Jürgen Klopp has given Antonio Conte the template: Chelsea must banish defeatism and be ‘hungry, alert and aggressive’ in season-saving Champions League second leg at Camp NouPeople are predicting the end of the Premier League as we know it just because Chelsea showed so little ambition against Manchester City when they had a chance to at least lay a glove on the champions elect.It is one thing for a team such as Newcastle to attempt to keep the score down against top sides in the hope of a favourable goal difference at the end of the season but if the defending champions are now at it the game has obviously gone. Related: Why Chelsea’s supine surrender at Manchester City should...
The defending champions desperately needed a positive result on Sunday, yet they set up negatively and played even worse, suggesting they did not believe victory was possibleThere was a moment in the second half of Manchester City’s win against Chelsea – it was probably with about quarter of an hour to go, but perception in a featureless landscape can become difficult – when Aymeric Laporte passed the ball to Ilkay Gündogan near the halfway line. Gündogan rolled it back. Laporte knocked it back again. Gündogan nudged it to Kevin De Bruyne who turned, looked about for a bit, and gave it back. They exchanged a static one-two and then Gündogan rolled it wide to David Silva who controlled it, looked up,...
Chris Hughton deserves plaudits, Sam Allardyce will not win Everton fans’ affections and Spurs look ready for JuventusThere is something striking about watching the defending champions cede their title to their successors, and this was a particularly mournful way to go about it. The last time a title-winning Chelsea team visited the side that was destined to succeed them they lost 2-1 to Leicester in December 2015 and promptly sacked their manager. This display is unlikely to accelerate Antonio Conte’s apparently inevitable summer departure, but a performance so stripped of ambition and attacking quality certainly reflected poorly on him. “My tactic was: don’t concede space between the lines,” he said. “If you concede space at Manchester City you risk losing...
Antonio Conte’s 3-5-1-1 formation, partly a result of dissatisfaction with the replacements for Matic, has played a big part in the club’s declineIf there was a moment when, symbolically at least, last season’s title race tipped decisively the way of Chelsea, it came 12 minutes after half-time of their game at Manchester City in December. City were leading 1-0 when Kevin De Bruyne, four yards out and with the goal gaping, slammed a Jesús Navas cross against the bar. Within three minutes Chelsea were level through Diego Costa and, as City lost their heads, Antonio Conte’s side went on to win 3-1.That game was 15 months ago, yet it may as well have been a lifetime. It is not so...
Chelsea stifled Barcelona’s key players, proving the Spanish side should not be so feared as they once wereThe first leg, you suspect, went just as Antonio Conte would have wanted it to go – apart from the bit about not playing a square ball across your penalty area to Andrés Iniesta with 15 minutes of a Champions League match remaining. But that is the problem with great tactical plans: they always rely, ultimately, on that most fallible of species: humans.Lionel Messi’s equaliser has tipped the tie Barcelona’s way, but Chelsea can draw great encouragement from the first leg and, having operated like the away side, can play the second in much the same way (another reason, incidentally, why the away...