Chelsea great Didier Drgoba has given some revealing insights into his spells under manager Jose Mourinho and Andre Villas-Boas.
Former Chelsea striker Didier Drogba has revealed that Jose Mourinho’s methods began to wear off during the manager’s first spell in charge, which ended in 2007.
The Portuguese has never lasted more than three years in charge of a club and Drogba – who played for Mourinho under both stints at the Blues – says history may be repeating itself.
‘I believe things often come in three-year cycles (and) we had arrived at the end of such a cycle,’ Drogba is quoted in the Daily Mirror.
‘By the start of the fourth (season) that Jose had been in charge, I think we had started to reach a point where it was sometimes harder for his message to get through.
‘We wanted to hear it, we tried, but somehow we had lost a little bit of what made us special.’
Didier Drogba spent nine seasons at Chelsea in two different spells.
Drogba also sheds some light onto Chelsea’s difficult period under Andre Villas-Boas, who only last seven months before being shown the door by Roman Abramovich.
There were extensive rumours while he was in charge that he didn’t have the full support of the players, and Drogba claims AVB was the architecht of his own downfall because he refused to listen to senior players.
“The club needed to keep moving forwards, but he shouldn’t have kept those players at the club while he was trying to make his revolution,” Drogba wrote in his new autobiography, Commitment.
“Although we weren’t going around complaining, it had an impact on the rest of the squad if we weren’t happy.”
Drogba claims Villas-Boas was urged to reconisder his policy of rotating senior players, but he never acted on the advice.
He said, “You have to be able to listen [to experienced individuals] and communicate with them.
“Otherwise, if you manage a team like Chelsea, you’re heading for a fall.”
Andre Villas-Boas believes a lack of consistency was his downfall at Chelsea
