Villas-Boas furious at referee as Drogba and Bosingwa see red!

Villas-Boas furious at referee as Drogba and Bosingwa see red









Andre Villas-Boas, the Chelsea manager, criticised Chris Foy, the referee, after seeing two players sent off in a 1-0 defeat to QPR which saw his side miss the chance to overtake Manchester United and move second in the table.

Jose Bosingwa and Didier Drogba were both dismissed as Chelsea pressed in the first half. David Luiz also conceded a needless penalty to gift the home side a first victory over their London rivals for more than 16 years, and their first Premier League home win of the season.

“I have to praise the players because they were amazing,” Villas-Boas told Sky Sports.

“For 45 minutes we played with nine men and that takes courage, it shows the strength and commitment of squad. It’s the third time in row where a referee has directly influenced the result for us and we’re not happy with this. In three games there have been blatant refereeing mistakes.”

Heidar Helguson had scored from the penalty spot before Foy controversially dismissed Bosingwa, who was judged to be last man when he hauled down Shaun Wright-Phillips.

Drogba then gave Foy no choice but to brandish the red card for a second time with a two-footed challenge on Adel Taarabt.

“I’m very disappointed with Chris’s performance,” said Villas-Boas. “With nine players we kept our emotions very well. Chris and his team managed to play an emotional game and they conceded to the crowd and committed tremendous mistakes.”

Chelsea also received seven yellow cards at Loftus Road.

It looked a lost cause for the nine men of Chelsea in the second half, but they went close to levelling straight away when Frank Lampard was just beaten to Raul Meireles’s brilliant cross.

QPR could not find a second goal and Chelsea should have capitalised with just over 10 minutes left when Nicolas Anelka headed the ball straight at Paddy Kenny, the goalkeeper, from four yards.

Chelsea then wasted another great chance to level when Lampard deflected Luiz’s overhead kick over the crossbar.

Shaun Derry, the QPR midfielder, said: “I think we’ve put a few smiles on people’s faces today, it means everything to us.

There were times in the second half when it looked like they had 11 men and we had nine.

“But we don’t care. We’re 1-0 winners over our rivals and that means everything to the club.

Neil Warnock disagreed with his Chelsea counterpart Villas-Boas over the performance of Foy.

“I don’t think the referee’s done much wrong today,” he said.