The international break is over and its back to Premier League football for Dean Smiths side.
Villa travel to London for the late kick off on Saturday. despite being a few players down, confidence is still high in the Villa camp.
Lets start with the drama with the two Emi's... The pair who wasn't meant to go on international duty, disobeyed Dean Smith's orders and went ahead to play. During the 8 minute mark in one of the games in Brazil. Brazilian health officials stormed the pitch, to DEPORT 4 of the Argentinian players who arrived from the UK. (Emi Martinez, Emi Buendia, Christian Romero and Lo Celso). They were required to isolate for 14 days upon arrival.
The two Aston Villa players involved, have arrived back in the UK, and will isolate immediately.
Dean Smith’s team hit the road after picking up four points from two games at Villa Park, kickstarting their season after an opening day loss to Watford at Vicarage Road.
Opponents Chelsea have made an unbeaten start to the campaign, including victory in the UEFA Super Cup final.
Thomas Tuchel’s side beat Crystal Palace (3-0) and Arsenal (0-2) before drawing 1-1 with Liverpool at Anfield last time out.
Chelsea have been on a real good run of form at the start of this new campaign, with them not losing a game at all as of yet... Can Villa be the team to end this run?
Aston Villa won their last Premier League meeting with Chelsea, winning 2-1 on the final day of last season. They’ve not won consecutive league games against the Blues since October 1993 under Ron Atkinson.
Danny Ings has been involved in eight goals in his last nine Premier League starts (6 goals, 2 assists), registering a goal involvement in all three of his appearances for Aston Villa so far (2 goals, 1 assist).
Seeing the attacking talent Villa have in their squad, and the players that are returning from injury, there is no reason they cant.
Team News
Smith has Leon Bailey, John McGinn and Jacob Ramsey available for selection again after the trio missed their last league outing. Morgan Sanson is also back in the squad.
Bertrand Traore is back in training, while youngsters Carney Chukwuemeka and Jaden Philogene-Bidace join Keinan Davis on the sidelines.
Emiliano Martinez and Emiliano Buendia are unavailable after international duty.
Tuchel confirmed on Friday that Christian Pulisic and N’Golo Kante are out of the game, while Reece James is suspended.
His only other concern is Thiago Silva, who has been banned for five days by FIFA after he didn’t travel to meet up with the Brazil squad during the international break.
The Gaffer
“They’re Champions League winners, a fantastic team with a fantastic coach. You can see from the start they’ve had that’s it’s going to be a very tough game. We’ll go in full of respect for them, but we certainly won’t fear them. We beat them in the last game of last season, but Chelsea had an awful lot of chances in that game. We’ll have to be better than we were if we want to get something out of this game.”
Predicted XI:
Predicted Score:
@ktd_avfc - 2-0 Chelsea