Branislav Ivanovic avoided a red card before scoring the winner as Chelsea broke Aston Villa's stubborn resistance to win last night's Barclays Premier League meeting at Stamford Bridge.
Ivanovic headed in a Frank Lampard free-kick unopposed after 73 minutes as debate raged over whether the Chelsea right-back should have been on the pitch.
Kevin Friend had booked the Serbian defender moments earlier for catching Christian Benteke with a flailing arm in an aerial challenge which infuriated the Villa manager Paul Lambert.
All the attention was on Jose Mourinho's return in Sunday's defeat of Hull City, but the Portuguese wanted to shift the focus to his team, who endured an altogether more difficult test than on Villa's most recent visit to Stamford Bridge.
Villa were beaten 8-0 last December, but were in buoyant mood following their 3-1 opening day win at Arsenal and determined to claim the scalp of another title contender.
Antonio Luna scored late on at the Emirates Stadium and was on target again, only this time into his own net following a Brad Guzan save from an Eden Hazard shot.
Benteke, whose double accounted for Arsenal, scored his third goal of the season with the final kick of the first half to equalise.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article