Five key talking points as Villa secure draw in FA Cup tie vs Chelsea

Aston Villa will face Chelsea in a replay next month after our FA Cup fourth-round tie on Friday night ended in a goalless draw.

The hosts were the better side in the first half and will be frustrated that they couldn’t convert their opportunities, but they did fade after the break and Villa enjoyed sustained periods of pressure.

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Similarly though, despite creating openings, we were unable to break the deadlock and secure the win, and so we’ll meet again next month to determine who advances to the next round.

Unai Emery’s focus will now quickly switch to Tuesday’s Premier League encounter with Newcastle Utd, with Villa hopefully getting back to winning ways after consecutive goalless draws.

Emi Martinez shows his class again

The 31-year-old made five saves, three of which were inside the box, successfully played the sweeper role, had 72 percent passing accuracy with 54 touches of the ball.

Martinez was superb yet again in this one as he was instrumental in keeping it goalless in the first half, producing a string of fine saves to frustrate the hosts.

Coupled with his ability to help us build out from the back and to rush out so effectively to sweep up behind our high line, he was fundamental in ensuring we have a replay at home to look forward to now.

Villa defence finding consistency with clean sheets

That’s three consecutive clean sheets across all competitions for Villa, as we’ve managed to rectify issues at that end of the pitch and look a more solid defensive unit, albeit still needing Martinez to produce in big moments.

Having conceded six goals in the three games prior to that, Emery will be pleased with that aspect of our performances, as many of the goals that we were shipping, were both avoidable and sloppy.

Particularly down the stretch of the season now, if we can maintain that solid foundation and keep putting our attacking players in a position to go out and win games, we’ll hopefully put a big run together.

Clinical edge in attack still missing

In contrast to the positivity of the point above, Villa are still missing something in the final third as we’ve only scored one goal in our last three outings.

We seem to have lost a clinical edge to our play in terms of being decisive and ruthless in key areas, while there is a lack of rhythm and creativity in how we unlock defences.

It’s preferred we have these issues now and can fix them rather than be blighted by them further down the line, but Emery will know that he needs his attacking unit to raise their level and put teams away when we create chances as we’re missing that end product at the moment.

Diaby still searching for form

Five goals and six assists in 30 appearances in his debut season with us is a respectable return from Diaby, as we can’t downplay the difficulty of integrating into Emery’s system and preferred style of play given others have struggled to get to grips with it initially too.

That said, we do need to see more from the Frenchman in the coming weeks to help us address the issue detailed above, as he’s lacking a killer instinct to his play either when creating for others or himself.

With one goal and no assists in his last seven league appearances and having drawn a blank in seven outings in other competitions barring his one goal in the Europa Conference League, it would give us such a lift if he is able to put together a decisive run of form.

Midfield balance restored with Tielemans return

This is arguably Emery’s preferred midfield as Youri Tielemans has now returned to the starting line-up to feature alongside Douglas Luiz, Boubacar Kamara and John McGinn.

Leon Bailey is having an excellent season and so perhaps he’ll be restored in a more advanced role on Tuesday night while Jacob Ramsey will hopefully find his best form again when he returns from injury, but this midfield quartet gives us the best balance and sense of control when they’re on their game.

It didn’t work as well as we’d have liked in the first half as we didn’t deal with Chelsea’s high press well enough in the early stages, but with the technical quality, composure and intelligence that these four show in how they tick over possession and position themselves in space, we’ll hopefully soon get back to our flowing and attacking brand of football.