The National staff
Birmingham // Chelsea’s title bid started to unravel on Saturday at Villa Park as they had two players and manager Jose Mourinho sent off in a 1-0 defeat to Aston Villa.
The loss means Chelsea are six points ahead of second-placed Manchester City, who have three games in hand.
Liverpool, in third can go second and close the gap to four points if they win at Manchester United on Sunday. They too would also have a single game in hand.
Chelsea had a first-half Nemanja Matic goal disallowed for handball and the game started to go wrong for them with Willian’s dismissal.
The Brazilian midfielder, already booked in the first half, got a second yellow card for tugging back Karim El Ahmadi on 68 minutes. Mourinho had planned to take Willian off a minute earlier, but changed his mind and replaced Oscar with Andre Schurrle.
The red card saw the game open up, with neither side content with a draw. The action became end-to-end and it was the home side who broke the deadlock with eight minutes left.
Marc Albrighton rampaged down the left flank and his cross was cleverly flicked into the Chelsea goal by Fabian Delph.
Right-back Branislav Ivanovic went to play as centre forward as Chelsea threw caution to the wind but it was almost 2-0 Villa in injury time when Delph’s shot deflected onto the crossbar.
Then Ramires received a straight red for an ugly stamp on El Ahmadi and Mourinho was sent to the stands for protesting as Villa held on to win.
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