Anyone who kept the Assistant Manager chip on Unai Emery (£0.8m) for Gameweek 26 would have been relieved at Aston Villa’s late winner against Chelsea on Saturday evening.
With bonuses being gobbled up elsewhere, Emery at least banked victory points for his owners.
Chelsea meanwhile slumped to another defeat. It’s now just two wins in 10 league matches for Enzo Maresca’s side.
We delve deeper into the game at Villa Park in our latest Gameweek 26 Scout Notes.
ROGERS INJURY UPDATE
Two of FPL’s five most-owned midfielders, Cole Palmer (£11.1m) and Morgan Rogers (£5.7m), continued their indifferent runs of form.
We can expect to see Rogers’ ownership in particular dwindle in the coming days.
Not only does he have a blank in Gameweek 29 but there’s now a yellow flag next to his name. It doesn’t sound like a serious issue but the context-less ‘75% knock’ will no doubt accelerate the rate of sales.
The budget midfielder, who is on a run of six successive blanks, came off after 77 minutes of Saturday’s draw with Chelsea. The game was finely poised at 1-1 at the time.
We’ve heard two updates straight from the horse’s mouth but the most detailed one came from Emery’s presser (not available to stream), transcribed by The Athletic’s Jacob Tanswell below.
“We played on Wednesday and maybe we were getting tired. Morgan Rogers, the injury, a small injury, hopefully. Tyrone Mings. We needed players and substitutes to make a good impact and they did it.” – Unai Emery to Sky Sports
“The players that were tired or with some pain, like Morgan, like Tyrone Mings, we substituted them.” – Unai Emery to Villa TV
Unai Emery: “Morgan (Rogers) is playing a lot of minutes because physically he can do it. But today he had a kick and he was asking me to replace him. Hopefully, he could play on Tuesday.” #AVFC
— Jacob Tanswell (@J_Tanswell) February 22, 2025
As Emery mentioned above, Tyrone Mings (£4.4m) also came off. He’d been battling to play through knee discomfort but finally admitted defeat on the hour.
Villa did at least get Ezri Konsa (£4.4m) back from injury on Saturday, while loanee Axel Disasi (£4.2m) will return in midweek. He was ineligible to face his parent club in Gameweek 26.
Chelsea lost a centre-half, too, in the shape of Trevoh Chalobah (£4.4m), who appeared to be holding his back before a very early withdrawal.
“We will see. It’s early, we will see tomorrow. He was quite good now, but I don’t know.” – Enzo Maresca on Trevoh Chalobah
HOLD FIRM – IT’S SOUTHAMPTON AND LEICESTER NEXT
Going back to the other well-owned blanker, Palmer, his last Premier League goal came over a month ago.
Chelsea may be a team in a funk right now, and Palmer is well below his best, but arguably two of the worst teams to ever grace the Premier League are up next. Both of them were beaten 4-0 at home in Gameweek 26.
Leicester City’s run without a league clean sheet is now at 19 matches. Southampton, threatening to break the Premier League’s lowest points total, have one shut-out in their last 16.
Palmer is surely a ‘hold’ for the next two Gameweeks no matter how poor the Blues’ individual and collective displays are. The question is more whether he’s captaincy material.
The England international was close to scoring at Villa Park, despite being muted. A first-half effort from the edge of the box deflected narrowly wide. His best chance, initially a one-on-one with Emiliano Martinez (£5.0m), saw him stumble and dither enough to allow Konsa the time to get back and block his tame goalbound effort.
Cole Palmer misses a huge opportunity for Chelsea! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/EqGGqB3KHy
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) February 22, 2025
NETO UP TOP, JAMES + ENZO IN MORE ADVANCED ROLES
If Palmer is a ‘hold’ for Gameweeks 27 and 28, are there any Chelsea players who are a ‘buy’ for those matches? Not many, in all honesty.
Maresca’s tactical tweak on Saturday may rekindle a bit of short-term interest in Enzo Fernandez (£5.0m).
The Chelsea boss changed his set-up in the West Midlands, deploying Reece James (£4.8m) in midfield alongside Moises Caicedo (£4.9m). That freed Enzo up to get forward a bit more.
The World Cup winner registered more shots against Villa than he’d done in a game all season (four). His penalty box touch count (five) was also at its highest since Gameweek 1.
Converting Pedro Neto‘s (£6.2m) cross from point-blank range, Enzo ghosted into the box to nod a Palmer delivery wide shortly after. A floated effort from just outside the area went narrowly over.
The caveat, of course, is that Maresca could quickly reverse this experiment in midweek, moving Enzo back deeper.
Neto did well as a makeshift centre-forward/false nine, with Palmer and Christopher Nkunku (£5.7m) flanking him. Eight of the visitors’ 15 shots either came from, or were set up by, Neto.
It was actually a better Chelsea display than we’d seen in recent weeks, which is admittedly damning with faint praise.
“Without a No.9 in the last two games, we struggled to create chances. Today, we tried Pedro during the week, it worked very good, attacking in behind and creating chances, scored a goal but it is a moment where we probably are a bit unlucky.” – Enzo Maresca
As for Nkunku, he is attractively priced, was back in a position that suits him better (on the left) and hauled against Southampton in Gameweek 14. Any punt on him would be purely playing the fixture, though, as he’s shown absolutely nothing of worth for a long time.
At the back, same s**t, different day. Filip Jorgensen (£4.2m) fumbled Villa’s late winner into his own goal, leading to the usual questions for Maresca.
“I don’t know. In this moment, it is not today’s mistake that I am going to change my mind about Filip in this moment. We will see.” – Enzo Maresca on whether he will change goalkeeper in midweek
ASENSIO AT THE DOUBLE
Villa had been on a five-match winless run themselves. Let’s not get too carried away by this victory, as but for Jorgensen’s error they’d be in ninth place, having played a game more than those around them.
They’ve got a similar clean sheet aversion to Chelsea’s: both sides are in the bottom six for shut-outs in 2024/25.
But unlike the Blues (and Arsenal, Manchester United, Newcastle United etc), they seem to have really bolstered their attack in January.
The two high-profile loan signings, Marcus Rashford (£6.6m) and Marco Asensio (£6.0m), combined for both goals here. Asensio’s first strike was very much like Enzo’s, the Spanish loanee bundling the ball in from mere yards out.
Rashford was a half-time substitute, his minutes being managed after the high-tempo midweek draw with Liverpool. Seven chances created in effectively two games (one start, two half-time substitute appearances) is a fine start to life at Villa.
Emery clearly sees Asensio as a number 10, shifting Rogers over to the right against Chelsea to accommodate both players. It’ll be interesting to monitor their output from those positions if that’s to continue. Rogers didn’t have a single shot on Saturday.
“He’s a clear number 10. He can take tempo when we need it and he can as well assist, he can as well score goals – like today.” – Unai Emery on Marco Asensio
