Andre Villas-Boas reveals four key signings he missed out on at Chelsea | OneFootball

Former Chelsea head coach Andre Villas-Boas has opened up on his ill-fated time in west London and discussed four key transfers that fell through in his short stint at Stamford Bridge.

Villas-Boas joined the Blues in 2011 after they triggered a £13.3m release clause in his Porto contract, becoming the most expensive manager in world football at the time aged just 33.

However, he was dismissed in March 2012 after a torrid run of results, and his legacy was further dampened when his successor - assistant manager Roberto Di Matteo - won the Champions League a couple of months later.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Villas-Boas opened up on his time at Chelsea.

"Chelsea was something that happens to a lot of people who have been through there. Sometimes you get lucky, you win a trophy and at least you leave a mark. I wasn’t that lucky," he said.

"We thought that we wouldn’t need as many changes as we predicted when we planned to start, OK? So that was a managerial mistake."

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Villas-Boas then went into further detail about failed transfer talks in his sole year at the club, highlighting that they missed out on Luka Modric, Joao Moutinho and Radamel Falcao, while they also backed away from a deal for Carlos Tevez.

"Of course, we missed the Modric deal [from Tottenham] at the beginning of the season. If the Modric deal was not to be done there was the Moutinho deal to be done. That was the promise of Roman [Abramovich] at that time," he added.

"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 pissed off. So, no Modric, no Moutinho...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 anymore.

"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 WHSmith!"