Despite taking an early lead at Villa Park when ruthlessly punished a defensive error from Tyrone Mings by volleying in the first goal, it was a difficult first half for Chelsea as Aston Villa pushed hard for a goal.

• Watch the highlights of our win over Aston Villa

• Mount on breaking his duck, being versatile and support for his great mate James

• Kepa on helping out and keeping faith in his work

However, following a series of changes in personnel and positions from , we settled more after half-time and made the three points safe when Mount struck again with a dipping free-kick which wrong-footed goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez.

Kepa peppered

Villa seemed to take a shoot-on-sight approach and kept Kepa Arrizabalaga busy, especially in the first half. Danny Ings, brought back into the team by manager Steven Gerrard, seemed particularly eager to make an impact, with his five shots two more than anyone else on the pitch.

In total, the home side managed seven shots on target, plus a couple more which weren’t included in the statistics as they were later flagged offside, but they found Kepa equal to all of them, making a series of impressive saves to earn our clean sheet.

The Spaniard’s seven saves is his highest such tally without conceding a goal in any top-flight match, for Chelsea or previous club Athletic Bilbao in his homeland. His performance was a big part of how we turned a statistically expected 2-1 defeat into a real-world 2-0 victory.

Experiment and adapt

Potter arrived at Chelsea with a reputation as a coach who comes prepared with several plans for any game, able to change shape and approach as the situation requires. This was clearly in evidence in Birmingham. With Reece James ruled out by a knee injury, he needed to alter things on the right.

Apparently expecting a similar match to our last Premier League fixture, a 3-0 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers where we enjoyed plenty of possession and needed to patiently open up space against our opponents, he opted to start at Villa Park with Raheem Sterling as right wing-back and Marc Cucurella on the left of the back three. They are both players comfortable on the ball and capable of making things happen, but less physical in defence than some of the other options in Potter’s squad.

However, with a packed midfield both teams ended up looking wide for their attacking impetus, with each side’s attacks through the centre counting for just 17 per cent of their total. While Villa used their pace on both flanks to try to create openings, Chelsea became focused on the left, where 47 per cent of our attacks originated and Ben Chilwell ended the game with 90 touches, the most of any player.

When it became clear this was going to be a very different game to the one against Wolves, our head coach wasted no time in changing things, both with a reshuffle midway through the first half and then a couple of substitutions at half-time. That was shown by the fact that, despite starting the game as a wing-back, Sterling ended the match with comfortably the highest average position of any Chelsea player, after moving to the right of our front three and then playing as the central striker.

The two players introduced during the break had a big influence, too, helping to settle things down in the second half and contributing to a much-improved team performance. Their impact was shown by the fact managed Chelsea’s most key passes (two) as well as his 90 per cent pass completion rate being the best on the pitch, while ’s two interceptions was the most for Chelsea and five clearances second only to Trevoh Chalobah, despite playing 45 minutes less.

Ruthless Mount

Of course, the performance of Mount was also vital to our win, as having gone into the game looking for his first Blues goal of the season, our No.19 put his name on the scoresheet twice against Aston Villa.

It was an impressive display of efficiency as he registered two goals from two shots on target and three shots in total, although the only other Chelsea player to manage more than one shot was Sterling, also with three.

That saw Mount reach the landmark of 25 Premier League goals for Chelsea at the age of 23 years and 279 days, making him the second-youngest player to reach that milestone for the Blues, being a whole eight days older than Eden Hazard when the Belgian achieved the same feat.