Chelsea’s Italian manager has demanded a huge effort from his players and been rewarded with a four-game winning run since defeat at Arsenal six weeks agoThose Chelsea players still on extended leave in mid-July after the European Championship need only have spied snippets of Antonio Conte’s inaugural press conference to discern the new head coach’s mantra. He used the word “work”, or one of its derivatives, 32 times in a little under an hour that day, including one response where he insisted he was “a worker who likes to work”. That was followed up with a rat-a-tat “I only know this verb: to work, work, work”, which was less a reflection on his English and more a reminder of the...
Marcus Rashford needs restoring to centre stage, Victor Moses is shining for Chelsea at last and David Moyes should be allowed to rebuild SunderlandThe splurge of title-winning questions after Liverpool’s breathless victory at Selhurst Park provoked a wonderfully enigmatic response from Jürgen Klopp. Can his team conquer the league playing in this wild fashion? “I’ve no idea,” he said. “It’s my first proper season in the Premier League. I have no idea what to do to win the Premier League. I’m pretty sure it was never decided at the end of October. We feel good in the moment, that’s all.” The notion that an experienced manager with 15 years on the job – who won the Bundesliga twice and has...
Chelsea’s manager initially switched to three at the back to avert a rout at Arsenal but his side have not looked back sinceAt first, the idea was simply to stop the bleeding. Three-nil down at half-time against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium a little over five weeks ago, Antonio Conte switched to a back three. The Chelsea manager had enjoyed success with the approach in his previous jobs with Juventus and the Italy team and, against Arsenal, it restored a measure of stability. Chelsea still lost, 3-0, but Conte could feel the stirrings of something.Look at Chelsea now. This was their fourth Premier League game since Conte’s tactical move and it was also their fourth clean sheet. Even better from...
Most people’s ideal would be for a tight top-flight but part of football’s appeal is the drama – and that requires weakness as well as strengthWhat would you like a league table to look like at the end of the season? Forget who you support, forget who you dislike, forget personalities and tactics and prejudices, if you turned up in an alien land and were given a subscription to watch every game in their league season, what would be your ideal? Most people, I’m guessing, would want it to be tight, would want the season to go down to the wire to sustain the interest, maybe so that on the final day every team would have a chance of success....
It will be easier for Antonio Conte to continue down a youthful road if we all just accept that there will be a few bumps along the wayWhat a game Nathaniel Chalobah had for Chelsea against West Ham United on Wednesday night. Striding purposefully around midfield and passing with precocious assurance, he looked a star in the making. Antonio Conte will have a tough time leaving him out for the trip to Southampton on Sunday. To be brutally honest, the Italian should be sacked on the spot if he even thinks about putting the youngster on the bench. I saw the future at the London Stadium and it looked exactly like Nathaniel Chalobah.The above is a lie. The truth is...