ANDRE Villas-Boas has back-tracked on his initial assessment of the damage done to Chelsea's title hopes after the 1-1 draw with Fulham on Boxing Day.
The Blues boss effectively wrote off his team's hopes of closing the 11-point gap on the Manchester clubs immediately after the two dropped points, now he says a big run of wins could yet alter the landscape.
“Those words were based on people doing their jobs, but on our predictions, we would have thought that Man City would win against West Brom and that Arsenal would have done the job against Wolves, but the reality is that the Premier League is as unpredictable as ever,” said the Blues boss.
“We were 12 points behind before, but 11 with the number of teams competing for this league is still a gap that can be shortened.
“The reality is that you have to be competent in those games as well, however, and we are looking to go on a run of good results, which we haven't got yet.
“A good run of solid wins can make a difference – that's the reality of the championship”
Chelsea will still be without Bransilav Ivanovic against Aston Villa tomorrow, but Villas-Boas hopes he has enough armoury to deal with an under-achieving Villa side, even if he is not writing off the threat Alex McLeish's team will pose.
“Alex has got Villa well organised – it's a team that shows great competence defending,” the Chelsea boss said.
“They've had a lot of draws away from home. It's a team that's compact and from what I've studied, Alex hasn't changed a lot from game to game, so people know each other's roles more or less.
“I think they can provoke a difficult challenge. Hopefully we can be competent enough to get the three points.”
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