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Didier Drogba has revealed how Andre Villas-Boas’ ill-fated reign as Chelsea manager was doomed from the start.

Blues legend Drogba has lifted the lid on AVB’s troubled spell in charge at Stamford Bridge, which was cut short after just seven months in March 2012.

The Ivory Coast international striker believes Villas-Boas paid the price for mismanaging and ignoring the advice of his senior players and thinking managing Chelsea would be “easy.”

Drogba first detected problems when whispers began to spread, soon after Villas-Boas took over, that he wanted to get rid of the likes of Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole and himself.

In his new autobiography, Commitment, Drogba says: “That’s his right, because the club needed to keep moving forwards, but he shouldn’t have kept those players at the club while he was trying to make his revolution.

“Although we weren’t going around complaining, it had an impact on the rest of the squad if we weren’t happy.”

Chelsea started the 2011-12 season well but their form started to dip in the September.

The day after they lost 2-1 at home to Liverpool in November — conceding a late Glen Johnson winner after being caught trying to play the ball out from the back — Villas-Boas held crunch talks with a group of senior players, including Drogba.

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Drogba urged AVB to ditch his unsettling rotation policy and the philosophy which had cost them against Liverpool until they had got back on track.

Villas-Boas appeared to take the advice on board — only to tell his whole squad in a meeting the next day that they could win the Champions League playing his way.

“It was as if the conversation (the day before) had never happened,” recalled Drogba, who left Stamford Bridge for a second time last summer to join MLS side Montreal Impact.

Villas-Boas’ decision to ban striker Nicolas Anelka and defender Alex from the first team the following month drove another wedge between him and his players.

(Image: Getty)

And when he returned from the Africa Cup of Nations that season at the end of February, Drogba writes he knew instantly that “communication between the players and manager was at breaking point.”

The final straw for owner Roman Abramovich was a 1-0 defeat at West Brom in March 2012, shortly after Chelsea had lost a last-16 Champions League tie 3-1 at Napoli when Villas-Boas left the experienced trio of Lampard, Cole and Michael Essien on the subs' bench.

(Image: Getty)

Reflecting on the sacking of the Portuguese, who arrived at Chelsea aged just 33 having won a Treble of the domestic league and cup and the Europa League in his only season with Porto, Drogba said: “Andre’s mistake was to think that it was going to be easy — that we just had to do things his way and we would win.

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“You have to be able to listen [to experienced individuals] and communicate with them.

"Otherwise, if you manage a team like Chelsea, you’re heading for a fall.”

* Commitment is published by Hodder & Stoughton on November 19, price £20