Villas-Boas denies losing cool

Andre Villas-Boas has vowed never to rant and rave at his Chelsea players, no matter how poorly they had performed.

Blue boss Villas-Boas has denied reading the riot act to his squad after watching them ripped apart by Arsenal on Saturday. The 34-year-old held an inquest into Chelsea's 5-3 Barclays Premier League defeat at Stamford Bridge 24 hours later but rubbished reports which suggested he lost his cool.

Villas-Boas said: "It's not my leadership style. Mine's a two-way leadership where the players are incentivised to give an opinion. It'll always be a two-way process for me where the most important words and actions are from my players. After a defeat like this, a player's own reflection is the most important thing."

Defender Branislav Ivanovic confirmed he and his team-mates had all taken a good look in the mirror since Saturday.

"Every one of us has to look in the mirror and be honest about how we played defensively," he said.

"We know how we made mistakes and how we plan to do things better. We have to be fully concentrated for the whole game and be strong for 90 minutes.

"When you're talking about the defence, you never talk about personal mistakes. In football, that can happen. We're talking about our game defensively. The whole team defends, the whole team attacks.

"In some moments, we lost some concentration. We weren't fully concentrated and things happened that we didn't want to happen, and that changed the game psychologically.

"This could be one of the most important things in our season after this game. A great reaction of the group would be good to show how we are strong."

Chelsea's first chance to repair the damage done by Saturday's defeat comes in tonight's Champions League game at Genk, where victory could seal a last-16 spot.