Chelsea have learned from last season's slump, says André Villas-Boas

André Villas-Boas believes the Premier League title race will prove more competitive than ever this term but is confident his Chelsea players will have learned from the mid-season slump that undermined them so critically last year and can sustain their challenge this time around. Chelsea travel to Queens Park Rangers on Sunday hovering on the shoulders of both Manchester clubs and with their manager apparently satisfied, a defeat at Old Trafford aside, with their progress. Chelsea have matched last season's total of 19 points from their opening eight games but, where Carlo Ancelotti's team had been thrust clear of the pack with that amount, Villas-Boas's side are three points adrift of Manchester City at the top. "It's much more competitive this season, not in the sense of taking anything away from what Chelsea has done in the past," Villas-Boas said. "The second Premier League title that we won [when Villas-Boas was working under José Mourinho in 2005-06] we won our first nine games. But more teams now look as if they are in title contention. Everybody is chasing the top two – Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, us – and we're all just looking to keep winning. "Tottenham keep surprising everybody, and they have great talent and humbleness of speech despite being a very competitive team. They will never admit publicly that they are title contenders because no one needs that added pressure. But I think they're a competitive team, with a game in hand, and they can be up with the best. I haven't seen a Premiership so tight as this one, with so many good teams." Villas-Boas will welcome experienced players back into his starting lineup for the derby at Loftus Road, with Juan Mata, John Terry and Didier Drogba all rested in midweek. The last two were key members of Ancelotti's squad who slumped alarmingly last winter, claiming only 10 points from 11 Premier League matches in what the Italian consistently described as "a bad moment" and which, ultimately, ended up costing him his job. Yet the new manager, who has never presided over a prolonged loss of form at any of his sides over his two years and 100 games at Académica, Porto and Chelsea, believes his squad will have learned from that experience. "The team have gone through bad periods, like the one last year when they could not get a winning result over a two-month spell," Villas-Boas said. "This team has lived past that. Negative emotions always last in your memory more than positive emotions, and you know exactly what impact they have in your life, so you try to avoid it happening again. I hope that experience will benefit the group because they will not want to live though that again. "What we have done so far this season has been nothing special. Nothing other than our responsibilities. What matters in a season is the last three months. You have to be there to challenge for the trophies, so to be where we are now means we have been fulfilling our responsibilities so far. Nothing more. "If we continue to improve as we are, we are on a good track. But we will collide with a bad day, for sure. It will happen. I can't say if it's round the corner or not but it will come. All I can say is we must give a good response when the negative happens, as we did after losing at United."