The planning behind our winning goal last night started in the Stamford Bridge tunnel at half-time as Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham discussed their combination play.
Abraham had already scored a header against his former club, and seen a few half-chances come and go. With Aston Villa having equalised before the interval, we needed at least one more goal after it to secure a first victory in four games. It took less than three minutes of the second period to do just that, Mount superbly guiding a volley past Tom Heaton after Abraham cushioned the ball in his direction.
Mount explained how the move had come to fruition.
‘We were actually in the tunnel before the second half,’ he started. ‘We spoke to each other and said if the ball falls to Tammy and he can’t shoot, I would be near him and he would set me. That’s what happened and I was buzzing it came off.
‘For me it was a perfect set and a perfect height to hit it first time and get that power on it. You want to try and keep it away from the keeper. Heats [Heaton] is a brilliant keeper, anything close to him he’s going to react and save the ball. I know Heats, I was trying to keep it as far away from him as I could, and getting it into the top of the net makes it difficult to save.
‘It’s been five or six games where I haven’t had a goal or an assist, and I obviously put that pressure on myself to step up and try and help the team,’ added the matchwinner.
‘When you’re not scoring it’s difficult at times, so to get that goal and that confidence back up, hopefully I can carry that on.’
The outcome was the perfect antidote to the weekend loss to West Ham, and Mount saw plenty of improvement from that reverse all over the pitch. On another day, his goal would not have been the deciding one but rather the second of four or five for the Blues.
‘The West Ham game we didn’t make one foul,’ noted Mount. ‘We knew we needed to up that, with aggression, being on the front foot and winning second balls. I thought we did that. It was definitely a better performance.
‘We also knew we needed to start winning more games at home and dominating performances. We did that too. First half I thought we played well, we were on the front foot but that end pass or shot in the final third wasn’t going our way.
‘Second half we came alive, were attacking them and could have had more goals. It felt easy going forward, the way we were playing kind of clicked. We knew we had to up it and that was the way it went.
‘We are focused on trying to win games and trying to stay as high as we can,’ concluded the no.19.
‘We want to keep pushing, we know where we want to be and where we want to go.’
Frank Lampard on Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham