There can be no complaints, Aston Villa deserved to lose to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.
This is now becoming really worrying for Unai Emery because Villa haven’t won in eight matches in all competitions and they can’t keep a clean sheet in the Premier League to save their life.
That’s 13 matches, 22 conceded and only six others are worse off. The majority of them are sitting below 12th-placed Aston Villa in the table.
From the leaky defence to the goal-shy attack, everywhere you look, the spark and quality is starting to drain out.
It should be a worry for Emery because, aside from the Champions League, there isn’t much to shout about and now ruthless calls need to be made.
The games are coming thick and fast for Villa now, starting with two home games next week – Thomas Frank’s free-scoring Brentford and newly-promoted Southampton.
Emery needs to make big changes and he needs to start with one man, in particular.
Ollie Watkins needs to be dropped after Aston Villa’s loss to Chelsea
When Ollie Watkins lacks that bite in front of goal, it really shows because he is very timid and weak in his play.
I was in the unfortunate position to watch that against Chelsea, especially when he missed two guilt-edge chances in the first half, including one where he was one-v-one and had options to pass to the side of him.
Instead, he practically passed the ball straight to Robert Sanchez in goal, to sum up what was going to be a painful game for him.
This isn’t the case of Watkins being the issue here, but time to axe him from the XI for Brentford, bring in Jhon Duran, who scored in his last start and send out a message to the rest of the team.
There are certain players who are far too comfortable in the XI and Emery now needs to get the boot out, or else, the team will just continue to slide and slide.
Watkins’ stats against Chelsea
On one hand, the games coming up, the quality of them and how quickly they are coming about, might make up Emery’s mind, regarding rotation.
And Watkins, you would assume, can’t start against Brentford, Southampton, Champions League and then Nottingham Forest – all these games will be played by December 14.
But in Watkins’ case, you can’t keep your place on reputation now, with WhoScored rating his performance against Chelsea at 6.21.
| Shots | Key Passes | Passes | PA% | Touches | Dribbles | Dispossessed | Rating |
| 2 | 1 | 9 | 88.9 | 20 | 1 | 1 | 6.21 |
Villa are lucky to have Duran in the wings because, in terms of confidence, he is the complete opposite to Watkins and fans now need to see more of it in the Premier League.
