Chelsea vs Aston Villa match report: Diego Costa earns Jose Mourinho important win on return

With Jose Mourinho having diagnosed a lack of confidence, a visit from Aston Villa is just what Chelsea’s doctor would have ordered (had she not been pursuing legal recourse after being banished from the bench). With one point from seven games Villa are even more fragile than Chelsea and after a bright start they gifted their hosts the opening goal and swiftly faded.

“We are staying up,” chorused the home support, a suitable riposte to Villa fans telling Mourinho he was “not special any more”. The light-hearted mood was infectious, even Roman Abramovich was seen smiling.

Chelsea are still 10 points off the Premier League summit, but the gap to the Champions League places, which is half as much, looks very bridgeable.

“It was not a brilliant performance but a solid performance,” said Mourinho. “When the confidence is a bit low, the quality goes a down and you have to bring other ingredients. They did that in an amazing way: great discipline and effort defensively, great balance.”

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That balance was achieved, said Mourinho, by dropping Eden Hazard, Footballer of the Year last season, to ensure his central midfielders did not have to worry about protecting the left flank when Alan Hutton went forward. Hazard, he added, had not been spoken to individually but “I told the players that this is not the moment to think about themselves, this is a moment for the team, just the team”.

“Solidity,” said Mourinho, was the reason Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who was making his first Premier League start of the season, was withdrawn at half-time and replaced by Nemanja Matic.

The 19-year-old Loftus-Cheek was one of five changes from the team that lost 3-1 at home to Southampton with the changes including a first Premier League start for Baba Rahman, a £14million summer recruit, at left-back.

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The way Hutton went past him after 11 minutes to bring the game’s first save from the Chelsea goalkeeper, Asmir Begovic, went a long way to explaining why Mourinho had chosen Pedro instead of Hazard on the left flank.

Though Villa’s team included only six players who have experienced a league victory this season – the opening day win at Bournemouth – they did not initially look haunted by the growing prospect of relegation, creating the best of the sparse chances, with Rudy Gestede also going close.

Then, shortly before the break, their goalkeeper, Brad Guzan, hit a difficult flat pass to Joleon Lescott. The former England centre-half mis-controlled the ball and it was seized on by Willian. The Brazilian drew Guzan and squared a pass for Diego Costa to tap in his first goal in the Premier League since August.

“It was a poor goal to give away,” said Villa manager Tim Sherwood. But he was not about to blame his goalkeeper. “Mistakes are there and we have to stick together. They’re team mistakes,” he said.

“It’s about bouncing back and making sure we don’t do it again.”

Sherwood added: “I thought we were better than them before that mistake but we lost again and are in a perilous position.”

Of his own future, he added: “I’ve had no indication that the clock’s ticking, but I know as a manager you need to win matches. If you don’t you’ll invariably lose your job somewhere along the line.”

The second goal, after 54 minutes, owed much to a fine advantage played by referee Roger East. Ramires was flattened by Kieran Richardson but East saw the ball was en route to Costa, whose attempted pass to Willian looped past Guzan off the ankle of his own defender, Hutton.

There was still 36 minutes left, but both teams knew that was game over.