Conte Needs To Be More Positive At Chelsea Or He’ll Suffer Jose’s Fate
Dark clouds seem to be gathering over Stamford Bridge once again.
Chelsea are the current Premier League champions and looked unstoppable at times last season.
But alas this summer hasn’t been as harmonious as the champs would’ve wanted. Unwanted distractions have continually reared their ugly heads.
People have speculated that manager Antonio Conte is unhappy at the club and isn’t committed to staying in London. His new contract only seemed to ease fears for all of five minutes.
The Italian is clearly disgruntled by the club’s transfer activity this season.
During a Sky Sports interview you could see the Blues boss didn’t want to sell Nemanja Matic and certainly didn’t want to lose him to a title rival:
“Matic knows very well what I think about him,”
“The importance for me about this player, who is a really good player, a top player, very important for our team, but sometimes you must accept this crazy transfer market.”
While I can understand the frustration in losing Matic to Man United, I think we should remember that Chelsea have still spent big this summer. £70m man Alvaro Morata has came in to get the goals, Antonio Rudgier joined to shore up the defence at a cost of £29m and exciting dynamic midfielder Tiemoue Bakayoko arrived in a £40m deal from AS Monaco.
Conte has also had a summer full of questions about last season’s top goalscorer Diego Costa. In June the Italian told Costa he was no longer wanted at Stamford Bridge and the Spaniard has been absent from training ever since.
Morata was brought in from Real Madrid to replace Costa but the problem is that Diego seems intent on holding out for a move to Atletico Madrid and that will only happen in January (at the earliest) due to a transfer ban being placed on the La Liga side. So Diego Costa’s shadow still lurks over Chelsea at the moment and that clearly frustrate’s Antonio, who seems to bristle whenever he hears his striker’s name during a press conference!
Interestingly Antonio Conte said this during preseason:
“We know the difficulty of the next season and for sure we want to avoid the Mourinho season with Chelsea. Two years ago the team ended the league in 10th place and we want to try to avoid this.”
Yet at the moment I’d argue that Conte is going down a similar path that Jose Mourinho went down during the 2015-16 season.
During that ultimately embarrassing campaign Jose was far too negative and he kept looking for conflict. That then caused problems for the whole club and the players were under too much pressure.
Today the Premier League champions lost their opening game of the season at home to Burnley.
The Blues were three down at half-time and were also down to ten men after captain Gary Cahill got himself sent off.
Chelsea did manage to pull two goals back in the second half but it wasn’t enough to get anything from the game. They were’t helped when experienced midfielder Cesc Fabregas saw a second yellow and he too was sent for an early bath.
After the game Chelsea gaffer Conte correctly stated that his side lost their composure and that sent them into a tailspin.
But the manager needs to realise that he’s one man who can now help his team.
He needs to relax and not be as negative in the press. I understand he still wants more new recruits before the transfer window shuts but he cannot do his current crop down or go into a public battle with the club’s board.
Last season Antonio Conte reacted well to adversity. After his side lost 3-0 to rivals Arsenal last term, Conte rejigged his formation and got the best from his side, that was the catalyst that saw his team go on a run to the league title.
The Italian has to dig deep once again and get his players believing in themselves and ready to fight in their bid to retain their Premier League crown!
Posted on August 12th, 2017 by scott
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