Aston Villa lodged a complaint to Chelsea after a bottle of water was thrown at their bench at the end of their 2-1 victory at Stamford Bridge.
There were jubilant scenes at full time after a stunning comeback moved Villa three points off Arsenal at the top of the Premier League. However, the celebrations also featured the away dugout being showered with water when the final whistle was blown. It was not clear if the bottle was thrown by someone from the Chelsea bench or whether it came from the crowd. Chelsea intend to cooperate with the investigation.
The incident did nothing to dim Villa’s joy at an 11th consecutive win in all competitions. They were poor in the first half but Unai Emery changed the game with a triple substitution just before the hour. Ollie Watkins, one of the players who came on, earned Villa an impressive win by scoring twice.
However Emery, who was called a “tactical genius” by Watkins, refused to entertain talk of a title challenge before his side’s trip to Arsenal on Tuesday.
“We are playing against Arsenal and our mentality is to compete strongly,” he said. “And we are not going to speak about our target in the league until we are in game 34 because there are teams contending with a huge power to get points like Liverpool, like Chelsea. Of course we are performing very well, we are winning matches, we are competing fantastic. There is still another 20 matches to play.”
Villa’s record of earning 18 points from losing positions stands in stark contrast to Chelsea dropping 11 points from winning positions at home this season. Enzo Maresca, who watched from the stands while he served a touchline ban, admitted that Chelsea did not manage the game well enough.
However, Maresca, whose side have slipped to fifth place, insisted that he had no issue with Cole Palmer’s angry reaction to being substituted in the 72nd minute.
“He was working very good,” the Chelsea head coach said. “He was on the ball and off the ball, pressing, he was very good. We have another game in 48 hours, so he was good and we are happy that he’s back.” Maresca added that Marc Cucurella had to come off with a hamstring injury in the second half.
