Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti is happy to be judged at the end of the season if his decision to offload several veterans last summer was right.
Players such as Joe Cole, Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Ballack, Deco and Juliano Belletti moved on but although the Chelsea manager often extols the virtues of experienced players, even when results have dipped he doesn't look back.
He told chelseafc.com: "Our philosophy at the end of the season was, because a lot of players were at the end of their contracts, to change our way and to give opportunity to the young players to grow from the Academy.
"This was the reason and now we can't come back to say, ah, we had players with experience. Our philosophy was to put more young players in and now we have to wait to see if we had a good idea or a bad idea - but we were agreed to change this direction."