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?

They’re coming home...

Picture: Football Association

We may now be up to 52 years of hurt, but the pain has been considerably dulled. The editorial post-mortems will quite rightly ask questions of what happened to England after Kieran Trippier’s remarkable free kick put them ahead after five minutes; of why they seemed unable to maintain possession as Croatia gained confidence; of why they resorted to the long ball tactics we thought had been left behind when Sven-Goran Eriksson stood down after the 2006 World Cup; of why Dele Alli went missing and Harry Kane was largely anonymous. And, yes, some questions, too, about ‘Sir’ Gareth Southgate. But, perhaps, these inquisitions are for another day.

As everyone - from TV commentators to newspaper pundits to pub experts - has commented, England’s progress through the 2018 World Cup has been nothing short of incredible, and welcomely restorative at the same time. Cynics from other lands might say a little success has gone to our heads, but if these last four weeks have been intoxicated by unseasonably summery summer weather mixed with England winning games, then so be it. If nothing else, it’s given us a welcome diversion from all the other nonsense going on in the world.

We have become so used to doom and gloom around the England team, with dismal, premature exits from competitions, that for once, the national love-in with Southgate and his men has been entirely justified. The young England manager, himself, has cultivated this: in an age of hate and cynicism, fuelled by social media’s free-for-all and the notable loss of civility that appears to have been engendered by Brexit and Trump, Southgate’s manners, intelligence and dignity have been counter to the times. Even those who say “it’s all very well him being so polite, what about the performances?” will have to concede that it mostly went right. Which is much more than can be said for any of his recent predecessors. The waistcoat-and-tie smartness isn’t an act: when Southgate was appointed it was unfairly surmised that he was the last option left. The FA had run out of ‘exotic’ propositions like Capello or journeymen like Roy Hodgson and Sam ‘One Game’ Allardyce, and that appointing an FA insider like Southgate was the safest political option. Maybe it was, but didn’t it work out well?!

So what has made the difference between the abject departure to Iceland in 2016 and defeat to Croatia in 2018? Surely the core of the squad is the same? The difference is that the England in Russia this summer has been more cohesive and focused on the task. The universal decry after that Iceland game was that England were, essentially, eleven overpaid Premier League superstars doing whatever they thought their self-appointed talents should be applied to. This time, England have looked like a band of brothers which, surprisingly, has enabled them to largely avoid the petty tribalism of who they play for in their day jobs. True, this England squad has, perhaps, a disproportionate number of Spurs players, who have - let the records show - no silverware to show for their exalted status, but somehow even the most vehement anti-Tottenham fans have rallied around Harry Kane. Possibly not Dele Alli, though.

In fairness, this World Cup has been the making of some of these young England players. Jordan Pickford comes immediately to mind: relatively short for a goalkeeper, and not exactly from the ‘cool’ quadrant of the Premier League, he has demonstrated himself to be an impressively reactive stopper, not least of which in that penalty shootout. Harry Maguire, Kyle Walker and Jon Stones, too, have enhanced their reputations enormously, applying a three-man central defence model (for which Antonio Conte deserves some credit) that pushed into midfield with decisiveness. Raheem Stirling should also be mentioned here: still mystifyingly divisive amongst fans, his penetrative pace was one of the bright spots in England’s attack. Less so, Kane and Alli. The former was often poorly served in the open play which his reputation has been built at Tottenham (that he still leads the Golden Boot is mostly down to his impressive spot kick record). With Alli, who may have been carrying injury, he just seemed to be played too deep in some games, and was too standoff in others (especially last night), to make himself useful in front of goal. Tempting as it is to niggle further, I won’t. Because to do so would be to submit to the default behaviour we’ve all been guilty of down the years.

That we’re not all self-flagellating this morning in the usual fashion is testament to how England actually did. Defeat in a semi-final has been accepted by a glass half-full, that England only went out after 120 minutes and a single-goal margin. People are, thankfully, even prepared to ignore that England met their match against Croatia. I had been increasingly wound up by all the ‘football’s coming home’ hoopla, and commentators making ridiculous nudge-nudge, wink-wink remarks about 1966 and Sunday’s final before a tricky semi-final with Croatia had even kicked off. As much fun as the waistcoat-wearing national euphoria was, experience has taught us that you can be over-confident. ‘Pride before a fall’, as the adage goes. But all that aside - and I’m not seeking meagre gratification here - there is much to look forward to.

As The Times pointed out today in its daily World Cup supplement, youth is on England’s side for both the next European Championships and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The Under-19 pipeline is equally promising, and with Southgate’s experience from managing England’s youth set-up - effectively, into the senior team - for once we should not be pointing our eyes skyward at the thought of the next tournament being another pointless exercise. Contrary to the negative narrative going into this World Cup - both about the competition itself and England’s prospects - we have all emerged with a smile on our faces, and none of the usual caustic resentment. Ain’t that a breeze?

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.

If you get it wrong you'll get it right next time

Picture: Getty Images

I start the year on a negative note. Now, I accept that after all the merde that passed our way in 2016, commencing 2017 with the triviality of a lost football match doesn't seem all that bad, and truly it isn't. But, like most Chelsea fans, I would sincerely hope, last night's defeat to Spurs will stick in the craw for a long time. Why? Because it simply should. This is Tottenham we're talking about, after all.

Why one team should be considered the one to beat over any other with whom you've had history - and Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United come immediately to mind - is not immediately clear, and is really just a symptom of the irrationality that is football fandom. Every opponent should be the one to beat, which is surely the logical objective of the game. But like Jerry Seinfeld and his postman neighbour Newman, Chelsea fans have a simmering dislike of Tottenham, going back to who-knows-when, and for no reason whatsoever other than Spurs are simply a rival worthy of our dislike.

But let's not get caught up in all that. Tottenham are, so far this season, looking more resilient, more potent and more disciplined than the side that collapsed in the final stages of last season. That contemptuous draw at Stamford Bridge on May 2 marked not only the end of Spurs' serious challenge to Leicester City for the league title, but also the inexplicable moment that Eden Hazard finally switched on the Eden Hazard we once knew, and had been absent without leave since the beginning of the season. Luckily for Chelsea, that Hazard is still with them. 

Just not last night. First off the bat, Chelsea weren't bad. Spurs' 2-0 win may have ended Chelsea's remarkable 13-match unbeaten run, but that may have been almost inevitable. Yes, perhaps if things had gone differently last night, and César Azpilicueta and Victor Moses had not missed their marked man not once but twice and in identical circumstances, the game might have had a different outcome. But let's not ignore the fact that Tottenham were the better composed side last night. Their MO wasn't that dissimilar to the start they made in May and indeed the way they took the lead at Stamford Bridge in November. In Dele Alli, Tottenham have a true gem, and in Wanyama they had a solid object in midfield to disrupt Chelsea's counter-attacking play. And, perhaps, if Diego Costa had been a little sharper, or if Pedro had run into the space that caused the visible ire between him and Costa, or Hazard himself had been more accurate when he had a shooting chance, then Chelsea may have extended the record to 14 unbeaten.

But it wasn't to be. As Gary Cahill, eloquent in his post-match interviews, said, "we are not robots". An important point. In the previous 13 games Chelsea had been imperious, whether winning emphatically over Manchester United and Everton, or grinding out more modest victories over West Brom, Sunderland and Crystal Palace. It became too easy to think that Antonio Conte had simply found the switch to turn this form on after those early season disasters against Liverpool and Arsenal, the latter of which prompting his change to the 3-4-3 formation that unlocked the success that followed.

This morning Chelsea are still top of the league and five points clear. Last night's defeat may have opened things up a little for the chasing pack, but the Premier League is still in Chelsea's hands if they want it. For us fans, we'll deal with wounded pride (which is, frankly, the biggest casualty). Conte's men will want to reflect, as they watch the video replay at Cobham today, on why they were unable to find the gears to really counter Tottenham and repeat that life-affirming reversal in May. Conte himself - a breath of fresh air at Chelsea following the rank negativity of Mourinho - will want to look at whether he put Cesc Fàbregas on too late to make a difference (his link-up play with Costa was evident from the moment he came on) and whether he should have replaced N'Golo Kanté earlier when it was obvious that his passing and positioning had been uncharacteristically off-kilter.

Football, as I've often quoted Danny Baker, "is chaos". There is no logic to it, no rhyme or reason. Chelsea can start a season poorly, then go on a record-seeking run, and then end it with an off night. That's why we love the game, warts and all. No team is infallible, just as there is no such thing as a perfect 10. Sometimes irresistible forces encounter immovable objects, and they tussle until one is the victor. That wasn't exactly the case last night. Chelsea weren't bad, it's just that Tottenham were better. 

The job now for Antonio Conte is to pick his players up. They won't have lost their mojo in a single, tough encounter (though the mystery is still unsolved as to how this same team lost it in the weeks between winning the league and restarting their campaign a season ago) but they will need to think about what didn't go right for them against one of the toughest opponents they will face this season, and build on it. There's the matter of an FA Cup 3rd Round tie against Peterborough on Sunday to think about - and think hard about (their 2015 4th Round exit to Bradford City should still be fresh in their memories...), followed by the resumption of Premier League hostilities that will see Chelsea play Liverpool (away) and Arsenal (home) in the space of five days at the end of this month. And we are only at the half-way stage of the season, anyway. 

Mental discipline and mindset were the reasons Chelsea fared so poorly last season. Antonio Conte has reversed that. There is confidence oozing through the side. Last night was an aberration. This morning, as the players file into the meeting room at the Cobham training ground, my hope is that someone on the staff is a fan of the late Scottish folk-rocker Gerry Rafferty, and as a musical pick-me-up, plays them his 1979 it Get It Right Next Time. Because if you get it wrong...