Villas-Boas' work disrupted by Chelsea players' 'contacts' with Mourinho

Porto president Pinto Da Costa has claimed beleaguered Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas' work is being disrupted due to the sustained contact of key players with former manager Jose Mourinho.

He believes Villas-Boas' authority is being destabilized by Mourinho's communication with his former players.

"He will be successful with Chelsea because his contract isn't just for one year. He needs time to mould his own team and he can't do that as long as there are players, as I've heard, who exchange text messages with Mourinho and Abramovich knows this," The Telegraph quoted Da Costa, as saying.

Da Costa made these allegations in an interview with the Italian sports paper La Gazzetta dello Sport, and it echoes with the reports that disgruntled Chelsea players confronted Villas-Boas at a team meeting at Cobham on Sunday.

There are still a large number of Chelsea players, who played under Mourinho, including John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Ashley Cole, Petr Cech, Michael Essien, John Obi Mikel and Paulo Ferreira, and many of them still possess a strong bond of loyalty to their former manager.