Villas-Boas plays down Torres miss

Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas was quick to defend Fernando Torres after the striker’s shocking miss in the defeat to Manchester United at Old Trafford.

After scoring with a brilliant finish just after half-time, it looked as though the under-fire Spaniard had brushed off the controversy that had been created following his big-money move from Merseyside to London.

There was more evidence that the front man had regained his touch as he caught the United defence napping, dancing past goalkeeper David de Gea, only to see all his hard work evaporate in one wild shot on an open goal.

But Portuguese manager Villas-Boas was sympathetic to Torres, saying it can happen to all top strikers and comparing the miss to Wayne Rooney’s unsuccessful penalty earlier in the second half, which he blazed off-target.

“You have an example of Rooney missing a penalty too, which is basically the same,” the former Porto man told Sky Sports.

“The worst things happen to the best strikers in the world and today it happened to both of them.”

Villas-Boas said he felt his side’s comeback after trailing 3-0 at the break was promising, despite eventually only hauling back one goal.

“It was a strange game, very, very open and a lot of opportunities for both teams.” he said.

“If luck could play a better part for our side today, maybe (we could have won). We had some very good chances to even the score or even to score first.”

“The scoreline went crazy in the first half, but we had good opportunities to do something in this game.”

“Coming back from 3-0 down is always difficult and we had to take risks without exposing ourselves too much.”

“The second-half recovery was very good and we had a couple of chances to even the score. The scoreline is crazy.”

United boss Sir Alex Ferguson was preoccupied by Ashley Cole’s late lunge on Javier Hernandez in the penalty area, which saw the defender earn a yellow card, although there was no penalty kick paid.

“To me it was a shocking tackle, an absolutely shocking tackle,” Ferguson said.

“The referee has booked him, but if he’s booked him, I don’t know why it wasn’t a penalty. I must ask him.”

“We’re going to have to wait until the morning. At the moment his leg is very numb and he doesn’t have any feeling, so he could be out for a couple of weeks maybe.”