Cech: Players are to blame

Petr Cech has delivered a damning assessment of Chelsea's current failings, pinning the blame firmly on the players and absolving manager Andre Villas-Boas of responsibility.

Goalkeeper Cech accused his team-mates of failing to defend aggressively enough during their current slump, of repeating the same mistakes over and over again, and of being persistently wasteful in front of goal, before demanding that the defeat at Bayer Leverkusen should herald the end of their malaise.

He told the club's official website, www.chelseafc.com: "The manager is not on the pitch, we are on the pitch and we are making mistakes. He cannot do anything about individual mistakes while he is standing by the bench. So the players are to blame and we know it and we try to make things happen and change. It is not easy but we keep going."

The 2-1 Champions League loss marked a new low in what has been Chelsea's worst start to a season since Roman Abramovich bought the club, piling the pressure on Villas-Boas.

Having crashed out of the Barclays Premier League top four, the Blues are now in real danger of failing to reach the knockout phase of Europe's premier club competition, something unprecedented in the Abramovich era.

The billionaire Russian's patience with his new manager would be tested to the limit were Chelsea not to qualify for the last 16 but Cech insisted any wrath should be directed at his multi-million-pound squad, who are repeating the slump that cost Carlo Ancelotti his job last season.

He added: "We have been talking recently about the same mistakes - concentration and little details when we don't go to clear the ball. I think we need to be much more aggressive in terms of defending."

Wednesday night's game was not without controversy, with Didier Drogba convinced he should have been given a penalty when the score was still 1-1.

But Cech said: "There are no excuses. We need to look first at ourselves and then we can criticise the other people because we put ourselves in the situation where we were 1-0 up and we could have killed the game off.

"Then there would be no discussion whatsoever about things that were happening in the game. We have to take it like that and make sure that this is the last time it happens."