Failure not an option for Villas-Boas

The thought of failing to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League has not even entered Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas’ mind.

The Blues face La Liga outfit Valencia on Tuesday evening at Stamford Bridge and need either a win or a scoreless draw, and for Leverkusen to avoid defeat to Genk, if they are to progress to the next round of games in Europe’s most coveted tournament.

The west London outfit could only manage a 1-1 draw in the corresponding fixture, which would see them dumped out of the tournament if they were to repeat that scoreline.

“It’s irrelevant what the game represents to me,” Villas-Boas said. “It represents, for this club, the continuation in this competition or not.”

“Our mindset is to continue in the competition, so we approach the game with maximum care and with confidence.”

“We cannot speak about going out. We have to focus on the match. I haven’t thought about it. Let’s just wait and see what happens.”

“I’m not going to answer any questions about what it might mean. My focus is on the game, not what’s going to happen after it.”

The Portuguese manager has already admitted that the team have only themselves to blame after throwing away the lead in all three Champions League away games, putting their destiny in the competition at stake.

“But those details made the difference. We have made mistakes and paid heavily for them, suffered against the run of play,” he said.

“That has all left us in matchday six and still having work to do to qualify. The destiny of both teams is here and everything is at stake.”

“We want to try and solve those mistakes.”

“The clean sheets we’ve had in the Premier League in the last two matches were a good start. If we do that again we know we’ll go into the last 16.”