It’s been an unusual Premier League season in a lot of ways, but we put it to you that Marco Asensio popping up with a matchwinning double in a game between Aston Villa and Chelsea, and those goals being against Chelsea is right up there.
Asensio being in the Barclays just doesn’t feel right, somehow. It’s off-brand for all concerned, but it’s possible here that really what we’re doing is just projecting the weirdness of this kind of player turning up at Aston Villa. It’s not that Aston Villa aren’t good enough to have excellent players, it’s just… the wrong sort of excellent player, isn’t it?
It’s not that he’s too good for the Barclays, or too good for Villa, or that Villa don’t deserve good and exciting players – they have loads of those anyway – it’s just not what any of us would’ve expected to happen to any party involved during 2024/25 is it?
Basically what we’re saying here is that if Asensio was going to have half a season here at all then it should have been at Chelsea or at Man City. That would have felt more suitable somehow.
And really it should also have been a deeply underwhelming and hugely forgettable stint, which this already appears unlikely to be on the evidence so far. It should have been the sort of thing that you spend smugly pointing out that ‘this isn’t as easy as being at Real Madrid is it’ while it’s happening, and then forget about it entirely to the extent that it causes you all manner of heartache on Sporcle seven years later.
Instead, he’s rocked up at Aston Villa and is playing really and has just turned a Premier League game on its head by scoring two goals, both of which were assisted by Marcus Rashford which is a whole other incongruous detail we don’t even have time for right now.
Let us forget for now the assorted gambles Villa have taken with an already PSR-baiting wage bill and just enjoy this while it’s happening. Villa’s array of attacking talent is now delightfully deep and rounded, and there is a very real prospect of a spectacular end to their season. It’s already apparent that the various new arrivals are bang up for proving one point or other, with Villa set to reap the benefits.
Villa’s late turnaround here also leaves us with the potential for one of the great battles for Champions League places. That’s just as well, really, because today did appear to also be one that drove significant nails into the coffins of both title and relegation battles. But the Champions League battle? That’s a belter.
If Newcastle beat Nottingham Forest tomorrow, we’ll have five points separating third place from eighth and an epic fight to see which three (and almost certainly it will be three) join Liverpool and Arsenal in next year’s Champions League.
And there’s still a chance for Brighton and even Fulham to yet insert themselves into this equation.
Chelsea, despite a recent return to absolute antics, remain firmly in the mix. This was a tricky Chelsea performance to place. They started the game well and deserved their lead. In the end, though, it was hard to think they didn’t also deserve the ultimate defeat.
But while that conclusion might also have led recently to excited ‘Maresca sack’ talk that doesn’t really feel quite right here either. He set the team up pretty well, they played pretty well, and then they didn’t and then yet another goalkeeper made yet another bollocks of things. It just feels like that’s what Chelsea are at this time.
Goalkeeper and striker are such obvious positions where Chelsea are deficient that it’s impossible not to be drawn to them. How do you spend all that money and look so limited in those famously important and easily identified spots, where the difference between success and failure is so cruelly visible.
The fact remains, though, that they are just two of the places where Chelsea are deficient. Are their centre-backs any good? Not really. Not for all the money that’s been spent. Chelsea had an unexpectedly good start and an unexpectedly sharp fall, things that have left them largely where they might have expected to be found when the season began.
That is definitely the wrong way to go about doing that, and Maresca – who has not handled recent setbacks well, it must be said – now finds himself in difficulty because of things that aren’t particularly his fault.
We know Chelsea aren’t good at building a sensible or even vaguely coherent squad. That’s fine. But if they’re also now being mugged off by Villa on the extravagant Hollywood January loan front then what even is the point of anything?
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