Villa blogger Dave Bytheway mulls over another must win game for the top four chasers as Guus Hiddink’s Chelsea come to town.

We are still there, still challenging, so hopefully now Martin O’Neill will get rid of any thoughts he had of prioritising after Sunday’s FA Cup exit at Everton.

After such a quiet and – for some fans – disappointing January transfer window, we now know the squad we have on board to take us through the most meaningful months for many years.

The difference between qualifying or not for the Champions League is huge, not just financially but also in the ability to attract the so called ‘big names’ of the game.

To only add one player in Wigan striker Emile Heskey shows O’Neill is confident in what he has. The only problem he always said was if injuries came into play we would struggle.

Here we stand, 13 games to go with our captain Martin Laursen injured, our big money buys Nigel Reo-Coker, Heskey, James Milner and Carlos Cuellar injured, add that to the long term Freddie Bouma and it’s quite a worrying prospect.

We should have added more in January with hindsight, but we will have to see what happens to prove if O’Neill was right, as he normally is.

At Everton on Sunday we played like a team who really had other things on their minds. We were out battled, out played and deserved to go out of the cup. We now have to concentrate on the two competitions were in, and one of those was put into jeopardy on Wednesday against CSKA Moscow in the UEFA Cup.

After going a goal behind early on from the impressive Vagner Love, I felt we probably deserved to win the game. Hopefully in training this week Gabby Agbonlahor has been having an extra bit of heading coaching.

It was like being back in the 1990′s, with the atmosphere of a big European night, and the great gesture from Randy Lerner to give everyone a free commemorative flag adding to the spectacle.

A 1-1 draw isn’t the end of the world as I always expect Villa to score, but conditions of -15 and an artificial pitch will definitely give the home side an advantage, so I am pretty pessimistic about reaching the last 16.

Chelsea now come to Villa Park for the early kick off, so I personally would like to see us go back to the 4-5-1 tactic, maybe playing Gabby on the left, with Ashley Young given a free role just in front of the midfield.

This would allow Heskey – if he is fit – to hold the ball up and bring in the attacking midfielders. It also allows us to build the wall between our goal and hopefully cancel their threat coming forward.

Some see one up front at home as negative, but in this case I see it as more attacking than a 4-4-2 with Milner, Young and Gabby breaking with us.

This game will really determine our season, win and we are five points clear of Chelsea, lose and were back into fourth, just three points ahead of Arsenal if they beat Sunderland.

It’s make or break, we simply have to win!

Have a great weekend. Up the Villa!