Andre Villas-Boas is gone but not forgotten, insists Chelsea captain John Terry
There were aspects of the Chelsea performance on Wednesday night that were straight from the Jose Mourinho vintage: John Terry playing through the pain, Michael Essien and Frank Lampard running themselves into the turf and Didier Drogba mixing menace with melodrama.
The old dogs were back doing their old tricks and the drama of the night seemed to validate Roman Abramovich’s decision to do away with his precocious reformist, Andre Villas-Boas. It must have been hard watching for Villas-Boas, like he was being erased from Stamford Bridge history.
Yet in the atmosphere of post-match elation, John Terry spoke up for Villas-Boas, revealing that he was still in touch with his former manager and the work he did in his eight months at the club will not be forgotten.
“I’m still in contact with him, like a lot of players here and probably will remain that way,” Terry said. “You know on nights like this you don’t forget things like that. He won’t be forgotten. It’s disappointing really because we would have loved things to go on [with him] and he had a vision and a plan and unfortunately that gets cut short with disappointing performances from us really. So it has a knock on effect on him, because at the end of the day we’re the ones out there performing and we weren’t performing as well as we could do. We’ve shown what we can do tonight but still at the same time we don’t forget what he’s done.”