Aston Villa vs. Chelsea, Premier League: Preview, team news, how ...

There is a very important Chelsea game happening on Saturday.

This is not it.

This one’s pretty much an afterthought, perhaps even for those actually involved in it. Mauricio Pochettino sort-of, kind-of semi-assured us that we haven’t actually given up on the season yet. Except he didn’t do that; he just said that playing for Chelsea should be motivation enough to get up for any game. That may have been true once. But on the evidence of the last couple seasons, that’s not the case anymore.

Anyway, let’s hope Chelsea finish the job against Barcelona in the Women’s Champions League semifinals.

Date / Time: Saturday, April 27, 2024; 20.00 BST; 3pm EDT; 12:30am IST (next day)Venue: Villa Park, BirminghamReferee: Craig Pawson (on pitch); Chris Kavanagh (VAR)Forecast: cold drizzle

On TV: TNT Sports 1 (UK); none (USA); Star Sports Select HD1 (India); SuperSport Premier League (NGA); elsewhereStreaming: discovery+ (UK); Peacock (USA); Hotstar (India); DStv Now (NGA)

Photo by Ibrahim Ezzat/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Aston Villa team news: Villa are in good form at the moment, with four wins on the bounce in all competitions including a 2-0 win over Arsenal to solidify their hold on fourth place in the Premier League. The last time they finished in the top-four was 1997.

They’re also still alive in Europe (the last Premier League team standing) having reached the Europa League semifinals — their first European semifinal since 1982. Unai Emery sure loves the Europa League (though the one time out of five that he lost the final was when he played against us with Arsenal in 2019) and only Pep Guardiola has more wins in European competitions since 2009 than Emery.

All that is to say that Emery has done a wonderful job at Villa, which makes our 3-1 win in the FA Cup here back in February all the more shocking.

Villa will be without Nicolò Zaniolo and Alex Moreno, who are dealing with minor injuries, and Tyrone Mings, Emiliano Buendía, and Boubacar Kamara, who are dealing with long-term issues. Jacob Ramsey has also been shut down for the season after a recurrence of a toe problem. Douglas Luiz returns from a two-match suspension for yellow card accumulation.

The blue hair experiment is over for Nico Photo by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images

Chelsea team news: We arrive on the heels of a shockingly bad (even by BlueCo Era standards) result and performance midweek against Arsenal, which followed a most frustrating and disappointing elimination from the FA Cup, and there’s every chance that we make it three losses in a row for the first time this season — though Nico got rid of the blue hair, which had brought nothing but misfortune for us.

And we do get Cole Palmer back!

But now Raheem Sterling and Carney Chukwuemeka are out, and neither Malo Gusto nor Ben Chilwell were spotted in training this weekend. Reece James, Levi Colwill, Christopher Nkunku, and Lesley Ugochukwu are back in light training but still a ways away from contributing. Roméo Lavia and Wesley Fofana remain out long term, and have been joined by Enzo Fernández, who elected to have his hernia operation now and be ready for Argentina’s Copa América defense in the summer.

Despite our travails, we’re not completely out of European contention yet; if we can get a positive result here and from our five other remaining games, we might yet sneak in...

Previously: We’ve actually won three in a row at Villa Park, including the aforementioned 3-1 win in the FA Cup fourth round (replay) in February. It was the same scoreline in 2021, when a Jorginho penalty brace sandwiched a Romelu Lukaku goal, and we also won here last season, when Mason Mount scored two most fortunate goals as well.