Graham Potter under fire as Chelsea lose to Aston Villa

Chelsea suffers another defeat at home to Aston Villa, putting Graham Potter's position as head coach under threat. Will he turn things around?

Down and out! Chelsea lost at home to Aston Villa to tumble out of the top half of the premier league table and will now hope on champions league as the only route back next season. (Photo credit: GOAL)

Graham Potter’s position as the head coach of Chelsea is under threat after yet another loss at home to Unai Emery’s Aston Villa on Saturday.

From the team selection to their erratic display, weak intensity, and indecision in key areas, you could tell that all is not well with the Blues.

But their latest embarrassment sent them tumbling from the tenth spot and straight into the bottom half.

Potter started Mhykalo Mudryk upfront and the duo of Kai Havertz and Joao Felix right behind him.

But all failed to spark as the hosts handed Ollie Watkins a free pass to open the scoring on the 18th minute after Marc Cucurella headed backward to no one in particular and Watkins lobbed Kepa to make it 1-0 to the visitors.

It went from bad to worse early in the second half as a sensational effort from John McGinn flew past Kepa to make it 2-0.

And Chelsea never looked like coming back into the game from there on despite Potter’s second-half changes.

Unai Emery expected more fight from Chelsea

It was so easy for Villa that Emery opined in his postmatch conference that his team expected a tougher challenge from the hosts and didn’t have much to worry about except a tame effort from Mudryk in the first half and some patches of effort that Emiliano Martinez handled well.

Chelsea had eight efforts on target and 27 shots in total, the most they have had in the league for nine years without scoring. 

The club hierarchy remains in support of the manager, but time is running out and he just might start winning or start packing.

"We have to accept it [the result] and do better," Potter told Sky. "We can't feel sorry for ourselves. We have a fantastic game on Tuesday to put it right," Potter said.

"There were a lot of good things in the game, a lot of attacking entries and shots. If you look at the stats of the game, it was a positive performance, but in terms of the score line, it was not. We're all really disappointed."