable of upping their game. We're a good side who've played well of late. Should be good game.

[Proposition Joe]

It's weird, I find these games at the top end of the table way more stressful than when we were fighting relegation. It's because we're in touching distance of a genuine achievement and the fear is still there that we'll find a way to bork it up. We're a better, more coherent team than Chelsea but their chaos makes me nervous, like Manure's, we seem to do better against organised, more predictable teams.

[itbrvilla]

Win tonight, we could be in with a should for 3rd at this rate.

[Somniloquism]

Grealish in the semi final?

I'm talking about the absolute that any handball by the goal scorer is chalked off no matter what. The ball ricocheted onto Luiz and it was chalked off. Any other handball is subjective.

[Rotterdam]

They haven't won away in the PL since Dec at Luton.
So I'm going 2-3. :'(