Chelsea adapting to Villas-Boas formula

Chelsea manager André Villas-Boas
It was a difficult match but we created numerous chances to win early. Petr Čech made a couple of great saves but it was our game to win and you would have to say it was a fair result. It was a pity the second goal took time to arrive, as it would have given us comfort, but we had excellent work-rate and an excellent number of shots on target.

We have a competitive squad and we have a very difficult calendar in front of us so this decision [leaving out John Terry and Frank Lampard] has to be taken bearing in mind the minutes people played internationally [last week] and the talent of our squad. We're very happy collectively and everybody has been amazing in this effort to absorb all of the new ideas.

Leverkusen coach Robin Dutt
Actually, not much went wrong. We had a huge chance to take the lead through [Michael] Ballack, but then a centre-back is allowed to march right through the entire midfield to score. That was one of the few moments we were not very well organised. That was the decisive thing today; Chelsea opening the scoring. Both teams were well organised and my team played really well in the 20 minutes after the break.

Michael Ballack played a good game until he was taken off. He covered a lot of ground and then they brought on two fresh players, so I also introduced a new player in Renato Augusto who is a very good attacking midfielder. Not much has changed – we knew before that we would not register a big win at Chelsea. Chelsea won deservedly, no question about it. But nevertheless I have seen a good performance from my team.