Two red cards and a string of refereeing decisions for the home side took attention from our below-par performance when fully manned at Loftus Road, where we had struggled to create goalscoring opportunities prior to Jose Bosingwa and Didier Drogba's dismissals.

His comments about referee Chris Foy have also caused a stir, but Villas-Boas refused to back down when discussing the official. He did, however, concede his players must also be criticised after a lacklustre first half-hour, and wants better away to Everton in the Carling Cup tonight.

'We should have played better with 11 men and committed less mistakes, and if we do that we avoid a couple of situations,' said the 34-year-old. 'And if with nine men we are able to do that to Queens Park Rangers, with 11 men we should be able to do it.

'You expect better things from us with 11 men but on the other hand it happened. You have to analyse the game thoroughly. You can take the view that with 11 men we were not good enough with the same fluency at the start. Then we were down to 10 men pretty early due to a bad decision.

'We have suffered before in early parts of the game, for example against West Brom, and we were able to react. We have been with 10 men before and we won 4-1 against Swansea.'

Villas-Boas would not criticise his players' discipline however, despite the dismissals and seven yellow cards.

'It is just the nature of the game. There are better years and years where you don't get yellow cards,' he pointed out. 'We have to just deal with it - as you start accumulating them suspensions come early so we have to manage it as technical staff to get the most availability as possible.

'It doesn't mean a pattern of bad behaviour or aggressiveness.

'I think there is a Mikel yellow card with us with nine men when he is confronted one against one before the player goes into the box and he chooses to foul the player instead of giving the player an opportunity to score. Things are related to other things and other stories.

'Didier's challenge is a sending off for sure and you cannot appeal but the other one is not in my opinion.'