Chelsea review - Gerrard culpable once again

Villa’s best performance of the season for 60 minutes is punctuated by two mistakes from Tyrone Mings and a goalkeeping misjudgement. A defeat, Gerrard’s fifth in ten games this season the result.

Dig a little deeper though and it’s clear for all to see that this was a performance driven by the players - to a man the players brought into the club by Dean Smith.

The pivotal point in the match coming as dynamism was swapped for Gerrard-ball on 72’ with the arrival of Philippe Coutinho.

Make no mistake, despite being 0-2 down, Villa were still in the game.

Post Gerrard’s substitutions the white flag was lofted high and the team walked to inevitable defeat without another attack of note.

That is no coincidence.

One suspects the first XI lifted their own games, without intervention from the manager.

Gone was the plodding, negative, narrow, uninventive football so familiar under Gerrard to be replaced by an intensity when on top more associated with Villa’s style over the years.

It’s exceedingly doubtful that Gerrard could genuinely take credit for the first hour, though of course he attempted to.

The real betrayal was the first interventions of Gerrard, as first Bailey was jettisoned - showing no lack of fitness but suggested to be on doctor’s orders - followed by the arrival of the unrecognisable 2022 version of Philippe Coutinho.

Everything thereafter unravelled with alacrity.

It was almost, as if to a man, the rest of the players gave up hope, playing out the game in a manner that could not be more opposite to the first 60 minutes.

It was Dean Smith’s signings who made the grade and took the game to Chelsea although notably Emiliano Martínez seems to have joined John McGinn and Ollie Watkins as the players most affected by the squad demoralisation under Gerrard.

But It was Gerrard’s signings that were the catalyst for the alarming downturn as Villa surrendered to defeat.

Coutinho and Dendoncker were introduced with no positive effect.

For Dendoncker it was just his third substitute appearance since his £13m move.

For Coutinho it was his eleventh game without any sort of goal contribution.

Looking further through the Gerrard additions to the Villa squad it gets little better.

For Robin Olsen it was his 28th unused substitute appearance having appeared once since his arrival in January with a woeful debut at the Etihad.

For Ludwig Augustinsson it was another game on the sidelines due to injury suffered on his equally poor debut for which he was only selected as the last man standing.

Calum Chambers - surely wondering why on earth he left the league leaders for no part in a relegation battle - sat on the bench unused for the seventh time this season to leave with just eleven starts in ten months.

Jan Bednarek, one of the most underwhelming Villa signings this side of Öyvind Leonhardsen and Mark Kinsella, boast justs one 45’ substitute appearance. Indeed Bednarek will undoubtedly be jettisoned as soon as possible by any new manager to go down in the annals as an utterly bewildering acquisition.

Lucas Digne remains injury prone after his terrible start to the campaign, as Matt Targett - Gerrard’s first victim - continues to impress on Tyneside.

Credit where it’s due, Diego Carlos’s 180 minutes in a Villa shirt showed promise despite defeat to Bournemouth on the opening day and Boubacar Kamara looked strong as a desperately needed defensive midfield influence across his eight game spell until suffering a 2022 ending injury.

But the running theme is pretty simple, Gerrard is no tactician, he is no judge of a player, he is no motivator, he is no communicator.

He is simply nothing.

The players are making it up as they go along, that may not have changed the result, but it at least gave us 60 minutes of football.

This though cannot and should not continue.