"You always learn from your mistakes, and you try to improve on those mistakes," he said. "Your man-management, your preparation for the game, and your training sessions. Everything is experience. In another way, you adapt to the culture of the club where you live in. All of those factors add up to a single person improving from a single experience. Have I improved? A lot, I think. A lot."
Emotion, especially as we enter the season's final weeks, is not something in short supply at Tottenham. Their implosion a year ago, followed by the memory of watching their Champions League place evaporate into the Munich night, still hurts deeply.
"It's never easy when they finish in the position that they did, qualifying for the Champions League in fourth spot and seeing it taken away from them because it's the rules," Villas-Boas said. "It's difficult for them, because of the distance [in terms of points] they had in the beginning.
"Everybody learns from experience. I have just told you that I feel like a different manager and a different person. The Spurs players who felt that in their skin definitely take it as an example. They lived it and they are the ones who felt it more deeply than I did, and I think you've seen that it makes a difference in their performances."
Whereas the Chelsea dressing room paid Villas-Boas only the most cursory of lip service, Tottenham players queue up to pay tribute.
"The gaffer is class," says Kyle Walker. "Even in terms of man-management. He is kind of one of the lads. He is only young, he is 35. But when he says things, even the experienced ones like Brad Friedel take on board what he has to say, because of everything he has won in Portugal."
His language skills have helped bond a polyglot squad. "It helps all the players a great deal that the manager speaks perfect English, perfect Spanish, Portuguese and French," said midfielder Sandro recently. Personally, it is a big help that the manager speaks to me in Portuguese. And it helps that if there is something that is not going right, we can approach him, or he can come and speak to us."
Circumstances at Tottenham have also helped Villas-Boas to settle. Despite the lengths to which Roman Abramovich went to sign him, he never quite felt settled at Chelsea, with its swirling undercurrents, internal politics and culture of developing success from the chequebook up. At Tottenham, where he is contracted until 2015, he has been given the trust to build a project, and the confidence to take his time over it.
"It goes further than the team," he said in Spurs' superb new north London training ground. "It goes along with what you are seeing here with these facilities. It means a change of culture for the club to have a new stadium and facilities. If we get to our objectives in the first season, it can put us in a good position to achieve it again next, and on to a team that challenges for trophies every single year."
Victory against Arsenal would put them in an position of extreme strength, but Villas-Boas was quick to warn that it would not guarantee Champions League qualification on its own. "It can change very quickly," he said. "Last year, from March 3, everything changed. It can change dramatically from a downward spiral to an upward spiral."
He was referring to Chelsea's remarkable resurgence in fortunes last spring. But he might just as well have been referring to himself.
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