Two goals in two minutes boosted Chelsea’s chances of a top-four finish and punctured Aston Villa’s dwindling survival hopes. Villa glimpsed a precious and improbable victory against a clearly superior team when Kortney Hause gave them a surprising lead just before half-time. But that prize soon vanished amid a rapid-fire salvo from Christian Pulisic and Olivier Giroud. Once they had edged in front, Chelsea never looked like being caught. Frank Lampard hopes the same stays true of the race for Champions League qualification, where his fourth-placed team now enjoy a five-point lead over Manchester United and Wolves. Villa remain stragglers in second-bottom. Their fixture list is daunting and if they are to clamber out of trouble they will need players such as Jack Grealish and John McGinn to exert much more influence than they were able to show here. Chelsea, on the other hand, could take heart from how bright they looked in their first outing since March, particularly as Villa had the supposed advantage of restarting the season sooner. Dean Smith had been sufficiently enthused by his team’s performance against Sheffield United on Wednesday that he sent out the same starting lineup, meaning the goalkeeper Ørjan Nyland retained his place after escaping unpunished for carrying the ball over the line against Chris Wilder’s men. Malfunctioning technology was not so kind to Chelsea’s goalkeeper here, as Villa Park’s sprinklers suddenly activated in the fourth minute to give Kepa Arrizabalaga an unexpected splashing. Happily for the Spaniard, play was up the other end at the time. It stayed there for most of the match. Chelsea ran midfield, with N’Golo Kanté ubiquitous in his first deployment since February and Mason Mount darting artfully. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, meanwhile, returned to action for the first time since injuring an ankle in May 2019. He, like his teammates, looked comfortable for most of a first half in which Villa mostly stood off the visiting side. Willian, with bursts of acceleration that left opponents flailing, threatened from the start. If Mount had been able to get on the end of a vicious cross from the Brazilian in the third minute, Chelsea might have been in for a fun afternoon, but Matt Targett intervened. In the ninth minute it was the turn of Tyrone Mings to come to the rescue, the centre-back hurling himself in front of a shot by Willian. Villa did little at the other end to perturb Chelsea until the 16th minute, when Giroud charged down a shot by Conor Hourihane after a corner. Five minutes later Nyland had to fling himself to his right to paw away a rasping shot from 20 yards by Mount. As the pressure from Chelsea increased, William tried to shatter the home side’s resistance on the half-hour, driving another dangerous ball across the face of goal. Giroud lunged for it but missed it by millimetres. Moments later Mount pinged in another cross from a similar position, and this time Nyland punched it clear. Arrizabalaga did not have to stretch himself until the 33rd minute, when Anwar El Ghazi forced him to parry a drive from 25 yards. A minute later El Ghazi picked out McGinn with a lovely cross from the left. The Scot, having made one of this characteristic bursts from deep, did not connect cleanly with his header from eight yards. Chelsea sought to re-establish their dominance. Mount danced past Hourihane down the right and flashed in a low cross that Loftus-Cheek came achingly close to converting. The visiting side’s frustration deepened when Villa struck a surprising blow just before the interval. Grealish, receiving the ball in an attacking position for one of the few times in the game, offloaded to Douglas Luiz, who clipped a searching cross from the right to the back post, where Villa had two players against one defender. Arrizabalaga blocked Hause’s initial shot but the centre-back reacted smartly, swivelling at the edge of the six-yard box and shunting the ball over the line. Villa had kept a rare clean sheet on Wednesday and now knew that another would lift them out of the relegation zone. Could they withstand the pressure Chelsea would inevitably apply? After seeing his team make no inroads in the first 10 minutes of the second half, Lampard sent reinforcements from his bench. One of the arrivals, Pulisic, made his mark within five minutes, guiding a cross from the right by César Azpilicueta into the net from close range via the underside of the bar. Two minutes later Azpilicueta reprised his run and cross from the right, and this time Giroud converted from 10 yards. That was that. “I’m really pleased with the performance,” said Lampard. “We moved the ball pretty well most of the game and dominated possession. If we had been a little bit more clinical, it would have been an easier afternoon.”