Next Saturday, 7th of February 2015, a deeply fragilized Aston Villa will entertain the league leaders, Chelsea, at Villa Park for round 24 of the English Premier League, on a match that the Villans need to win, since they are currently dangerously close to the relegation zone and, therefore,  cannot afford more slipups.

Three consecutive defeats is Aston Villa’s recent record at the EPL and, judging from that, things are definitely not easy for Paul Lambert and his boys. Last weekend, the Villans travelled to London to be severely hammered by Arsenal and conceded their 11th defeat of the season. The Birmingham team's finishing problems are particularly worrying. With just 11 goals scored in 23 leagues matches so far this season, Aston Villa have the worst attacking line of the league and they urgently need to fix that if they don’t want to fall into the depths of the relegation zone.

The upcoming match against Chelsea is probably not the most indicated to start turning their bad luck around, but the Villans have to find a way to work something out for that particular clash. For the match against the Blues, Paul Lambert will probably still not be able to rely on the contribution of Kozak, Vlaar, Cole and Senderos, all currently sidelined due to injury.

As for Chelsea, the Blues have secured their five point lead at the top of the English Premier League table last weekend by drawing against Manchester City at Stamford Bridge. José Mourinho’s boys didn’t have the best of days as they allowed the visitors to have control over large periods of the match. Without Cesc Fabregas (injured) and Diego Costa (suspended), the Blues weren’t able to impose their match and their usual at-home dominance, but they did manage to secure one point from such an important match.

The upcoming match against Aston Villa will probably not be a walk in the park for Chelsea, especially if we have in mind what happened last season when the Blues visited Villa Park and lost by 1-0. José Mourinho is certainly aware of that and he will do everything within his reach to prevent a similar slip up from happening again.

Despite last campaign's match outcome, the Blues are firm favourites for the next Saturday’s match since from what we have seen from Aston Villa so far, they might still don’t have what is needed to overcome a powerful side such as Chelsea.

Aston Villa

Stats: W-2 L-3 D-0

Recent Form - LWLLW

Chelsea

Stats: W-2 L-1 D-2

Recent Form - DWLDW

Possible Line-ups

Aston Villa (4-3-3) – Guzan - Hutton - Clark - Okore - Richardson - Delph - Cleverley - Sanchez - Weimann - Carles Gil - Benteke

Chelsea (4-3-3) – Courtois - Ivanovic - Terry - Cahill - Azpilicueta - Matic - Fàbregas - Óscar - Hazard - Willian - Remy

Prediction

Aston Villa 0 Chelsea 1