Chelsea\u2019s 4\u20131 victory at Villa Park on Wednesday is bound to be remembered for Jo\u00e3o Pedro\u2019s first Premier League hat trick, but the posturing before both kickoffs drew as much attention as the goals.<\/p>\n
Seconds after Chelsea started the match, Douglas Luiz put Aston Villa ahead inside 125 seconds with a well-taken opener. The visitors levelled through Jo\u00e3o Pedro in the 35th minute, and he then put his side ahead in the sixth minute of stoppage time.<\/p>\n
Before the opening whistle the Chelsea players gathered in a tight huddle around the ball at the centre circle, and they repeated the ritual before the second-half restart. Amadou Onana and Ollie Watkins appeared impatient as Chelsea\u2019s players stayed clustered around the ball. The Villa Park crowd reacted first with confusion and then with loud boos as the second half began.<\/p>\n
For Chelsea\u2019s manager the scene was a welcome sign rather than a provocation. \u201cThat comes from unity,\u201d Rosenior told BBC\u2019s Match of the Day after Chelsea climbed up to fifth place, three points behind Aston Villa. \u201cThat comes from the players. It doesn\u2019t come from me. As their manager, it makes me really proud to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve taken a lot of message on board from not just myself, but from the staff. Willie Isa is a top man and he\u2019s from rugby, he\u2019s from New Zealand, and he\u2019s spoken a lot about our togetherness and the players have taken it on board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Willie Isa was appointed as the club\u2019s player support and development officer in February 2025, a month after his professional retirement. Isa spent a decade and a half at club level and made more than 300 appearances before representing his nation, but those appearances came in rugby league rather than soccer.<\/p>\n
Isa\u2019s former head coach at Wigan Warrior, Matt Peet, was confident about the appointment. \u201cHe is a cultural architect,\u201d Peet told The Athletic upon Isa\u2019s appointment. \u201cHe will make the environment better and all the individuals around the environment better. Ignore the different shape of the ball that he is associated with, Willie\u2019s skill set is all about high-performing teams, leadership and dealing with people. ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rosenior hailed team unity after Chelsea’s pre-kickoff huddles and Jo\u00e3o Pedro’s hat trick. This week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1264],"tags":[1505,1081,1162],"class_list":["post-7588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-football-development","tag-accountability","tag-adaptation","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}