Be careful of what you wish for

There’s a tale - apocryphal or not - about Eden Hazard’s relationship with Antonio Conte when they were both at Chelsea. Such was the eardrum-bothering volume with which the Italian coach would bellow instructions from the touchline, the mercurial winger would arbitrarily switch wings if Conte’s seal-like barking got too much. I must admit, from way up in my East Stand Upper eyrie at Stamford Bridge, Conte’s vociferous chuntering - with Tannoy-strength projection - could be equally as irritating.

There’s no question that the new Spurs coach is effective, decisive even, and may just be the thing that chairman Daniel Levy needs to shock his embittered, lethargic and indifferent players into performing. Nice guy as Nuno Espírito Santo is, he came across as too casual in his authority at Tottenham, running into the perfect storm of Harry Kane angling for a move to Manchester City, impacting his previously symbiotic relationship with the otherwise dependable Son Heung-min, while allowing the ego-on-legs that is Dele Alli to retreat even further into his own agenda, which seemed to be as much about having a good time as knuckling down with the job he gets paid handsomely for.

Should I care about any of this? Well, obviously not. Football’s laws of tribalism ensure that not only do I not care about any team other my own, but also that the ongoing existential drama of what it is to be seemingly permanently “Spursy” is only to be laughed at. Which I do. I also don’t care about the idea of Conte taking charge in N17. He won Chelsea the Premier League in his first season in charge, and then the FA Cup in a somewhat insipid final at Wembley, before parting company with the club (and then taking it to court). The same was the case when José Mourinho joined Tottenham (and, indeed, Manchester United) - we had the best out of him, won titles and enjoyed the psychodramas that come with his involvement in a club, but moved on with gratitude. 

Conte is, by turns, likeable and charismatic, but also by reputation, difficult to handle. And, let’s face it, Chelsea get through managers with a higher frequency than I buy underwear, so it’s hard to get too attached to any of them, even a club legend like Frank Lampard. Thomas Tuchel will, I’m sure, at some point, fall out with the club hierarchy, and the revolving door will spin again. So we enjoy things while we can. Conte, on the other hand, has a different challenge at Spurs, namely to deliver success to a club that has spent longer than I care to remember believing it should be hoovering silverware, but consistently falling short. Unlike Liverpool or Manchester United, who have the Shankly and Ferguson legacies to draw on, Spurs have never had an imperious phase, even if their fans believe - from what and where, I have no idea - that they do. 

The agreement to appoint Conte as new head coach, on an 18-month contract worth up to £15 million a year, will need to deliver. Unlike Nuno, Conte has a somewhat more substantial track record, having won five league titles as a club manager (and over seven campaigns). Even if his last appointment, at Inter Milan, ended with the sack, he still managed to take the nerazzurri to their first Serie A title in more than a decade. He therefore arrives in north London with his work cut out, and even though the opening overtures from the club hierarchy have been positive, it won’t be lost on many that Spurs’ original approach for Conte in the summer, to replace Mourinho, ended after Conte allegedly expressed concerns about the club’s strategy and funding for recruitment. Tottenham suggested that they didn’t see eye-to-eye with Conte on squad strengthening, and a perception that he wasn’t interested in working with youth players (a hangover from his Chelsea days). Clearly, then, these red lines have been removed. 

Conte has since made a statement that the summer was “too soon” to take over at Spurs, but that doesn’t bely the fact that, wherever he goes, he has high expectations of clubs spending to match their ambitions. Daniel Levy is not known for his largesse (especially as he’s going to be paying for the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for many years to come).

“The terms must have changed,” Chris Sutton said last night on BBC Radio 5 Live. “[Conte] isn't going to go to Spurs unless he feels he can win something or come close because he is not that type of manager. He is not coming to the end of his career. He wants to come in and transform the club.” In that, Sutton said, Conte will be doing Spurs a favour, rather than the other way around, helping out an unemployed top-tier coach. It won’t, though, be an easy ride. 

From Day 1, Conte faces plenty of challenges. Principal of those will be getting Harry Kane scoring goals again, which also means restoring the 28-year-old’s love for the club badge. No mean feat, that, when his head was so publicly turned by the prospect of City. The second challenge will be to restore a sense of team unity. It was notable that no player gave any statement of sympathy for Nuno, not even a patronising “wishing the gaffer well”. Rumours spilled out from Tottenham that team spirit had been allowed to fray by a head coach who was not a great interpersonal communicator, whose vision wasn’t well translated to the 11 on the pitch, and for those players not considered to be in Nuno’s immediate thoughts, a sense of being frozen out or ignored. 

Football management is about squad engagement as well as managing disappointment - just look at what happened to Frank Lampard when he started to work with a core of younger players at the expense of older heads. I hate the notion of player power: the manager should be respected otherwise discipline breaks down, but it’s worth noting that so far, Thomas Tuchel has been able to keep a large squad happy with tactical rotations to cope with the various competitions Chelsea are currently in without any obvious disquiet in the ranks.

There is, though, also a tactical challenge that Conte will face. Spurs fans have a tradition of expecting their team to play a certain way, and while this isn’t as bad as it sounds (i.e. coaching from the terraces), it does play into the club culture, one that has become ever so slightly entitled. If there’s one aspect of this I’d say, as objectively as I can as a supporter of a despised rival (and, therefore, what do I care?), is that Spurs need to get back into a more attacking frame of mind. That doesn’t just lean on Kane’s shoulders (though he could help), but on the entire formation. So far this season they’ve been far too tentative - and the results have shown. That might come through the physical intensity Conte will put the team through. At Chelsea he was notorious for the punishing training routines at Cobham, and during his single full pre-season put the squad through the kind of ‘beasting’ ordeal that SAS recruits might baulk at. Conte is also a disciplinarian (just look at his fractious relationship with Diego Costa), and that will come into sharp focus with Alli, who’d been all but abandoned by both Mourinho and Nuno, and even Mauricio Pochettino, suggesting that it wasn’t them, but Alli himself who has been the problem.

Another challenge Conte will encounter is longevity. No one is naive enough to think that any job in football is for life, and the fact that the Italian has only been signed until the summer of 2023 suggests that his appointment is more of a project than the start of a legacy. From a Spurs perspective, there is also Conte’s reputation for managing for the short term, not always through choice. “He left Inter [at the end of last season] because they couldn't invest money and they sold his best players,” points out football writer Gabriele Marcotti. “He left Chelsea because he couldn't get owner Roman Abramovich to spend more money on players he wanted.” Marcotti says Conte has form in this area, recalling a tale about him leaving Juventus saying that “they wanted me to eat out in a 100 euros restaurant with 10 euros in my pocket”. Marcotti believes that Spurs, with its notoriously profligate attitude to buying players, might leave Conte short-changed.

For his part, Conte has spun the inevitable PR line about why things didn’t work out between him and Spurs just four months ago. “Last summer our union did not happen because the end of my relationship with Inter was still too recent and emotionally too involved with the end of the season,” he said in a statement. “So I felt that it wasn't yet the right time to return to coaching.” But added: “The contagious enthusiasm and determination of Daniel Levy in wanting to entrust me with this task had already hit the mark. Now that the opportunity has returned, I have chosen to take it with great conviction.” Just as well, then, that Nuno sleep-walked into his P45.

The managerial merry-go-round is a constantly baffling thing. The minute a manager is fired, a list of runners and riders tipped to replace him is quickly assembled, even if you can’t help feeling that they’re all red shirt-wearing crew members of the Starship Enterprise being summoned to the transporter room (you might need to look that reference up). Managers like to talk of “relishing the challenge” and “opportunities too good to miss” when they sign up for the most poisoned of football’s chalices. Conte is far from cannon fodder, but it’s hard to imagine that Spurs will be any happier an environment to work in than anywhere else he’s been and subsequently walked away from. You kind of wish him luck, but then that wouldn’t be a rival football club fan’s sentiment, now would it?

Maurizio Sarri: who's fooling who?

And so a new month rolls around and with it, April Fool's Day. I trust everyone has been having fun enjoying all the pranks. And no, that front page headline you read about Theresa May's government about to collapse wasn't another one.

Neil Warnock, the beleaguered Cardiff City manager, might, on the other hand, argue that April Fools Day arrived a few hours early, as his relegation-threatened side - one which has been fighting against the odds following the morale-sapping Emiliano Sala tragedy - lost to Chelsea yesterday, after the visitors came from behind with a clearly offside César Azpilicueta equaliser, then a Ruben Loftus-Cheek header that followed an incident in which Antonio Rüdiger should have seen red for bringing down striker Kenneth Zohore when through on goal.

As a whole, Chelsea's winning performance stank. I know that's supposed to be the mark of champions, winning despite the odds, but when you get to half time and wished it was the 90-minute mark, having seen nothing to feel in any way accomplished (and paying Sky £8.99 for the pay-per-view privilege), you know you're watching a dreadful game. Cardiff, to be fair, offered little, and sympathy towards Warnock's complaints about yesterday's officials notwithstanding, their looming relegation is sadly inevitable. That doesn't, though, excuse the awful errors of referee Craig Pawson and his assistants. Azpiliqueta and Rüdiger's good fortune masked Chelsea's poor display yesterday, one for which head coach Maurizio Sarri needs to share the blame.

When you win and your supporters still boo you, something must be up. Chants of "We want Sarri out" and "You don't know what you're doing" might be largely reactive, but even the most fickle football fan doesn't call for the manager's head without good reason. Even when Antonio Conte was looking like he was attempting 'death by cop' last season, destroying any value in Diego Costa by sacking him by text and becoming increasingly sulky as the season wore down, the fans were still, largely, behind him. Perhaps winning a league title at the first time of asking helped.

Sarri is still, mostly, unproven. The praise heaped upon him from every grandee in the game for the way he had Napoli playing has largely evaporated, as whatever worked in Serie A isn't in the Premier League. True, Chelsea are still sixth and just a point behind the increasingly Spursy Tottenham; and, yes, that numerically puts Chelsea in with a chance of Champions League qualification. But does Sarri really know what he's doing? Is he really prepared to gamble with the Chelsea future of Callum Hudson-Odoi by publicly admitting that he only watched 20 minutes of his full England debut? To me, that's not a coach trying to apply tough love on a precocious teenage starlet, that's just vindictive grouching. And thus, things continue that way.

Watching Hudson-Odoi's face yesterday, as Eden Hazard, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and then Olivier Giroud went on, spoke volumes. If - and it's probably, now, a case of when - he moves to Bayern Munich, and Chelsea and, indeed, the Premier League, are shorn of a prodigious young talent, we will look back at Maurizio Sarri's obstinacy. Yes, we get it - the lad needs to improve his game. Show me an 18-year-old in any profession who's the finished article? But Sarri is in danger of doing to Hudson-Odoi what Conte did to Costa - diminishing his future value to Chelsea Football Club.

Let's face it, the teenager, along with Hazard, will be off this summer. I can't see the Chelsea board having it any other way, knowing that both players have only a season to run on their contracts. Which makes for an interesting summer ahead. Chelsea will no doubt lose their two prized assets, along with others, and I'm pretty confident that Sarri himself will be on a plane to the Stadio Olimpico, where a certain Associazione Sportiva Roma appear to be coveting the tobacco-loving 60-year-old. And, no, that's not an April Fool joke, either.

Sarri seems to be the hardest word - part 3

Time's up?

Let me get this out there from the start: there is no shame losing to this particular Manchester City team. I might even claim it’s a badge of honour. But going into yesterday’s game at the Etihad, I wasn’t expecting much, as a Chelsea fan. Not that I don’t have any faith in Chelsea, even given their recent run of away results, but Pep Guardiola is currently custodian of a team that will punish anyone with elan. That doesn’t make them infallible, as they found at home to Crystal Palace before Christmas, but their results against opposition, big and small, have shown a propensity for telephone number scorelines. Which should have put Chelsea on their guard before the abject capitulation at the Etihad.

Before 4 o'clock yesterday I wasn’t even that concerned that I’d be spending the first half listening to radio commentary of City-Chelsea while driving home on the M25. I just didn’t expect to be 4-0 down by the 24th minute. At that point I came close to petulantly switching the radio off, but even then Dion Dublin, BBC 5 Live’s co-commentator with John Murray, was still of the opinion that Chelsea might be able to dam the flow of City goals and restore some pride. I was less positive: scorelines like that rarely get turned around, if ever, and if they do, you wouldn’t get this Manchester City team folding up and switching off. As they showed against Burton Albion, they are decidedly ruthless when on a killing spree. And thus they proved. 6-0.

So, hats off City, I knew you’d beat us. I just didn’t know how painfully you’d do it. Which brings me to Chelsea and Maurizio Sarri’s future. There’s an interesting comparison to make here between the two managers on the touchline yesterday at the Etihad: Guardiola has been given the time, space and resources to create this squad. Chelsea won the Premier League title in Pep’s first season at City, implausibly accelerating away from the chasing pack by Antonio Conte’s tactical switch to a wingback system that caught everyone off their guard. Meanwhile, Guardiola was rebuilding. Down the M64 at Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp was in the midst of doing much the same. Between them, they’ve had two and four years, respectively, to get their teams to where they are now. Will Sarri be afforded the same latitude?

It’s unlikely. Chelsea’s philosophy in the Abramovich era has been consistently short-termist, even if it looked like a slight change of strategy had been adopted with Sarri. If Chelsea would only come out and say that’s how they do it, we’d all accept it. Only the most naive manager would join the club in the expectation of seeing out their career there which, I suppose, is fine. The chances of another Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger putting in double-digit tenures at a Premier League club (or, indeed, anywhere else) are now unlikely, anyway. Again, fine, but in the case of Chelsea, there has been a distinct lag between head coach turnover and squad evolution. The elephant still in the room after yesterday’s horror show in Manchester is that the squad Sarri is playing with, or at least trying to convert to his philosophy, is still rooted in the Mourinho Mark II and Conte group of players. Change seems to be a problem for them. So yesterday’s game, plus the recent pounding from Bournemouth, should be attributed to a combination of Sarri’s unbending view that his possession-based system is the one and only, and that the players can switch off just when they need to dig in and fight. Much is said about Sarri’s lack of a Plan B, and when, yet again, you see like-for-like substitutions being made (though at least Kovačić on for Berkeley came in the 54th minute, rather than the usual 72nd…), and nothing changing in the fundamentals, you wonder if the Italian’s rigid adherence to Plan A will ever shift. Some might even admire his obstinacy, but he’s now starting to look like King Canute.

Sarri’s appointment last July was always going to be a gift to headline writers, which is why this is the third time I've blogged about Chelsea and used the generous pun you see at the top of this page (and thanks, too, to Elton John). Yep, I know it’s lazy, but the Italian is a gift that keeps on giving. His protracted appointment - delayed by Napoli, somewhat childishly, stalling his release while they onboarded former Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti as his replacement - was made just three weeks before the Blues’ first competitive game of the season, the Community Shield, which they lost 2-0 to Manchester City. At the time (and since) Sarri was cut some slack, the line being that it takes time to build a team, to get them to adopt a philosophy. Sarri was appointed largely because of the attractive football he’d instilled in Napoli, which enabled them to keep pace with runaway Serie A leaders Juventus. Six months on, it’s patently clear that what worked at Napoli is not working at Chelsea, what may have fitted the pace of Serie A is not fitting the Premier League.

What is most troubling is that Sarri is starting to exhibit the same truculence that Conte adopted, and that didn’t fair well for the previous Italian in charge at Chelsea. Though not as obvious as Conte became, Sarri’s current demeanour is not the kind that Mr. Abramovich and his acolytes appreciate. But before the inevitable P45 is dispatched Sarri’s way, I seriously hope that Abramovich, his de facto chief executive, Marina Granovskaia, chairman Bruce Buck and the other members of the club’s football board, David Barnard, Guy Laurence and Eugene Tenenbaum, take a good long look at the state of the team. Until yesterday, Chelsea had maintained a top four position in the league, which is probably all that could be expected at this stage of a new head coach's tune with this particular squad. And even when the wheels first fell off, against Spurs in November, they were lashed back on to record wins, including a 2-0 defeat of Manchester City at Stamford Bridge However, the bolts securing those wheels keep shearing. Yes, Chelsea remain in four competitions, but the topography of results that got them to this point is decidedly uneven, perilous even.

Next up will be Malm ö away in the Europa League on Thursday night, then a resurgent Manchester United next Monday in the FA Cup 5th Round, followed by Malmö at home in a second leg, with the run of immediate challenges ending with Manchester City, no less, in the League Cup final at Wembley. Big decisions, then, for the football board at Stamford Bridge. Fire Sarri now (and I wouldn’t expect club legend Gianfranco Zola to remain on the management team, either) and the club enters dangerously familiar territory: the final third of a season with honours on offer, but a caretaker in charge. Yes, that worked a couple of times with Guus Hiddink, Robbie Di Matteo even won the Champions League, and the toxic appointment of Rafa Benitez still netted Chelsea the Europa League trophy. But there’s only so many times Hiddink can be parachuted in, and you don’t see Zidane donning a hazmat suit to join Chelsea for the remaining four months of the season, unless there’s a desire by both him and the club to make it permanent. Plus, it’s just not going to happen, anyway.

However, all this is grist to the mill. Something has to change fundamentally at Chelsea. First up, is the relationship between head coach and the club’s football board. After technical director Michael Emenalo left for Monaco in November 2017, the link between the board and the club’s playing elements disappeared. Marina Granovskaia assumed all control over player acquisitions and divestments. The coach appears to become nothing more than a consultant in the recruitment process (although Sarri managed to persuade the club to bring in his trusted lieutenant Jorginho from Napoli, as well as - finally - Gonzalo Higuain on loan, another player with positive Sarri experience). But that has been all. Questions must also be asked about the state of a squad with access to so much academy talent, and yet no intention of using it. I’ll come back to Callum Hudson-Odoi in a moment.

The lack of true leadership on the pitch is the other major area of concern. Yesterday’s match in Manchester highlighted the absence of blood-and-guts at Chelsea. That was never the case when it had, at its core, leaders like John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Petr Čech, a spine that would take the game by the scruff of its neck when it was needed. As much as I like César Azpilicueta, he’s no Terry, and having been one of Chelsea’s best performers over the last couple of seasons, has not looked as effective this term. That may be down to his captaincy (favoured over the unfavoured Gary Cahill), something that has a habit of diluting ability (once dubbed 'The Botham Effect" after the mullet-haired cricketer's powers wained after he was made England captain in the disastrous 1980 test series with the West Indies).

However, when there are players who need no motivation at all, Sarri doesn't use them. Principally I'm talking about Hudson-Odoi: the precocious 18-year-old may well still need to know his place, but his pace and strength are the very attributes Chelsea have lacked in recent performances. Sarri clearly isn’t sure about the teenager, and with Chelsea managing to ward off Bayern Munich in the transfer window, the club needs to reach agreement on what they do with him. It was almost painful to see the teenager yesterday, not even on the bench but in the seats behind the dugout reserved for squad members who travel but are not on the team sheet. Sarri’s treatment of Hudson-Odoi has been nothing short of scandalous. A player who wants to play, who can play, who can give the fans something to cheer about. And what did Sarri do, once Bayern Munich’s overtures had been conclusively (for now) rebuffed in January? Drop the player for the Bournemouth match on the grounds that he’d only played three days previously. Hudson-Odoi might as well start learning German now, because he’ll be out the transfer window as soon as it opens in the summer.

José Mourinho spent the last four months of his time at Chelsea playing Russian Roulette, almost literally. Then, he was sacked when Chelsea had plummeted from previous season’s league champions to 17th, just above the relegation zone. He was sacked in mid-December when it was still possible he could have turned things around. The Chelsea board didn’t see that as possible, and fielded then-technical director Michael Emenalo to tell the press about the “palpable discord” between manager and players. Today, Chelsea are only in sixth, on points. At any other club, that - and the fact they’re still battling on four fronts - would not set off any alarm bells. Chelsea, however, are not any other club. Sarri, or anyone else, should not think for one minute that Abramovich’s visa or business issues should be a distraction. The next few days - or even the next few hours - could prove to be another disrupting chapter in the recent history of Chelsea Football Club. Sarri would be the expected casualty, but if he does go, serious questions need to be asked about how Chelsea’s boom-and-bust cycle needs to come to an end.

Dead men walking

Imagine, for a moment, being sacked by the media before your employer has formally relieved you of your position? Imagine knowing for weeks that the person most likely to take your job hasn’t officially left theirs, even though someone has been appointed to replace him? Imagine maintaining, amid all the speculation, that you plan to see out your contract? Imagine turning up for work on a Monday knowing the it was only a matter of when, not if, that your successor would be announced? Imagine, then, being a dead man walking.

"People have said I am a dead man walking but I am not - I am still moving. It is difficult to kill me" - Claudio Ranieri

It was Claudio Ranieri who rose, stoicly, above the rumouring when still Chelsea manager to respond to media claims that he was a “dead man walking”, following Roman Abramovich’s acquisition of Chelsea. The Italian - a dignified figure then and still a much loved figure to this day - was being written out of a job by the sports press who hypothesised that the so-called “Tinkerman” (on account of his sometimes eccentric susbtitutions) would not be the manager Abramovich would want to implement his vision of turning Chelsea into the AC Milan of West London. Enter José Mourinho.

As long drawn out public executions go, Antonio Conte has been on Death Row for the last 12 months. Even as he was celebrating winning the Premier League - perhaps unexpectedly - in his first season in charge at Chelsea, the Italian was sowing the seeds of the departure announced this morning by agitating for more investment in players, or investment in better players. This became the narrative of an otherwise disappointing second season for Conte at Chelsea. Given Roman Abramovich's history of trigger-happy knee-jerk dismissals, Conte was playing with fire. That it's taken such a protracted time for him to go is, actually, baffling. Chelsea managers have gone far sooner and for less.

On Monday this week Conte took charge of Chelsea's first official pre-season training session at the club's Cobham base. It was the first time he'd been seen in public with Chelsea since the FA Cup Final at Wembley in May, when he paraded with his squad and the trophy. His future remained ambiguous: he maintained he was going nowhere, that he had a contract and he would fulfil it. The club said nothing, but the rumours continued that it was actively seeking a replacement, with Napoli's Maurizio Sarri persisting as the lead candidate. Today, Conte's status, at least, has been finally clarified: "Chelsea Football Club and Antonio Conte have parted company," was the headline on the club's website, following the somewhat basic "During Antonio’s time at the club, we won our sixth league title and eighth FA Cup. In the title winning season, the club set a then-record 30 wins in a 38-game Premier League season, as well as a club-record 13 consecutive league victories. We wish Antonio every success in his future career." 61 words, and none of them including the customary "we thank XXXX for his contribution to the club's success over the last XXXX years" or "by mutual agreement". It's a statement that no doubt, had been crafted by a lawyer. Just the right side of acknowledgement, just the right side of liability.

The period since the FA Cup Final has been, even by Chelsea's modern standard of dysfunction, chaotic. According to various reports, Conte's departure was protracted while lawyers haggled over the terms of his payoff, rumoured to be worth up to £9 million, as well as payoffs for his entire coaching staff, which includes his brother Daniele. Whether Conte had accepted his fate, or not, remains to be seen, and the sight of him on Monday taking training came across as either an act of accommodation or resilience on a scale not seen since Monty Python's Black Knight declared "it's just a flesh wound",  as blood spouted from a socket vacated by his severed arm.

Sources in Italy claim that Conte has been "disgusted" by his treatment, but as likeable for fans as he was, he should not be surprised. On top of the precedent set by eight previous managerial sackings, often with considerably shorter lead times, Conte needs to reflect on the way he went about things: effectively firing a sellable asset like Diego Costa by text message wouldn't have gone down well; then there was the constant niggling about players, plus an apparent deterioration in his relationships with key figures on the playing staff like Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz and Thibaut Courtois; and then a season - a title-defending season - in which consistency and indifference became the norm, rather than the bright, exciting excellence of the previous term. If the griping about players wasn't enough, a post-Christmas run of three consecutive 0-0 games and seemingly routine defeats to Manchesters United and City raised questions. The 4-1 reverse to Watford only raised more. A league record of 21 wins, seven draws and ten defeats, with a fifth place finish, may not be a disaster, but in contemporary Chelsea terms, not enough. The 3-0 away defeat to Newcastle on the final day of the season probably sealed Conte's fate - even with the Cup Final win to come - as it simply summed up a season of seeming indifference. That Chelsea would fall outside Champions League places - still the measure of Abramovich's expectation - added one more nail to the Conte coffin as Chelsea manager.

Given this record, it seemed to be an unavoidable conclusion that Conte would go. What has delayed the process has been the even more protracted legal wrangling to land Maurizio Sarri as his replacement. Despite Napoli appointing Carlo Ancelotti as manager some weeks ago, Napoli have been haggling with Chelsea over minutiae in an agreement to release Sarri from his contract, and prevent Chelsea trying to poach Neopolitan players. Presumably, the timing of this morning's terse, 61-word statement about Conte means that Sarry's appointment, plus the signing of Italian midfielder Jorginho, all part of a £54 million deal with Napoli, will go ahead.

Just as well: the club's website yesterday trilled that there's just four weeks to go before the start of the season. Never has there been such an alarming lack of preparedness for a new season. The club might, apparently, seem calm about it, but its fans are restless. As Spain found a few weeks ago, sacking a manager just before a major competition can have disastrous results. I hope Chelsea - lacking a Director of Football since Michael Emenalo left for Monaco, with an owner seemingly barred from the UK and calling a halt on the development of Stamford Bridge - are prepared for the consequences.

If there is one good thing about finally solving the manager issue, it's that the club can start making summer signings. The suggestion is that since discussions began with Napoli over Sarri's release, the manager-in-waiting has been feeding instructions or at least requests on who he'd like Marina Granovskaia, the club's de facto chief executive, to sign. More hangs on this than just a sign of activity: Eden Hazard's stock has risen in Real Madrid's eyes since Ronaldo hopped off to Juve, and with the Belgian rattling his sabre over Chelsea's lack of signings so far in the window, Sarri's first task will not be bed in new players but to keep those like Hazard from fleeing. Conte's man management left a lot to be desired, and stories have even surfaced this week if him carrying an intimidating air about him around the club. Sarri will have to work hard and work fast to galvanise the squad, parlay his vision and get them working to it in time for the Community Shield face-off with Manchester City on August 5, and a week later, the opening game of the Premier League season, a tricky away tie to Huddersfield. It all feels just a little too much, a little too late.

Who's Sarri now?

Amid all the welcome hoopla of a World Cup which has been, so far, largely good fun, this week my postbox delivered up a reminder that when it’s all over, we will return to the monied insanity that is domestic football. On Friday my 2018-19 Chelsea season ticket arrived, and with it questions about what it, actually, be good for. This year’s renewal date fell early in May, with two league games still to play plus a FA Cup Final, and with no idea what was going to happen to the manager, Antonio Conte. And there hasn't been any further news since.

The general consensus, all season long, was that Conte would be out this summer, with Napoli's Maurizio Sarri emerging as the primary candidate to replace him. Today, July 1st, there's still no clarity. Journalists have been speculating that something might be announced this week, but the silence from Chelsea has been deafening, apart from a couple of announcements about junior players (one loaned out, the other signing a new contract). Beneath the rumours, it has been assumed that Chelsea have just been taking their time to work out compensation packages for Conte (who stands to get £9 million) and releasing Sarri from Napoli (despite his role already being replaced by Carlo Ancelotti). Presumably, this is still going on.

But while that may be the headline story, the mood around Chelsea is, six weeks before the new season begins, iffy. Players don't know who they'll be playing for when they return from the World Cup or the beach, and even this week it was reported in the Evening Standard that the squad was totally in the dark as to when they were supposed to be reporting for duty for pre-season training...or who will be in charge of it.

Conte has been understandingly silent - he hasn't been seen since lifting the FA Cup at Wembley on May 19 - as has Sarri. Rumours have also swirled as to Gianfranco Zola becoming his No.2 (or not) and Michael Ballack filling the void opened up by Michael Emenalo resigning as Director of Football last year. And then we've had the likes of Eden Hazard dangling a Sword of Damacles over the club by suggesting that, unless it starts signing A-grade players soon, he’ll be off. For now, Hazard is busy with the World Cup, but it can't be long before he returns to thoughts of the day job. And, finally, there's the matter of the club's owner, Roman Abramovich, who took over Chelsea fifteen years ago today. The apparent inertia at Stamford Bridge appears to have coincided with the oligarch being denied a visa, resulting in the club announcing that plans to rebuild the Bridge have been put on hold due to the UK's “investment climate”.

Much, then, depends on the managerial situation being sorted out. Officially, Conte is still in charge, and Chelsea are apparently relaxed about it all. However, us fans aren't. Chelsea's FA Cup win last season was consolation for what was otherwise a disappointing title defence. To be starting July without any signs of player replacements - presumably because the situation regarding the head coach is not resolved - means Chelsea go into the pre-season program and the Premier League's commencement with a mixture of players, some rested from the season, some not rested from World Cup duty, and no clarity on what their marching orders will be. Thankfully the World Cup continues to provide some welcome diversion, but if news does break of Sarri's appointment and Conte's removal, expectations will be high that preparation for a tough new season will begin in earnest...and will be effective. Right now, confidence in the Chelsea board to do the right thing is low.

Meh...it's finally the end of the season

There’s a small but unlikely chance that, over the next 48 hours, corporate IT departments might see an uptick of calls from employees whose F5 buttons have become exhausted on their company-provided computers. Then again, they might not. My lack of conviction on this theory is down to one simple fact: if Chelsea Football Club does part company with Antonio Conte, no one will be the least bit surprised, making it unlikely that there will be much browser refreshing going on at all.

Surely, Conte is on his way out, despite winning the Premier League title in his first season at the club and, now, the FA Cup in his second? Well, yes, but... Chelsea's football board will meet sometime over the next two days to discuss the Italian's future (presumably Roman Abramovich will join by conference call, given his suspect visa issues...). However, things aren't straight forward: even if Conte has seemingly been talking himself out of a job for most of the season - with his constant niggling over squad strength along with some dismal team performances - he is, today, still in post with another full season to run on his current contract. Secondly, although Chelsea have changed the compensation policy for sacked managers (which was getting ridiculous, given the attrition rate), Conte would take away a reported £9 million should he be fired. Assuming that his coterie of assistant coaches would also receive payoffs, Chelsea are believed to be reluctant to sanction another payoff, especially when it's clear - by the scale, or lack of, outlay on new players - the club has cut back on the lavishness that defined the early Abramovich years.

Chelsea managers appear only to last as long as either their perceived effectiveness, or their apparent compliance. Conte has probably exhausted both. Even after Saturday's FA Cup Final triumph over Manchester United, the he has still been defiant towards his employer: "When you decide to take a coach like me, you must know who you are taking, who you are charging for this job," Conte said, once again seemingly starting a fight with no one but himself. "I cannot change my personality. I cannot change my idea of football. Today was the only way to lift a trophy. If you want to change, then we can change our idea, but you must change many players," another dig at the club's apparent lack of player investment, a frustration for Conte that appeared to begin as early as pre-season, and went on to be the undercurrent of his second season in charge.

Twitter/Chelsea FC

By everyone’s admission, this has been a disappointing season for Chelsea, for which the FA Cup - still one of the greatest trophies in football - provides some compensation. But only so much. The Premier League title was always going to be tough to reclaim - it just is - but the extraordinary acceleration by a Manchester City, now fully galvanised under Pep Guardiola, meant that an equally extraordinary effort would be required by Chelsea to keep pace. Throw in a sparkier Liverpool this term and a José Mourinho in his second season at Manchester United (usually the mid-point of his tenure at a club and therefore his most profitable), plus competition on four fronts including a return to the Champions League, and the challenge for Conte and his team couldn’t have been bigger. Saturday’s result at Wembley not withstanding, Chelsea simply didn’t rise to the challenge.

Granted, this season's fifth place Premier League finish is clearly better than the 2015-16 disaster, which could have been a lot worse than the 10th place Chelsea managed to salvage in the end. But, still, there has been too much history repeating itself from that title defence this season, in particular, in the way Conte's frustrations with his bosses have been picked up on by his players. When his shoulders have dropped, so have his players', though nowhere as bad as that miserable period between August and December 2015 when Mourinho flew Chelsea into a canyon of negativity and "palpable discord" developed between coach and team. Conte is, by general comparison to Mourinho, a considerably more chipper individual, but his constant scratching at the open wound between him and his board could prove to be a fatal mistake. Not winning things because you don't have the players when the club has spent some £180 million on players is not a wise thing to complain about when you work for Abramovich. It's just strange that the Russian hasn't pulled the trigger already, after the dismal run of games in January and February, or even after the final Premier League game of the season, a 3-0 humiliation away to Newcastle.

It's been noticeable that Chelsea have shied away from the money-no-object marquee signings that transformed the club from perennial underachievers pre-Roman to trophy hoarders since the Russian took over. That said, last summer's acquisitions of Álvaro Morata, Tiemoué Bakayoko, Danny Drinkwater and Antonio Rüdiger carried some kind of industrial logic: Morata to lead the line as Diego Costa's replacement, Bakayoko to partner N'Golo Kante in central midfield (as they do for France) or Drinkwater to partner Kante (as they did for Leicester in their title-winning campaign). However, with the exception of Rudiger (who was outstanding on Saturday at Wembley), the most polite assessment you could give is that these players are still adapting to the Premier League, the club, or both. After an initial show of goalscoring prowess, Morata ended the season with just 11 goals; Bakayoko was, at times, an embarrassment (especially against Watford, getting sent off to the relief of everyone); Drinkwater made just 12 appearances, seven as a substitute. More arrived in the winter window, with Olivier Giroud joining from Arsenal and Ross Barkley from Everton. While Giroud has quickly become a fans' favourite, Barkley has become a forgotten man. Even the sight of him warming up at Wembley gave the air of a peripheral player, rather than the great English hope many had billed him as. Questions, quite rightly, have been asked as to not only who the club is buying, but by what criterion players are being bought. And, with technical director Michael Emenalo no longer at the club, who is making those decisions.

Eden Hazard has hinted that a condition of him staying at Chelsea will be the quality of players they bring in over the summer. Even if he has blown hot and cold this season, Hazard has been the club's most outstanding player (demonstrated again on Saturday at Wembley). Some fans are resigned to the 27-year-old moving to Madrid, perhaps in the belief that we've had the best out of him, but he is still a player who makes the difference. If he goes, he needs replacing, like-for-like. Likewise Thibaut Courtois, who has been somewhat ambiguous about whether he'll be around beyond the summer. Again, on Saturday, he demonstrated what a top-drawer goalkeeper he is.

At the end of the 2017-18 season, and despite winning the FA Cup for the sixth time since 1997, there is a deeply unsettled vibe around Chelsea. We should be happy. We've won silverware, we're in Europe again next season (albeit the Europa League), and we could be Arsenal. We can't win the Premier League every year, but this season just didn't feel like Chelsea tried. Yes, there were impressive wins in August, September and into October, but there were also too many draws and defeats that suggested the mental strength just wasn't there. True, Chelsea had a decent run in the Champions League (for which the opportunity to see Lionel Messi in the flesh was one I'll savour for a long time). The FA Cup, too, has provided some satisfaction, but there have been too many laboured performances this season in which it was clear that Conte was either being deliberately obstinate to make a point, or simply had run out of ideas when things weren't going well. On this last item, there is some debate: at Wembley, the sight of Willian and Pedro in a permanent state of warming-up right in front of us was frustrating, and you could see the Brazilian, in particular, growing ever more anxious as the clock ticked down. These are not great signs of a warm relationship between a key player and his manager. On the other hand, you could argue that Conte stuck to a plan - defend at all costs - and knew what he was doing. The trophy he held aloft on Saturday evening might be testament to the fact that he did.

So here's the Chelsea board's dilemma: sack a man who has, regardless of how or when, produced silverware, almost on demand, or stick with him for the remainder of his contract, even if it is clear (and has been for some time) that the relationship with his players is less than perfect. And what if they do sack him, and bring in a Luis Enrique or Maurizio Sarri or another exotic-sounding careerist from La Liga or Serie A? Will that necessarily do any good? Would Enrique or Sarri deliver a title in his first season, such as Conte, Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and interim managers Roberto Di Matteo, Guus Hiddink and even the despised Rafa Benitez have done? And, to raise the thorny issue at the heart of Conte's frustrations, what about player investments - is the club prepared to spend big again this summer?

Twitter/Chelsea FC

Talking to other Chelsea fans on Saturday there is a state of resignation that Antonio Conte has gone as far as he can, that the FA Cup is a suitable reward for a job done, but that it is time for the club to move on again. Two seasons is not much, but Chelsea have seldom, in the modern era, been about building domains. When he bought the club, Abramovich envisaged turning Chelsea into AC Milan or one of the Spanish giants, playing exciting football in Europe every year with a squad of galácticos. That ambition has been, at least, partially realised over the last 14 years. However, entrance to Europe requires excellence in England, first, and before the club makes any decision on Conte's future it must first examine what happened this season in failing to make the Premier League Top 4. Manchester City were unstoppable, just as Chelsea had been the season before, but what kept Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool ahead of The Blues in the final reckoning, to keep them out of Champions League places?

Perhaps Chelsea thrive on change. Perhaps the club's strategy is that long-term managerial appointments are a recipe for complacency. We might never know. But if the mood of the terrace is to be heard, there is a sense of weariness towards Conte. Whether it has been the timing or lack of substitutions to inject life into otherwise stubborn performances, Conte has regularly demonstrated a 'I know best' obstinacy that, while true that he probably does, has not translated into something to get behind from the stands. And if we sense it, players like Hazard sense it, which means surely it's a problem that can only be solved one way...

A glimpse into the future...but for whom?

Twitter/Chelsea FC

In three weeks' time Antonio Conte could be collecting a FA Cup winner's medal from whomever Prince William deputises to the task while he's busy delivering the best man's speech at his brother's wedding. If Chelsea do beat Manchester United at Wembley on May 19 it will be a welcome reversal from last year's abject display against Arsenal in the same contest (one for which - without any bitterness at all... - I bought a ticket for myself and my best mate for his 50th birthday...), in which Conte's then-Premier League title winners forgot to turn up. Or, at least, they turned up with Victor Moses, who forgot what occasion he was playing in.

Some say Chelsea are cup specialists. There are those, too, who maintain that no other club in the modern era has made the FA Cup Final quite their own. In this regard, they have a point: in the competition's modern history Chelsea have won the cup seven times out of a total of 12 appearances. They won the last final at the old Wembley in 2000 and won it in the first final of the new stadium in 2007, beating Manchester United by a single Didier Drogba goal. For those of us who were there, this was sweet revenge for the humiliating 4-0 defeat by United in 1994 (even if that experience - which led to a European Cup Winners Cup run - somewhat marked the 'return' of Chelsea to the big time, having spent the 1970s and 1980s in a dark, financially ruinous an largely anonymous, success-wise, place).

Indeed, it would be three years later when the team, under Ruud Gullit's management, captained by Dennis Wise and peppered with internationals like Gianfranco Zola, Frank Leboeuf, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Di Matteo (who famously scored after just 42 seconds), would beat Middlesborough 2-0 and win their first 'grown-up' silverware for a quarter of a century.

"Chelsea are back!" we sang, and they were. I won't bore you with all the stats that have followed, save to say that the FA Cup has been an ever-constant in much of the Abramovich era, a period that, yes, has seen Chelsea win the Premier League five times, but has also seen them win the Cup four times in the last 11 years. That, however, isn't the point of this post. Nor is the cycle of management - you know the drill: Chelsea hires head coach, wins a trophy or two, parts company with head coach, hires head coach, wins a trophy or two, parts company with head coach, repeat ad nauseam. Nope. Not this. Even if, surely, Conte's appearance with Chelsea at Wembley later this month will be his last in charge.

No. Because when Roman Abramovich assumed ownership of Chelsea, apart from wanting to turn it into London's AC Milan, he also gave instruction to his minions to create a successful academy system that would generate future stars for the club. On paper, at least, that hasn't happened. John Terry is, arguably, the last youth product to have achieved first team regularity (although, this season, Andreas Christensen could be considered to have broken through, tentatively). Looked at from a broader, historic perspective, the Chelsea academy hasn't been without longer lasting successes: Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Tambling, Peter Bonetti, Terry Venables, Ron Harris, John Hollins, Peter Osgood and Ray Wilkins all came through its system, along with more recent graduates like Terry, Ryan Bertrand and Robert Huth. However, the absence of sustained careers at the parent club remains a key issue for the current era. Perhaps it's not even the academy's mission? Perhaps generating new talent, who glimmer with prospect for first team appearances before being sold or loaned out is merely the business model, nothing more than a form of husbandry and a secondary process to first team recruitment? For fans this isn't without its frustration. Chelsea loaned out academy product Ruben Loftus-Cheek and replaced him - for £40 million - with the profoundly disappointing Tiémoué Bakayoko. There are many more examples.

Twitter/Chelsea FC

Which brings me - six paragraphs later - to events last night at the Emirates Stadium and the point of this post. Chelsea won their fifth consecutive FA Youth Cup, an achievement you have to go back to the Busby Babes of the 1950s to match. Thrashing Arsenal 7-1 on aggregate recorded the Chelsea Under-18s their seventh FA Youth Cup trophy in all since 2010. The feeling amongst football writers is that it is unlikely to be their last, either, and that a fifth consecutive trophy could easily become a sixth, seventh or more.

Imagine a first team recording such persistent success. They'd be regarded with the same superlative as Manchester United's dominance under Sir Alex Ferguson, or the modern Barcelona, or Liverpool in the late '70s and early '80s. And yet, when you think about it, seven years of success for a youth side should mean, applying basic mathematics, that there has been a steady flow of graduates into the Chelsea first team. The truth is, there hasn't been. Amongst the current crop, Callum Hudson-Odoi (who scored twice last night) has had a few runouts this season under Conte, during which he has looked a very exciting prospect, with lightning pace and an exceptional turn of foot. Others, like Dujon Sterling and Ethan Ampadu have also enjoyed the odd taste of the big time as substitutes. The $64,000 question is - what next? Will that be it?

Another key question is about the future of Jody Morris, the Under-18s manager. A Chelsea academy graduate himself, once a combative midfielder who came through the ranks alongside Terry and made 124 midfield appearances between 1996 and 2003, he has quietly got on with playing a huge part in the youth team's remarkable run of success since being appointed four years ago. While it might be highly unlikely that he would be considered an immediate replacement for Conte, should he leave (and with a predictable list of European exotica being lined up), surely a record like his won't go unnoticed?

All of which begs the more existential question about what is Chelsea's strategy when it comes to players and managers alike? To win five consecutive trophies suggests that the club is sitting on a gold mine in Morris and his players. No one, though, would be so naive to suggest that any of their success would translate instantly into the first team: but, all the same, it would be a tragedy to see that talent just ebb away to other clubs. I might be ludicrously idealistic, but why not get some of these youngsters blooded in properly at the top level, and see what raw, precocious talent can do? Alan Hansen's infamous statement in 1995 that "You can’t win anything with kids" has often been proven right, even if it was immediately proven wrong by Fergie's youngsters (Gary Neville, 20; Paul Scholes, 20; Ryan Giggs, 21; Phil Neville, 18; Nicky Butt, 20; and David Beckham, 20) going on to win that season's Premier League. The trouble is, is any club willing to give it another go now?

It ain't over 'til it's over. But it's over.

I'm OK. No, really. I'll get over it. I've been through worse.

Painful, as it was, to see Chelsea's 28-year home record against Tottenham come apart at the weekend, there was, perhaps, some inevitability to it. That doesn't soften the blow of Chelsea - yet again - giving up a lead, or the worst thing of all, allowing the odious Dele Alli to score twice, affording him the opportunity after his first of provocatively - and, in my view, illegally - celebrating in front of home fans in the Shed.

What had already been the traditionally ugly atmosphere for this fixture got steadily uglier after that moment, albeit one brilliantly captured by a pitchside photographer who caught a wonderful array of emotions - the Asian lady vituperously extending both middle fingers, the enraged individual several rows back being restrained (presumably with the words "leave it bruv, he ain't worth it") and the stoic feller at the very front, nonchalantly nursing a cup of coffee. BuzzFeed's Chris Applegate tweeted that it looked like "a giant Renaissance canvas. The more you look, the more characters and possible back stories you discover." and, indeed, there is some baroque artistry about the picture - like a Caravaggio or a Rembrandt, capturing the human condition in all its varied forms.

Notwithstanding Alli's moronic behaviour (and even the Spurs fans' disgraceful chant about Marcos Alonso - irrespective of the morality of the actual event it referred to), Tottenham deserved the win. That's as agonising a set of four words as I'll ever commit to a keyboard. But it's true. Something is rotten at Chelsea. To lose or draw the odd game to a last-minute opposition strike is annoying but happens. For Chelsea, it's been happening too much this season. Worse, still, there's been no Plan B to put things right, and the fault for that lands firmly on the shoulders of Antonio Conte.

With the exception of Rafa Benitez (whom we didn't want) or André Villas-Boas (whose appointment we just didn't get), Chelsea fans have been remarkably loyal to the club's myriad managers over the decades I've been following the club, and regardless of the condition the team has found itself in. Even in that poisonous final few months of the Second Age of Mourinho, when a "palpable discord" was tearing the team asunder, the rallying call of "José Mourinho!" (to the tune of Verdi's La Donna è Mobile) still resonated - weakly, it has to be said - around Stamford Bridge. On Sunday, there was a vaguely similar flimsiness to the sporadic choruses of "Antonio...! Antonio...!".

And, yet, Conte knows his time is up. We know his time is up and, I suspect, so does the club. So why hasn't the notoriously capricious Roman Abramovich fired him already? Whether he goes now or during the final year of his contract, it will still cost the Russian a reported £9 million, so that isn't necessarily a factor. A summer break might also be cleaner, allowing the replacement (be it the widely expected Luis Enrique or - today's rumour - Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri) a chance to rebuild. But that does leave Chelsea open to the risk of not qualifying for next season's Champions League, the one thing Abramovich appears to hold dearest to his ambitions. Then again he may just not be bothered: perhaps the diplomatic spiral the West is currently caught in with Russia is weighing more heavily on the oligarch than we might expect.

Abramovich may just, uncharacteristically, be wearing a beatific smile. The worst has been done and Chelsea can't, now, repeat their 2015-16 near-denouement. That said, they currently lie in fifth place, 28 points behind league leaders Manchester City. The task, for the remaining few games of the season, is to secure European football for next season, even if that means the Europa League, as well as hang on to FA Cup contention. It's all thin gruel, though. Not even another parachute appearance from Guus Hiddink would make much difference. It's hard to translate Conte's constant niggling about squad depth and player acquisitions onto how his players go about their business, but certainly Mourinho's demeanour had an effect, and Conte's must, too. But, perhaps, the biggest cause-and-effect is Conte's tactics. On Sunday he didn't make any substitutions until long after they would have any effect. It was almost as if he didn't care any more: throw on Giroud on 80 minutes (for the woeful Moses), the little-played Emerson on 83 for Alonso, and the genuinely exciting youth product Callum Hudson-Odoi for just the final four minutes of the tie, to no effect.

The kindest words that can be said about Chelsea, at least since Christmas, if not before, is that they look out of sorts. Games that should have been easily won have been too easily lost. Defensive mistakes - which happen - have happened too regularly. There will be excuses; Morata, for example, is still only in his first season at the club, and is adjusting from being a second-stringer - but given that Chelsea are still one of the most expensively assembled teams in the Premier League, even if that expense has included the likes of Bakayoko, Berkley and indeed Morata - they should still be competing as keenly in the top four as any of those now above them. Then there's the constant riddle-wrapped-in-an-enigma that is Eden Hazard, never happiest than when playing in from the left, and yet frequently played as a false 9, even when centre forward options have been available. Hazard's petulant departure after being subbed against Manchester United last month spoke volumes about his working relationship with Conte, and Conte's demeanour in general.

The general belief is that his heart just hasn't been in it this season, that he was prepared to walk last summer, and only agreed his contract revision reluctantly. Even Chelsea legend Gianluca Vialli has confirmed to Sky Italia that his compatriot "can't wait to leave Chelsea", even if he remains verbally committed to seeing out the remaining 12 months of his contract.

They say that 90% of all communication is non-verbal, and Conte's body language has been telling volumes. Coupled with his continual abrasion of the Chelsea club leadership over transfers (or the lack of), it would be safe to say that it would be in both parties' best interest if they parted company. Perhaps, just not yet: with Chelsea still needing to redress an eight-point gap to fourth place with just seven games to play, you'd hope that the Italian has enough personal pride left to see the job out.

Not a case of if, but when

Picture: Twitter/ChelseaFC

We’re a wacky lot, us football fans. We hold grudges long after they’ve served any meaningful purpose. Just ask Rafa Benitez, who, as Liverpool boss, made a habit of winding up Chelsea supporters...only to become, temporarily, the Chelsea manager (a toxic appointment, if ever there was one, but one which produced the 2013 Europa League title...). Just ask David Elleray, the referee whose pettiness contributed to Chelsea’s 4-0 humiliation to Manchester United in the 1994 FA Cup Final. Just ask Dean Saunders, whose tackle on Chelsea’s Paul Elliott in September 1992 effectively ended the defender’s career. We don't forget.

We football fans cheer and boo for the most capricious reasons. After Chelsea lost 3-0 at home to Bournemouth last Wednesday night, there were a few boos at full time, but these were largely drowned out by a chorus of "Antonio! Antonio!". There wouldn't have been a fan dressed in blue at Stamford Bridge that evening who expects Antonio Conte to be in charge of the club at the start of next season, but the singing made for a slightly odd end to what had, on balance, been a somewhat comic evening, in what is turning out to be a somewhat strange season.

Back in August it was generally accepted that Chelsea's defence of the Premier League title would be fraught with challenges, not least of which, the fact that it's harder to defend a title when you've got rivals like Manchester City and Manchester United hugely outspending you. If nothing else, Conte has conducted a lot of expectation management, reminding anyone who'll listen that Chelsea are (until their Carabao Cup exit to Arsenal) fighting on four fronts, whereas last season they didn't have a European distraction. And, without calling a spade a spade, he hasn't been getting the reinforcements he's wanted.

However, at risk of repeating my post from a couple of Fridays ago, when it seemed like the January transfer window was closing without much satisfaction for Conte, his apparent digs at the Chelsea board have continued, and have been at times none-too subtle. All of which reminds me of the great Stanley Holloway's ode, The Lion And Albert, in which young Albert visits Blackpool Zoo, taking with him "a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle (the finest that Woolworth's could sell)" and promptly sticks it in the ear of "a great big lion called Wallace, whose nose was all covered with scars". "You could see that the lion didn't like it. 'E pulled Albert inside the cage with 'im, and swallered the little lad - 'ole!".

You can probably see where I'm going with this: take José Mourinho, Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Ray Wilkins, Carlo Ancelotti, André Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo and Mourinho (again) for reference. Last week various newspapers reported that Chelsea's patience with Conte was running out, with former Barcelona manager Luis Enrique topping the list of potential replacements. Not that, for once, results are entirely to blame: the team that ran away with the Premier League last season, as well as becoming FA Cup finalists, have, in the last few weeks, recorded 4-0 and 5-0 wins over Brighton and Stoke, respectively, 0-0 results against Leicester, Arsenal and Norwich, and an impressive 3-0 home win over Newcastle in the FA Cup. Not bad results, but the goalless draws and £60 million signing Álvaro Morata's chronic dithering in front of goal (before he suffered a back injury) have added a tone of attrition to an otherwise OK season. Perhaps, then the "Antonio!" chants were more in irony than support.

When Mourinho was breeding "palpable discord" in the first four months of the 2015-16 season, before he was sacked, his mood had a very noticeable effect on the team. Conte hasn't got that bad, but his press conference comments about squad size have sounded like carping. His touchline demeanour on Wednesday night, too, spoke volumes: for two thirds of the game he was his usual self, barking at his players like a distressed seal, but then as the strength of the embarrassment seemed apparent, his shoulders dropped and he cut a somewhat lonesome figure. Forget chanting -  some in the crowd would probably have wanted to put an arm around him.

Conte is, after all, Italian, which means that emotions are not so much worn on the sleeve as engulfing the entire body like a onesie. His post-match press conference on Wednesday and pre-game press conference on Friday brought many of these emotions out in the raw - from defiance over the way Chelsea are, actually, playing, to how he's getting "120%" out of his players (not-so-subtle subtext: 'I'm lacking players'). The club is believed to have cautioned him over these niggles, and yet they continue, suggesting that the relationship may well be at breaking point. If not beyond repair.

Picture: Twitter/ChelseaFC

Tonight's game against Watford could prove crucial. It's unlikely that Chelsea will sack Conte if the result is indifferent, nor that he'll walk out before his contract ends (he's said as much that he wouldn't). But these are tricky days: tonight, Morata will still be out, backup striker Michy Batshuayi has been loaned to Borussia Dortmund (where he scored twice on his debut, just to rub salt into the open wound of Chelsea's goal scoring), new signing Olivier Giroud only joined from Arsenal last Wednesday, and the other great hope, Ross Barkley (who also signed in the January window), has joined a lengthening list of hamstring injuries.

On the one hand, you can't blame Conte for making pointed statements that he is "exploiting this squad at the maximum level", but on the other hand, while some of his personal transfer targets haven't materialised, the club has hardly been profligate when it comes to bringing fresh blood in.

Fatigue was, clearly, a factor last Wednesday evening at Stamford Bridge. Even substitutes, like Cesc Fàbregas, looked sluggish and jaded. Bournemouth took their chances well, but they were playing a team that had played 40 games already this season, and it showed. On this, we fans have sympathy. We even joke, as we walk up the umpteen steps to reach our seats in the Upper East Stand at Stamford Bridge, that we seem to have been doing it a lot in recent weeks. And we're not highly trained athletes running around Cobham most days of the week. Something has to give, and I doubt (though I may not be sure...) it will be my hamstring. There's some truth in that fable of young Albert and Wallace...

We've heard this one before

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

The warning signs are there: Antonio Conte is not a happy bunny. "Sometimes, I can have an impact on transfers, sometimes you can't," he told reporters after Wednesday night's Carabao Cup exit to Arsenal. "My first task is to do my job and be a coach. For sure, I don't have a big impact on the transfer market."

Elsewhere, the Italian bemoaned the lack of options at his disposal after Willian went off injured, affording Ross Barkley his Chelsea debut, albeit one after several months out, with only a training match under his belt for his new club. "Willian's injury was decisive because we don't have many players to make subsititutions. Morata was out and, after injury, I was a bit forced to decide to play Ross Barkley."

Out of context, "I was a bit forced" might sound like a reference to the apparent indifference Conte showed towards the signing of Barkley. It probably wasn't, and Conte's English skills aren't 100%, but there is certainly something simmering with him. For a manager unable to suppress rumours that he'll be off at the end of the season, he's not doing much to lift the mood.

If newspaper reports are to be believed, we're currently in the fourth transfer window where Conte's wishlist has barely been touched. For this we must remember the separation between church and state at Chelsea: Conte is 'First Team Head Coach', the club's football board is responsible for player acquisitions and disposals. Today's Times reports that Conte's relationship with board member Marina Granovskaia - the de facto managing director and the club's chief conduit to Roman Abramovich - has become so strained that they now communicate through Carlo Cudicini, the former Chelsea goalkeeper-turned assistant coach and Italian-speaking liaison. Things have worsened, according to The Times, since Michael Emanalo stepped down as technical director in November, having previously acted as a "buffer" between Conte and the board, bridging the former's responsibilities for first team performance and the board's role in squad evolution.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

Even if the headlines scream of paying inflated prices for average players, and a vast army of assets sent out on loan as a clear husbandry policy, Chelsea are, in the main, quite astute when it comes to transfers. Granovskaia is seen as being the key to that. Whatever you think of the player, reducing Everton down by £20 million for Ross Barkley is good business. However, the same probably can't be said of the £40 million spent on 23-year-old Tiémoué Bakayoko, whatever his reputation was at Monaco. But here highlights the divide between Conte and the club's board: neither of these midfielders were on his list of players to bring in. Nor was Michy Batshuayi, who has so far failed to win over Conte's trust (even when he could start as centre forward in place of Álvaro Morata, Eden Hazard has been the preferred option).

Now we have a seemingly desperate hunt for a back-up striker, with names as varied as Andy Carroll and Peter Crouch apparently in Chelsea's sights, along with a protracted effort to bring in the 31-year-old Edin Džeko from Roma, despite the player's apparent reluctance to move, the Italian club's reluctance to let him go, and Chelsea having to compromise on its policy of offering multi-year contracts to players over 30.

All of this points to dysfunction at Chelsea, but compared with the dark final days of the Mourinho era, things are anything but. But with Conte showing no signs of letting up in projecting his dissatisfaction over transfer targets and activity to the board that employs him, there is only ever going to be one outcome: either he walks in the summer, or he gets pushed, just as former manager Carlo Ancelotti (who, despite being fired by Abramovich has maintained a gracious proximity) moves back to London...with a view to returning to Premier League management.

Does anyone have a cure for goal shyness?

Thanks to social media we are now familiar with almost every aspect of a footballer's life. When they sign for a club we get the obligatory 'thumbs up' photograph of the player undergoing his medical, followed soon by the contract signing itself, and then the standard 'club shirt/scarf aloft' picture. As they progress through their club careers we are entertained by videos of the player banging in trick shots and dummying teammates on the training ground, all designed to show what a fantastic player they are when, obviously, not having to deal with actual opposition players coming at them in full tilt.

However, none of this fan engagement via social media reveals what Chelsea's players are actually doing at their Cobham training ground all week long. Because, in last night's frustratingly tedious 0-0 draw with Arsenal in the Carabao Cup we saw the Blues dominate with more than half of the possession, and had 21 shots on goal against Arsenal's eight and six shots on target to Arsenal’s three. Álvaro Morata, the latest striker to bear the prefix "club record signing" was, once again, industrious without product, leading to a notable increase in the volume of tutting in the stand around me and my girlfriend (attending her first ever top-tier football match...).

After opening his Chelsea account with a number of we’ll taken goals early on, since October Morata has been achingly profligate, most notably in one-on-one opportunities. Now, it would be charitable to credit the goalkeepers in each of these situations, but the truth of the matter is that a striker with his cojones properly attached would have put those chances away time after time. And, of course, it can only get worse. One newspaper report today noted that defender Andreas Christensen is yet to score for the club. So what? He’s a defender. What I’m interested in is the striker scoring, mainly because in his job description that’s mostly all it says.

Chelsea have been there before, of course. In fact it’s been an Achilles heel of the club for many years that, not since Gianfranco Zola's era, has it enjoyed a striker so deadly that goals happen every time, without fail (and I'm not even sure that Franco was all that consistent). Not for nothing is the club's record goal scorer Frank Lampard, a midfielder. Diego Costa and Didier Drogba were the closest Chelsea have come in the modern, Abramovich era to a regular marksmen, though both suffered being temperamental, the latter in particular, when disinterested in a fixture, simply breaking down when it suited him. And there have been the fanciful experiments - Shevchenko, Torres, Crespo, Sturridge, Eto'o, Ba, Casiraghi - with mixed results, mostly of the occasional kind.

It's easy, of course, from my seat high up in the East Stand of Stamford Bridge to carp about what happens on the pitch below, but expectations are high. And when you're spending a reported £60 million on a striker, you’d hope he does what it says on the tin. Morata isn’t alone, however. I've now watched several consecutive Chelsea games in which the goal margins could have been higher had shots on target have actually gone in. Yes, some of those can be put down to good goalkeeping, but many could have been converted with more confident, accurate predation by the players involved. That, is what I want to see on my social media feeds. Not cute larks on the training field, but players - especially those paid handsomely to score goals - practising how best to bang them in, time and time again.

The problem isn't just Morata: even Eden Hazard has been more miss than hit. Teams like Southampton and Stoke - despite their shambolic league position - have gone out of their way to frustrate Chelsea in front of goal. But then that should be something the attacking side has a plan for. Again, back to the training ground. Morata has, though, been the most obvious miscreant. In last week's league encounter with Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium the Spaniard missed a priceless chance in the first half and then sent another effort wide when bearing down on Petr Čech towards the end of the 2-2 draw. Morata was, according to Antonio Conte, "not lucky in this period". "He’s young," the Italian explained. "I repeat, I understand for a striker it's not easy if you don't score, but don't forget for Alvaro it's his first season playing regularly. He didn’t always play with Real Madrid and Juventus. You have to know this. I’m very happy with his commitment and the way he's playing. He has to stay calm continue to play this way. The goal is coming." True, and last night you couldn't fault his work rate. But, to repeat, his job is scoring goals. Going back to October, his early season form dipped for the first time following injury, with Conte saying that he needed more time to return to top form after missing chances against Bournemouth, including yet another convertible one-on-one opportunity.

If anything, Morata's apparent lack of confidence, with his feet at least. in front of goal draws the spotlight on Conte's need for a striker in the January window (the exact same problem that led to Fernando Torres joining the club in January 2011). Michy Batshuyai, the charismatic Belgian, is the de facto backup to Morata, but he has looked increasingly not the solution with every ten-minute cameo Conte has given him. Long-term, there's Tammy Abraham, who won't be recalled from loan, meaning that the only salvation for Chelsea's misfiring forwards is either an epiphany or a fresh injection of talent. And it's not entirely certain where that might come from. For now, Chelsea need to work - and work hard - on the training pitch at Cobham. They need to rediscover what you do with the ball in front of goal, regaining the confidence to not overplay and overelaborate, but shoot straight and true.

The Premier League is now clearly out of sight for all but Manchester City, but with this Saturday's league fixture against Leicester, next Wednesday's FA Cup replay against Norwich, the second leg of the Carabao Cup against Arsenal a week later, and Barcelona in the not-too distant future in the Champions League, Chelsea need a strikeforce as effective as their defence continues to be, thankfully. Because it's goals scored we pay to see, not goals saved...

No, the Monday Moan is not returning. Yet.

Twitter/Chelsea FC

Faithful readers will recall, two years ago, how my Mondays became typified by a weekly rant about Chelsea, as their Premier League title defence - and their season - went rapidly down the toilet. I'll spare you the history, but yesterday, I studiously went about avoiding a reinstigation of the 'Monday Moan' from the 2015-2016 football season. This was more out of blind hope that Chelsea's defeat to Arsenal in the Community Shield (again) and implosive defeat on Saturday at home to Burnley weren't harbingers of a carbon copy of what happened exactly two years ago.

As I wrote last week, following the Wembley game, the signs were uncannily there. All that the Burnley match lacked was Antonio Conte replicating José Mourinho's Basil Fawlty-style touchline meltdown. In fact, Conte was markedly unimpassioned at Stamford Bridge on Saturday: very little of the cardiac-endangering histrionics and constant barking of unintelligible instructions. For much of the game he just stood there, only moving out of his technical area to attempt a remonstration with the fourth official after another of referee Craig Pawson's pedantic decisions, only to be held back by Carlo Cudicini and prevent a bad afternoon getting worse.

To briefly return to the 2015 season, part of Chelsea's spiralling malaise was the result of Mourinho's demeanour. Unhappy at the progress of inter-season signings, frustrated by his own decision to start pre-season training late and, despite signing a lucrative new deal days before the season opener, letting rip at club doctor Eva Carneiro as she ran onto the field to attend to Eden Hazard, publicly demoting her days later. The mood in camp visibly suffered, and Mourinho was gone by December.

Conte has been installed by the bookies as favourite to be the first Premier League managerial casualty of the season. This, though, is not new: he was widely tipped for the sack a year ago as Chelsea's put in a confounding opening spell (2-1 wins over West Ham and Watford, a comprehensive 3-0 win over Burnley, then a 2-2 draw with Swansea followed by the home defeat to Liverpool and the 3-0 demolition by Arsenal that saw Conte switch to the wing-back system that would sustain them to the title). We mustn't, then, be rash. Saturday's loss to Burnley can be seen as an opening day blip, and indeed, despite the 2-3 scoreline and dismissal of both Gary Cahill and Cesc Fàbregas, the manner with which Chelsea fought back in the second half gave the home fans much to feel better about, especially Alvaro Morata's debut goal.

What happens next - and that includes Sunday's return to Wembley to play Spurs - will be down to Conte. And here is where the worry is. He is a very different personality to Mourinho, who maintains a brooding, simmering sense of victimhood even when he's done nothing wrong. Conte, on the other hand, while not exactly effervescent, is a highly personable individual, until he pulls on the tracksuit and - normally - leaps about the touchline as if someone is repeatedly jabbing him with a cattle prod. But his somnolent stance against Burnley spoke volumes. Whether his team selection was a message to the Chelsea board (and Roman Abramovich in particular) or not, the game's outcome should have been the clear instruction to bring in the reinforcements Conte has been demanding for months. Ahead of the Tottenham game, Chelsea are without Cahill and Fàbregas (suspension), Hazard and new central midfielder Tiemoue Bakayoko, as well as possibly Pedro (injury), Diego Costa (extended hissy fit back in Brazil), and having sold Nemanja Matic, Nathaniel Chalobah and Nathan Aké, and loaned out Ruben Loftus-Cheek, amongst several others, will have little-to-no first team experience available to fill the gaps.

According to The Times today, Conte remains at odds with the club over his transfer targets as many of them are older players with limited resale value. And yet most come with a hefty price tag because a) it's Chelsea and b) they're getting increasingly desperate. On top of that, the club hierarchy wants players with a long-term career path, whereas Conte is only looking at the short term of competing in this season's domestic competitions as well as the Champions League. All of a sudden his two-year contract - albeit on improved financial terms - is starting to look somewhat finite.

Along with death and taxes, the only other constant we have to contend with is that Chelsea managers are not forever. We learned that in the Ken Bates era, and thus it has proven relentlessly under Abramovich. The thing is, can we Chelsea fans put up with the constant upheaval when we're also benefiting from the trophies that do still seem to come? Longevity can be seen as both a blessing and a curse. Manchester United built a dynasty with Sir Alex Ferguson, but also paid the price of not making a change at a time when the squad itself was needing a refresh. And, then, there's Arsenal, with the stubborn Wenger hanging on and still delivering some semblance of success.

I'm writing as if Conte has already been sacked...or walked. I don't wish him to, and one defeat on the opening day doesn't condemn an entire season. But with new players not materialising, and a long season ahead - including the unpredictable intensity of the Champions League - you could hardly say that Chelsea are marching forwards with any strength. True, there are bright spots: Morata's pull-downs and goal on Saturday demonstrated a class improvement over the ineffective Batshuayi; Antonio Rudiger looks a quality buy to strengthen the defence while Andreas Christensen looked a more assured central defender compared with the loaned-out Kurt Zuma. But with talk still of Chelsea bringing in Virgil van Dijk from Southampton, Danny Drinkwater from Leicester and even Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain from Arsenal, not to mention long-term targets like Alex Sandro from Juventus, there is still an overwhelming sense of work-in-progress with Chelsea, one league game in, and just over two weeks of the transfer window left. It'll be interesting to see what the squad looks like as that window slams shut. Not to mention who will be in charge of it...