Familiar issues hurt Chelsea as cracks begin to show ahead of key run | OneFootball

Blues risk slide down table after just one win in their last six Premier League matches

Saturday offered plenty of deja vu for Chelsea, and none of it was welcome.

Following previous occasions in April 2023 and September 2023, the England striker became the first Premier League player ever to score the winner on three separate visits to Chelsea, and this one was especially painful for Enzo Maresca’s side, who had squandered a half-time lead to lose.

Indeed, they have now lost three of their last seven matches in all competitions, and won just once in their last six Premier League matches. December has historically been something of a traffic-calming measure for Chelsea’s form, and so it is proving again. They surely cannot wait for the New Year now.

Ollie Watkins scored a late winner for Aston Villa with a header from a corner

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But they must still face Bournemouth on Tuesday in their final game of 2025, and the fact it is another home match at Stamford Bridge provides more of an obstacle than respite, on current form.

Chelsea have lost 13 points from winning positions in the top flight this season, and a concerning 11 of those have come at home, which is the most of any Premier League team. Bournemouth can watch back the way Maresca’s side tired and withered in the second half against Aston Villa and take confidence in their own ability to outlast their hosts at Stamford Bridge in just the same way.

Maresca served a touchline ban and could only watch as Unai Emery’s substitutes change the game. The Chelsea head coach said it was after Watkins’s 63rd-minute equaliser that the complexion of the game completely changed and that Villa grew and Chelsea wilted. But, in truth, it came earlier than that, when Emery introduced Watkins, Amadou Onana and ex-Chelsea man Jadon Sancho.

Villa had not as much as taken a shot in the first half and Chelsea’s two centre-backs, Benoit Badiashile and Trevoh Chalobah, had completed more passes in the first 45 minutes than the entire Villa team combined.

Matches are won across 90 minutes, not 45, though, and Chelsea succumbed to a similar defeat to September’s 3-1 loss to Brighton, when Chalobah’s sending off with the Blues 1-0 up completely changed the game and Brighton kept building up pressure, scoring in the 77th minute and twice in stoppage time.

It has cost Chelsea numerous times not to be able to manage a game properly, and while Maresca’s young team are maturing in some ways, there are still no signs of progress on that score, something he freely admitted after the match.

“By the time we conceded the first goal, we should have scored two or three goals,” said Maresca. “We have to be clinical. We struggle a little bit with the management of the game. And it's something that for sure we need to improve.”

Chelsea stay fifth, for now, but cracks are beginning to show. They are as many points away from their conquerors, third-place Villa, as they are from 16th-place Leeds.