Chelsea and Aston Villa has similar points on the table and I can't even differentiate their performance but I think Aston Villa are sneaky team that make way even when things are difficult for them. They just humiliated Bayern Munich in the Champions League and draw almighty Manchester United in their last game and as for Chelsea, they are busy making more goals than what they have concede, only their next matches is going to determine who is going to last at the top.
By features arrangements, Aston Villa might have a way to stay above Chelsea because I'm not sure how Chelsea are going to win Liverpool that is fighting to stay ontop of the table, any small mistake from this play will not only drag them from there, they have to come down to stay with Aston Villa hopefully Villa don't win their next matches again but sometimes, things don't go as expected, minor teams don't finish from surprises.
It was surprising to me how Chelsea were able to show the same results as Aston Villa and even managed to finish above them due to a better goal difference. Aston Villa lost a little ground due to the last two matches, when they first failed to beat Ipswich, and then lost points in a draw with Manchester United, and thus allowed the leaders to get away, now the advantage of Liverpool is 4 points, this is more than the distance of one victory, it looks like in the end for Aston Villa it will all come down to the fight for the top 4.
So far we have seen the competition in the Premier League is starting to be very tight and some teams are currently starting to try to outperform each other, some teams that are in the European competition zone (ranked 1-5) currently only have a small point difference so that it is still possible for a change of position to occur in the standings, every team that tries to move up or maintain their current position of course requires them to be able to maintain performance and consistency in every their match.
Aston Villa did suffer some disappointing results, as you said, failing to beat Ipswich and only drawing with Manchester United previously cost them an important point and failed to dethrone other team in top standing, but with the small points difference, Of course we will see how chelsea and aston villa will put up strong resistance against other teams to fight for the top of the Premier League standings, because in my opinion, Chelsea and Aston Villa, they still have the same chance as Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City at the moment to end the season as champions.