Villas-Boas hails wounded Cech after Chelsea win

Last updated : 06 November 2011 By AFP

Cech suffered a suspected broken nose after a heavy collision with Blackburn striker Ayegbeni Yakubu in the early stages at Ewood Park, but played on to help the Blues earn their first clean sheet since the opening day of the season.

The Czezh international currently wears a scrum cap after suffering a serious head injury in a challenge with Reading's Stephen Hunt in 2006.

And Villas-Boas felt Cech showed courage to play on despite his history of injuries to his head.

"I think he has broken his nose. He was in tremendous difficulty and he's injury-prone in these types of incidents," Villas-Boas said.

"He gave us good signals and we asked if he wanted to come off at half time but he and wanted to continue.

"That was brave because he's been suffering a lot from these types of injury."

Chelsea win was their first after back-to-back defeats in the Premier League, but Villas-Boas insisted he was never too concerned about his team's mini-slump.

However, the Portuguese coach admitted he was relieved to have picked up a victory ahead of a two-week break for the internationals.

"We needed this stimulus of a win before the international break and we have a better feeling before the game against Liverpool," he said.

"It's important to always win the game no matter what kind of conditions and we had had to hold out for a clean sheet."

Frank Lampard scored the only goal just after half time, when he got on the end of Branislav Ivanovic's cross from the right to earn Chelsea victory.

Yakubu had missed a good chance for the hosts in the first half and Cech made a series of impressive saves from Morten Gamst Pedersen, Mauro Formica and Yakubu to keep his team's lead.

Villas-Boas feels Lampard is playing as well as he ever has and said:

"Frank has found his timing to arrive in the box like the old days.

"It's never easy at Ewood Park, particularly after the moment we were going through, with back-to-back defeats and coming to a difficult stadium for us to play a Blackburn team in desperate need of points.

"Arsenal lost here and that shows you the difficulty teams can have at Ewood Park."

Blackburn have picked up just three victories in their last 25 Premier League matches.

But since facing Wolves and Everton in their opening two games they have had a tough run at home, hosting Arsenal, Manchester City, Tottenham and Chelsea.

After the international break they head to Wigan and Stoke before a run of games against Swansea, Sunderland, West Brom and Bolton.

Manager Steve Kean is sure that his team will pull themselves out of trouble over the coming weeks.

"We'll look at the run of fixtures we've got. The run we've got and with our performance level, I don't think is like the position we are in," he said.

"I don't think you can continue to play like that without going on a very, very strong run. We are confident we can climb the table.

"Not being disrespectful to other clubs, you look at the fixtures coming up, we knew in the first 10 games we had some very tough games and hopefully we can pick up some points now."

Source: AFP

Source: AFP