Chelsea 1 Birmingham 1: Villas-Boas is scornful of notion that Drogba delivered team talk

The Blues’ stuttering season almost hit a new low when they narrowly avoided crashing out of the FA Cup in a dismal draw with Birmingham.

An Italian journalist had flown over to assess Chelsea ahead of Tuesday’s last-16 first leg against Napoli and made it clear afterwards he felt Walter Mazzarri’s men have little to fear.

His brief grilling of Blues boss Villas-Boas may have been delivered in broken English but there was no disputing what he meant.

How could a side who failed to beat lower league opponents missing half of their first-choice line-up hope to handle one of Serie A’s finest sides?

“Because it’s football and it happens just like that when you least expect it,” was Villas-Boas’s reply.

“Napoli is a strong team but we are a strong team – we still believe.”

The bluntness of his challenger’s assessment would have stung but Villas-Boas attempted to laugh off the exchange in what was a welcome moment of light relief amid more questions about the Portuguese’s future, player power and the abject form of Fernando Torres.

Villas-Boas insisted his job did not depend on the Napoli tie and furiously denied claims substitute Didier Drogba had delivered a half-time team talk when Chelsea were 1-0 behind.

Television pictures certainly showed Drogba leading a discussion with his team-mates in the tunnel before the start of the second half.

But Villas-Boas was clearly irked at the suggestion it constituted a team talk of the kind usually conducted by a manager in the dressing room.

Such defensiveness was unsurprising considering the 34-year-old had admitted only two days earlier that there was effectively a degree of unrest among certain members of his squad.

Torres is unlikely to be among that number having started every match since Drogba departed on African Nations Cup duty.

But the Spaniard still chose to sit in the dressing room rather than with his team-mates on the bench after being rightly hauled off at half-time.

Daniel Sturridge’s goal rescued Chelsea after their latest defensive calamity had allowed David Murphy to give the visitors a shock half-time lead at Stamford Bridge.

Colin Doyle brilliantly saved Juan Mata’s penalty to deny the home side immediate parity before Sturridge struck after the interval.