Andre Villas-Boas believes Blackburn are on the 'right track' with Steve Kean as he prepares to take his Chelsea side to Ewood Park.
Chelsea boss praises Blackburn counterpart and Venky's
Andre Villas-Boas believes Blackburn are on the 'right track' with Steve Kean as he prepares to take his Chelsea side to Ewood Park on Saturday.
Rovers are struggling towards the bottom of the Premier League standings and Kean has come in for fierce criticism from his own supporters.
The Blues could increase the pressure on Kean this weekend and Villas-Boas is determined to help Chelsea return to winning ways after a difficult recent period of their own.
However, Villas-Boas knows Kean well and feels he is capable of leading the club away from danger, while he has also praised Blackburn owners Venky's for sticking by their man.
"Blackburn is a team that is going through ups and downs in terms of emotions and a public that has shown a bit of disrespect for the manager, for the quality of work he does," said Villas-Boas.
"Steve is my friend and I have high respect for what he has done. When a team is like that you know they can put up a challenge, a proper challenge, so we just have to be up to our best again and try to get the three points.
"The owners have done tremendously well in protecting Steve because they believe in his talent.
"The owners and Steve live every day with their squad and know that they are capable of. So there is belief in the squad they can turn things around.
"Their run in the Carling Cup shows exactly that and I believe he can do a good job. Managers are always questioned by results, and it's fair, but I believe they could be on the right track."
Organisation the key
Meanwhile, Villas-Boas has insisted he has 'complete trust' in Chelsea's defensive solidity despite conceding five goals against Arsenal.
The Blues were carved open with alarming regularity by the Gunners to slump to their second straight Premier League defeat and fall nine points behind leaders Manchester City.
Questions have been raised about Villas-Boas' footballing philosophy but he has vowed not to change his attacking style.
But the Portuguese tactician maintains that he is also committed to making sure his team is organised defensively, and he does not believe there is any reason to panic.
"Defending is a collective organisation - it's nothing about one or more individuals," he told the club's
official website.
"It is to do with collective organisation, and there are collective mistakes we have addressed, I think we went one step up in terms of our collective organisation against Genk and we will just have to try to continue to transfer that into the games and create more goalscoring opportunities and prevent the opponent from creating theirs.
"There is always room for improvement, there must be. We are not satisfied with conceding goals but our most important task is to create more goalscoring opportunities than our opponent and put them in the back of the net because if we do that we are able to win most of the games.
"We have good solid organisation, and it is not one game that ends 5-3 that will make us question our defensive organisation, particularly when two goals happen from different situations, situations that are imponderables from the game - a player slipping when a pass goes behind and when you are going all-out attack to try to get a draw.
"Our defensive organisation is solid, it's competent and we have complete trust in it."
