AVB: Rom let me down

Posted Thursday, July 12, 2012 by The Sun

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ALL AT SEA ... Andre Villas-Boas when he was Blues boss

ANGRY Andre Villas-Boas has told Roman Abramovich: You let me down at Chelsea.

New Tottenham boss AVB is still furious with Blues owner Red Rom for giving him the boot in March after just nine months in charge at Stamford Bridge.

Villas-Boas said: “I respect the decision of the owner of Chelsea ... but I will never accept it.

“I told him that for me it was him quitting on me when he had been so much involved in the beginning in bringing me in.

“And I told him he was also the one who was not putting up to the things he had promised.”

Villas-Boas, 34, was given a three-year contract by Abramovich last summer after guiding Porto to their domestic double and the Europa League.

But he was sacked just 256 days into the job as Chelsea’s Premier League and Euro hopes faded.

His assistant Roberto Di Matteo took over and led Blues to a Champions League-FA Cup double.

AVB, speaking in his first Press conference since replacing Harry Redknapp as Spurs boss yesterday, said: “It was a tremendous learning experience, to be fair.

“You also have to understand that the decision to terminate what was going on at Cheslea was not mine, it was the owner’s.

“I have never put my dismissal in front of the owner. It was the owner who dismissed me and the owner who decided to cut short the project.

“It is all very well that you cut the project short and Chelsea going on to win two trophies and say how wonderful the squad was.

“But at the beginning nobody believed in that squad when we put it together.

“So it was a tremendous learning experience which I am grateful to have gone through. It makes me a better coach and a better person now.

“For Chelsea to have won the Champions League and to have won the Cup was because we were still in those competitions.

“I had the opportunity to win them cut short and I had cut short the opportunity to qualify for the Champions League when I was just three points off the fourth position.

“That is what I recall from the day when I was sacked.”