Andre Villas-Boas once again accused the Sun newspaper of fabricating stories following Chelsea's 2-1 victory over Manchester City, claiming he never demanded that his players celebrate with the management team to show solidarity.
Villas-Boas helped his side back into the title picture thanks to goals from Raul Meireles and Frank Lampard at Stamford Bridge. However, neither player ran to the bench to celebrate, as had been claimed in the morning paper.
The Portuguese insisted that, much like an earlier report in which he had allegedly given a public dressing down to Alex and Nicolas Anelka in front of the entire squad, the story about forcing his players to celebrate with the bench had also been totally made up.
"It's a false story, I never said anything like that. I think it's ridiculous," Villas-Boas told Sky Sports. "The Sun in two weeks has been spot-on with two false stories. I already said that if they paid the informant, they should get their money back.
"I told the players that when we score a goal, the bench lives the same emotions. The bench competes with them, with the same desire. We are for them, we want to play but we can't play.
"That's what I said in that conversation, and it's an unfortunate story. It's a pity, you'll get to know me, I'd never be an individual to say something extraordinary like that."
Focusing on the game itself, Villas-Boas steered away from taking any added credit for inflicting a first league defeat of the season on City. However, the Chelsea boss does believe the Christmas period could be telling.
"We needed to close the gap, we don't take any extra flavour from being the first team to beat them, that is irrelevant," Villas-Boas said. "We needed to win to get our Premier League challenge back on track and I think it is alive now.
"We had to keep calm and keep our patience, and the players did it brilliantly. They were very patient to get the goal to earn us the win. They deserve this win."
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