Ramires was one of the few bright spots of Andre Villas-Boas' time at the helm of Chelsea. The Brazilian, who was something very much approaching useless in the early stages of last season, has continued his maturation into a legitimate Premier League player this season, and his recent performances on the right wing have highlighted just how far he's come since the first few months of the 2010/11 campaign.

Ramires was also known to be one of Villas-Boas' key supporters in Chelsea camp, with him, Juan Mata and David Luiz all big admirers of our former manager. Which makes his retroactive sanctioning of the manager switch even more damning:

It's hard to say why it didn't work out for Andre but we have all taken strength from the change of coach. When results aren't good, it's always down to the manager. But with Robbie in charge we have found more respect in ourselves.

Robbie has brought in some new ideas and instilled great confidence in us. And we soon began to realise that we are still a great team with great players. We have built from our victory in Robbie's very first game in charge and we have gone from strength to strength since then.

-Source: ESPN Soccernet.

I don't know what Andre Villas-Boas did to the morale of this team, but it sure wasn't anything good.