ALL together now, in Sound Of Music mode: “How Do You Solve A Problem Like The Chelsea?” Luiz Felipe Scolari’s team of all the talents are unbeaten at home in 85 Premier League matches but Martin O’Neill is a man with a plan.

O’Neill and Aston Villa are the latest visitors to the Stamford Bridge fortress today, when Chelsea will be striving to extend an unbeaten home run that stretches back to Claudio Ranieri’s time. If the corresponding fixture last season, which finished 4-4, is anything to go by, it should be a cracker, and Villa, who climbed into the top three on the back of their third successive win last weekend, are stronger and more confident now.

O’Neill believes attack is Villa’s most likely route to a favourable outcome. He feels that in Ashley Young and Gabriel Agbonlahor he has the pace to pin back Chelsea’s attacking full-backs and to get in behind them, and that the 6ft 5in John Carew is one of the few strikers big and good enough to be a handful for Chelsea centre-half John Terry. Another reason to be cheerful is the form of Gareth Barry, described by teammate Stilian Petrov as the most influential midfield player in the country. Nodding, O’Neill said: “Gareth, to his credit, has put aside the disappointment of not joining Liverpool and got on with it. He’s playing better than ever.”

O’Neill was exaggerating for the purpose of emphasis, but his meaning was clear enough when he said the other day that Young, who cost nearly £10m from Watford in 2007, was playing “three times as well” as he was when he won the last of his three England caps at the back end of last season. It is an assertion that the 23-year-old goalscoring left-winger from Steve-nage is keen to justify when Fabio Capello attends today’s match before naming his squad f o r t h e W o r l d C u p qualifiers against Kazakh-stan and Belarus.

After playing against Trinidad & Tobago in June, Young, right, has been ignored by Capello. Having contributed four goals to his club’s strong start, he is anxious to make up for lost time. “If I keep doing what I’m doing, fingers crossed, I’ll be in the squad,” he said.

Under O’Neill, he added, “everybody now has that never-say-die attitude - we’ll fight right to the 90 min-utes-plus. Last season we often seemed to concede in the last 10 minutes; this time it’s different. We’ve defended well and seen it out. If you’ve got that rock-like base at the back, it sets up forwards like me to go out and play. If we keep going this way, there’s going to be a time when we break into that top four.”

Villa’s recent record against Chelsea “isn’t bad at all”, said O’Neill. “In my two seasons here, we’ve drawn three times in the league and won one. We went there on Boxing Day last year and were as close as anyone to winning. We led 2-0, playing really well. Frank Lamp-ard had come off with a thigh problem, and at that stage there seemed to be a bit of internal strife affecting them.

“A minute before half-time the game changed when the referee awarded them a penalty and sent off Zat Knight. They came from 2-0 behind to go 3-2 in front, but we got back to 3-3 and the last few minutes were incredible. They went 4-3 up in the 88th minute, then we equalised right at the end. So we have shown resilience there in the past. We went into that game in a pretty positive frame of mind and will do so again. We have players who can cause any side problems, and we’ve more self-belief than we’ve had for a long time: we think we can win.

“Chelsea are a fine side and I have the utmost regard for them. Their record at home is astounding - it will probably never be done again - but we’ll go there and try to win the game. That’s not an idle boast, we feel it’s something, on our day, we’re capable of doing. If we do it, mind, that won’t mean we’ve cracked it as a big team. I hate drawing sporting analogies, but what we’ve done so far is like playing three decent holes in a round of golf. There’s still another 15 to go.”

A draw would be about par.