Joao Pedro, Chelsea teammate shame Shearer and Aston Villa in Champions League race | OneFootball

There’s no great shame in being dominated by Joao Pedro but Aston Villa should take a long hard look in the mirror after Alejandro Garnacho ran riot at Villa Park to hand Chelsea a huge boost in the race for Champions League qualification.

The pass to Malo Gusto was on for Enzo Fernandez for what felt like at least a couple of minutes before he delivered a good but actually quite simple ball for a Premier League midfielder over the top of the Aston Villa defence for the right-back to assist Joao Pedro for his first goal on quite the evening for the Brazilian.

It was in moments like that and seemingly innumerable instances besides when the injuries to first-choice midfield trio Boubacar Kamara, Youri Tielemans and John McGinn were most keenly felt. The issue wasn’t the very high line but the lack of pressure on Fernandez, Moises Caicedo or any other Chelsea player able to play a pass into 30 to 40 yards of space for a teammate to run onto, i.e. all of them.

The cross threaded between Emiliano Martinez and the backtracking Villa defenders by Gusto to Pedro was sublime, as was much of Chelsea’s build-up play, albeit up against some very willing Villa patsies.

Matty Cash endured a torrid time vs Alejandro Garnacho, who enjoyed a once in a blue moon display to suggest he may actually be good enough to be starting games for Chelsea. And the on-fire Joao Pedro spent the evening going up through the classification of burns to leave Ezri Konsa and Tyrone Mings with third degrees from head to toe.

After seven goals and four assists in 26 games under Enzo Maresca, his hat-trick and an unwitting flick to Cole Palmer at Villa Park made it ten goals and five assists in just 12 games under Liam Rosenior. A goal every 90 minutes; a goal contribution every 60 minutes. He showed his quality as a goal poacher to slide in his first and third goals, and the second was proof of his status as a world-class finisher.

Garnacho did well on the left to get the better of Cash for the 427th time of the first half and then found Fernandez, who paused in possession on the edge of the box – quite how or why he was allowed to will feature in the multifarious defensive recriminations for Villa – before playing a smart pass through for Pedro to then dink Martinez and score in the far corner. A goal which should put Alan Shearer’s doubts to bed.

“I think Joao Pedro is a really, really talented player,” Shearer said last week. “Whether he’s enough to take Chelsea to the next level and to where they want to be in terms of titles and the champions League is a different conversation.”

He very evidently is “enough” and very clearly not one of the players Shearer or anyone else should be concerned about as Chelsea look to go to the next level.

It’s no exaggeration to say Chelsea won every battle on the pitch but one, though that clash was one-sided enough to keep Villa in this game for far longer than their general play merited. At one point it looked like a mere breeze created by Ollie Watkins as he ran past Wesley Fofana was enough to send the Chelsea centre-back sprawling to the ground.

Watkins really should have scored that one-on-one, it was his dummy in the box which granted Douglas Luiz the chance to score the opening goal of the game, he was denied a goal by VAR for having an Arsene Wenger-angering toe offside and generally had Fofana on toast. And yet come 70 minutes was seen cynically shoving the Blues defender in huge frustration at what his teammates had offered him in support.

Pedro was again involved in the build-up to Cole Palmer’s goal, drifting all too easily through the Villa midfield before James’ cross was parried by Martinez to Palmer, via a flick off Pedro to hand the Brazilian a very cheeky assist, for the England international to drive through Villa defenders into the back of the net.

Villa had effectively given up on the game by the time Pedro scored his third – tapping in Garnacho’s square pass – and may as well give up on the race for Champions League qualification unless their medical staff can work miracles on their injured midfield trio. Luiz, Amadou Onana and Emiliano Buendia are so far short of the level required.

Chelsea were as good as Villa were bad though. They showed character to come from behind, played out from the back effectively and impressively more often than not and looked as dangerous and slick in attack as at any point so far under Rosenior, with the relationship between Palmer, Pedro and – most remarkably – Garnacho blossoming to hugely promising degree.

The former Manchester United winger did miss a sitter towards the end of the game and had two or three other opportunities when he either took the wrong option or got the right option wrong. But crucially, having spent most of his Chelsea career to date cutting back and playing ten yard passes, he ran at Cash and kept running at him.

He was excellent, but there’s no getting away from the shame his excellence brings upon Aston Villa, who are firmly in the doldrums and must soon consider how many of their eggs should be in the Europa League basket.