Make no mistake about it: this was a dire Villa performance.

The papers will, unanimously, talk about Villa throwing away a commanding lead. But 4-1 up with twenty-odd to go, it had been far, far from commanding.

I don't know what has surprised me the most tonight. It could be that Martin Laursen scored twice, but I don't think so. It could also be that as soon as we bring on Marlon Harewood we play nothing but long ball, but I don't think it's that either.

You know what I think it is; it's that eleven so called professionals could be three goals clear with just over twenty minutes to go and they go and mess it all up.

It's the result that matters and I've said that a few times when we've won and not won convincingly or when the football was unattractive and in terms of the Leicester game, it really did come down to the result.

It's simply not good enough and for a team that really has only two hopes of winning something this shouldn't have happened.

I’m afraid the match sponsors, and indeed most of the UK press, have got this entirely wrong.

With all due respect to both Gabby and the Great Dane, there was only one man-of-the-match on Villa’s emerald turf on Sunday afternoon. And that – at the risk of monotony – was Gareth Barry.

Over a pint this evening, a Sheffield Wednesday supporter told me that he couldn't believe the change in Gareth Barry. Ineffectual, he had thought, in previous England appearances, but extremely effective against Israel at Wembley today.

Now this isn't really rocket science. Give a player half an hour, out of position, and there is the slightest possibility that he will not show you his best. Offer the same player a full 90 minutes in the same position he is playing his club football, and you may just see something else.

Quite why five thousand people couldn't be bothered to turn up for this defies belief. Perhaps they were still smarting at the fact that O'Neill failed to bring in Robinho, Cannavaro and Kaka during the summer window. What they missed was a treat. A real treat.

On one level, this match was all about duels. Laursen, or Knight, against Drogba. Reo-Coker against Essien. Carew against Terry. And although the stats will show that Chelsea had a lot of the ball, to a very large extent they had it in harmless areas. Why?

Zat Knight scored on his debut and Gabriel Agbonlahor got the second to secure the three points for Aston Villa. What an excellent result.

On my notes from the game I was calling for substitutions at around 65 minutes and on 71 when Gabby and Carew picked up yellow cards I made further notes about bringing on Maloney and Harewood for the two players; it turns out it wasn't needed.

Okay, it wasn't just Shaun Maloney and Luke Moore but I wanted to use that title because I used one very similar after the Fulham result at the weekend. I rate these two players very very highly.

Maloney scored two while Moore, Reo-Coker and Harewood also got one each. Nice for Reo-Coker and Harewood but also very nice for Moore as he changed the game for me against Fulham.

Luke Moore replaced the still to convince me Stiliyan Petrov at half time and the game completely changed. Shaun Maloney replaced the injured Wilfred Bouma with ten minutes to go and he won it for us today.

It wasn't the best first half of football I've ever seen but the second half was much better and we really could have had loads today.