Villas-Boas has ‘complete trust’ in Chelsea rearguard

Chelsea manager André Villas-Boas admits he is unhappy with the number of goals his side have conceded recently – but insists he has “complete trust” in the Blues’ defence.

The west Londoners have let in eight goals in their last four games, including five during Saturday’s defeat by Arsenal at Stamford Bridge.

But although the Chelsea boss admits there is room for improvement, he feels his side have been unlucky – and has called on them to focus on creating more goalscoring chances to turn around their recent slump in form.

“Defending is a collective organisation – it’s nothing about one or more individuals,” he told a news conference at Chelsea’s training ground.

“It is to do with collective organisation, and there are collective mistakes we have addressed.

“I think we went one step up in terms of our collective organisation against Genk and we will just have to try to continue to transfer that into the games and create more goalscoring opportunities and prevent the opponent from creating theirs.

“There is always room for improvement, there must be. We are not satisfied with conceding goals but our most important task is to create more goalscoring opportunities than our opponent and put them in the back of the net because if we do that we are able to win most of the games.”

Villas-Boas, whose side travel to Blackburn Rovers on Saturday, refused to criticise his side’s defending during the 5-3 defeat by The Gunners last weekend, pointing to the frenetic nature of that particular game.

He continued: “We have good solid organisation, and it is not one game that ends 5-3 that will make us question our defensive organisation.

“When two goals happen from different situations, situations that are imponderables from the game – a player slipping when a pass goes behind and when you are going all-out attack to try to get a draw.

“Our defensive organisation is solid, it’s competent and we have complete trust in it.”