Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas is happy with the way his players have responded to him this season.

The Portuguese rejected suggestions it had taken longer than he had predicted for his players to absorb his ideas, insisting they had done so at the start of the season, jokingly crediting predecessor Carlo Ancelotti for that.

"So you would say that ideas were either quickly assimilated or the last manager still left his ideas," said the man who left Porto for Stamford Bridge last summer.

"I got it last year the same - we started winning so much and it was not me, it was the ideas of the old manager, the same."