Roman Abramovich was pissed not to have signed this player for Chelsea – Former Chelsea manager reveals

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Former Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas has spoken of his time in charge of the Stamford Bridge club.

AVB was in charge of Chelsea for a very brief spell in the 2011-12 season. He was eventually sacked few months into the job, with his assistant Roberto Di Matteo going on to win the Champions League in that same season.

AVB has spoken on some things that went wrong during his time, as some of the club’s transfer plans prior to the start of that season didn’t work.

According to AVB, then Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich was pissed off that the club failed to sign up Luka Modric.

“Of course, we missed the [Luka] Modric deal at the beginning of the season,” Villas-Boas told The Telegraph.

“If the Modric deal was not to be done there was the [Joao] Moutinho deal to be done. That was the promise of Roman at that time.

“Moutinho joined the Premier League years and years after I tried – proposing to both Chelsea and Tottenham – and everybody has seen the player that he is.

“So that denial of him was a failure that you can’t [blame on] a coach. I thought that we had the Modric deal done and he ended up in Real Madrid the season after. Then the Moutinho deal was to be done with Porto but the problem was the deal [for Chelsea] for the left-back of Porto, Alvaro Pereira, fell through.

“Roman felt p****d off. So, no Modric, no Moutinho, [Radamel] Falcao is another one that was about to come in but then you had [Didier] Drogba who couldn’t decide whether he wanted to leave or not in January.

“He was about to go to Shanghai, then he isn’t any more and then Marina [Granovskaia] she wanted Carlos Tevez and suddenly she doesn’t want Tevez any more.

“So, you know, managements and mismanagements that are typical within that organisation.

“But Marina evolved to one of the greatest CEOs at that time [at Chelsea]. I am nothing compared to what she has achieved. There are a lot of things about that season that deserve one of those shocking autobiographies in England that reaches number one in WH Smith!”