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?

Grotesque doesn’t even cover it

The other evening I happened across an episode of Dad’s Army, 'Is There Honey For Tea?', in which the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard rally around Private Godfrey and his sisters Dolly and Cissy when their idyllic Cherry Tree Cottage comes under threat of demolition. The house is a perfect rose-decorated slice of bucolic English perfection which, Sergeant Wilson wistfully remarks is “just what we are fighting for”. Britain was a different place in 1975, when the episode first went out, beset by grey skies, strikes and British Leyland cars, an altogether different era to the somewhat confected view of tradition which, even as the set-up for comedy, that episode of Dad’s Army set out to convey. But it brought home a point. Tradition does count.

The timing of the episode going out was prescient. Tradition is under attack again from the announcement that England’s so-called ‘Big Six’ league clubs - Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City - are to join a new and exclusive European Super League along with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, AC Milan, Internazionale and Juventus (notably, none of the likes of Bayern Munich, Ajax or PSG are involved). It’s been some time coming: the clubs are believed to have been in talks for some time about creating their own rival to the Champions League, but formal confirmation of the consortium has brought the morality of it all into acute focus.

Football supporters, commentators, the domestic leagues and politicians have all, quite rightly, condemned the plan. There have been murmurings of points deductions, international player bans and other sanctions for those clubs who take part. Overall, the move has been roasted, demonstrating the grotesque arrogance of football clubs in failing to understand the ethos of what supporting football is all about, and why fans are prepared to dip into their hard-earned to follow clubs at every level for sometimes perverse and random reasons. 

I make no secret of my patronage of Chelsea, one of the clubs who’ve signed up for this folly. And it’s not out of arriviste glory-hunting, either: I started visiting Stamford Bridge as a child, when the club was near bankrupt, flirting with the old Third Division, and crowds of just 7,000 were turning up to see warhorses like Micky Droy and Ron Harris kick lumps out of opponents. Liverpool were then the dominant English side - even Ipswich were in the ascendancy - and the sort of riches that surround Chelsea today weren’t even dancing on the wildest stages of our imagination. That’s not why went to the Bridge. It was our club, just as whichever berth you call your home club is yours. It is, of course, an added bonus if you have superstars to watch. Even better if your club gets to play the European elite - nothing gets the hackles up quite like watching a load of cynical Spaniards falling over a lot in front of you on a Wednesday evening. But to some extent, this is mere confection, fairy dust sprinkled on the more prosaic form that is the Beautiful Game.

"We have all spoken forever about the importance of the ‘pyramid’ - the dream, the aspiration of clubs developing, they fall, they get promoted,” former  Football Association and Manchester City chairman David Bernstein told Sky News this morning. “Clubs like Manchester City who, 20 years ago, were in the first division and playing Gillingham in a play-off final at Wembley, become what they are now. Leicester City now have punched above their weight. "So I think you are moving all that dream, that aspiration, and I think that's sad and very dangerous."

Football fans have expressed similar sentiment, especially supporters associations of the clubs embroiled in the breakaway. The Chelsea Supporters' Trust branded it “the ultimate betrayal" and a decision made “with no consideration for the loyal supporters, our history, our future or the future of football in this." One Liverpool group accused the club’s US-based owner, Fenway Sports Group, of appropriating a property that is "ours not theirs”, while another said it was withdrawing support to a club “which puts financial greed above integrity of the game.” The Manchester United Supporters Group posted a picture of the Grim Reaper kicking a football on its website, along with a statement opining that the new league “has no sporting merit and would seem to be motivated by greed,” adding that it had been created without any input from the grass roots of the club’s support. "These owners, irrespective of where they come from, seem to think football belongs to them; it doesn't it belongs to us - the supporters - irrespective of which team we support."

I’m not saying that Doncaster Rovers are any closer to playing Real Madrid in the Champions League, but why can’t they aspire to the Premier League and therefore a shot at a top four place? Unlikely that they would, but who is to decree that they can’t, simply because a self-appointed elite has elected to create a closed shop into which only they can play. And for those fans of clubs in this super league - do we really want to play the same 11 teams all the time, including six we meet at least twice a season in our home league? There’s no dodging the fact that competition for the Premier League title and for the Champions League itself is dominated by the same clubs season in, season out, but there’s still enough margin for variety that we can, for example, see West Ham challenging for a Top Four league finish this season, and thus a shot at the European elite next season at the expense of one of the so-called big six.

Tradition, of course, doesn’t even enter the equation. It’s all about cold hard cash. Larceny, actually. The big clubs and their owners have shown their true colours and a patent absence of any understanding of what they’re custodians of. By reducing European club competition to, essentially, an exhibition tournament, they are effectively turning the 12 teams into football’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters. I’m sure we’ll see all the tricks in the book, but it will soon get pretty boring watching them play the Washington Generals every time. European nights haven’t been made by predictability, but by the complete reverse. We still talk now of José Mourinho leading Porto to the Champions League title in 2004, or even further back, Brian Clough doing the same with Nottingham Forest, twice. 

What I bridle with the most is that these clubs believe, to begin with, themselves to be a self-appointed elite. Even thinking about my own club, Chelsea are where they are today thanks to Roman Abramovich's largesse. Do Arsenal or Tottenham have any right to see themselves as elite on their form this season? No, and frankly that statement extends back even further. Elsewhere, neither Liverpool or Manchester United have been exactly polished this term, ditto Barcelona and Real Madrid. The only thing that distinguishes these clubs is the wealth behind them.

What the proprietors have declared, in forming the super league, is their disdain for everyone else, and that frankly is the ugliest aspect of all this. I’m not going to pretend that football is a purely altruistic sport, where hard work and endeavour is the only measure of progress. Because clearly when you’re able to spend £70 million on a single player, whereas other clubs in your same domain struggle to spend that on a squad refresh, you’ve got a performance advantage (even if the litany of expensive flops proves that all that glitters isn’t always gold). Essentially, the breakaway clubs have given a massive ‘up yours’ to the rest of football. They have even doubled down on this by taking pre-emptive “protective steps” to legally prevent football authorities from taking sanctions out against the clubs, with measures talked of including players being banned from playing for their countries, one of the ultimate objectives they strive for.

Let me return to this thing about tradition. It’s a thorny subject. A procession of interviewees today have referred constantly to the role all football clubs, even the big ‘corporate’ behemoths, historically play in their communities, and that the big six are showing this contempt. They will all dispute that, going to great lengths to demonstrate their community programmes, from grass roots support to dispatching their first team to children’s wards at Christmas. But you can’t ignore that even the most historic clubs now looking to join the super league are living a world away from the traditions they come from. 

“He’s more machine than man,” Obi-Wan Kenobe tells Luke Skywalker about his former protege, Anakin in the 'first' Star Wars film. You could say that about the clubs involved in this venture.  “They pretend ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the people’s club, the fans’ club,” railed Gary Neville yesterday about Liverpool. And he had this for the club he played for: “Manchester United, 100 years, born out of workers. And they are breaking away into a league without competition, that they can’t be relegated from? It is an absolute disgrace. We have to wrestle back power in this country from the clubs at the top of this league, and that includes my club.” His former manager Sir Alex Ferguson - who remains a director at the club - told Reuters: “Talk of a Super League is a move away from 70 years of European club football.”

You could take a step back, breathe, and conclude that football is in constant flux. That progress should be embraced. Even Private Godfrey concluded that if his cottage had to be destroyed for the war effort, so be it. We can easily descend into romanticism, but I think that risks missing the point. We support the clubs we follow - regardless of their status - because of something else, something intangible. Even we Chelsea fans, contrary to the jibes, are not glory hunters. We’ve endured bad times and frustrations. We even appreciate the good fortune we find ourselves in, to follow extravagantly financed teams staffed by exciting talent. But that doesn’t entitle the custodians of our clubs’ histories to ride roughshod over them and our patronage. 

You could even take the harder view that football has been a divided kingdom for a long time, of an elite and all the rest. In the grand scheme of things, does anything fundamentally change with this super league? Yes, pretty much the same clubs who vie each season for the knockout stages of the Champions League are involved in it, but there’s a fundamental here: there’s no reason why other clubs can’t also be in the mix, working their way up the pyramid. And that’s what we scream and shout for. Not some glorified showcase, a friendly tournament in all but name, and one designed purely to line the pockets of the proprietors, and do nothing for the humble supporter, many of whom will be now questioning where they put their disposable income when it comes to football.

The day football came back...briefly

I don’t know about you, but I’m passing the extended lockdown by noting anniversaries of the otherwise mundane: the last time I had a coffee at Caffé Nero, the last time I went swimming, the last time I saw someone in the flesh who wasn’t a member of my immediate household. That sort of thing. For example, Easter Sunday marked an exact month since my last haircut, and given my barnet’s normal growth rate, I’m surprised I'm not yet resembling Tom Hanks in Castaway.

It is now six weeks - SIX - since I last saw a football being kicked in anger, (Chelsea's 4-0 battering of Everton, since you ask, easily the best game I've seen this season). In other circumstances this might have bothered me, but like so many aspects of the viral crisis, there are other things that now take priority and, frankly, football is not one of them. Not that football isn’t perfectly capable of crowbarring itself back into consciousness, whether it is the idiot Kyle Walker getting caught in flagrante with a couple of “sex workers” who clearly weren’t members of his household, or his former club Tottenham Hotspur digging itself into a hole by placing half of its 550 non-playing staff under the government’s furlough scheme and imposing 20% pay cuts on other employees (despite being the world’s eighth-richest football club which recently posted record annual revenues of £461 million and a profit of around £70 million). Facing a backlash from its own fans and even some players, Spurs have wisely made a U-turn, with Daniel Levy, the club’s chairman (who earned a cool £7 million last year) announcing that all non-playing staff will now get paid in full for April and May, with only the board taking a pay cut. Last week Liverpool staged a similar volte face. In truth, clubs like Tottenham and Liverpool - 8th and 7th, respectively, for global club revenues last season - can most afford it. Others, like Bournemouth and Norwich City probably can’t and have carried on with drawing on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

We are on shaky moral ground, here. Elite football generates - and spends - ridiculous amounts of money, money it earns, if it is a Premier League or Championship team, from they eye-watering deals done with television companies. Matchday gate receipts and income from merchandise and sales of dodgy burgers is, for some clubs at this level, something of a bonus. For clubs lower down, however, every last bottle of Coke sold could be the difference between a bleak future or not when this thing is all over. Here, like so many businesses across the spectrum of enterprise, there are people working at these football clubs who earn a mere fraction of the sums trawled by the players they serve. That said, Spurs should never have put themselves in the spotlight with such a PR disaster.

In a club statement Levy said: "The criticism the Club has received over the last week has been felt all the more keenly because of our track record of good works and our huge sense of responsibility to care for those that rely on us, particularly locally. It was never our intent, as custodians, to do anything other than put measures in place to protect jobs whilst the Club sought to continue to operate in a self-sufficient manner during uncertain times.” Be that as it may, but when the businesses of the very fans who keep these clubs going are facing very uncertain futures, Spurs' unnecessary insertion in the coronavirus news cycle was ill-thought through especially, without little fanfare, while other clubs have simply been getting on with it (Leeds United’s first-team squad have agreed wage cuts to assist others at the club, Juventus players have taken a four-month pay cut and Barcelona players have agreed to a 70% pay cut).

Picture: Nike

Were it not for this brouhaha, football would have dropped completely from view. I am, though, inclined to care less about whether the current season ends, or whether Liverpool’s somewhat justifiable receipt of the Premier League title, happens or not. "Staying in, saving lives" has replaced everything else in my consciousness. Last Monday I started a new job, which at least managed to supplant days framed largely by an unhealthy diet of rolling news and watching delivery vans out of the living room window speed up and down the road. Covid-19 has rapidly reshaped our priorities and interests, not that football was exactly an obsession. But I've now realised how much of my time was, pre-crisis, spent on watching, reading, WhatsApping, tweeting and blogging about football. And then, nothing. Like I'd reached the end of the universe and discovered that beyond it, there is nowt. Well, there was, until Easter Sunday when, in much the same manner as EastEnders' Nasty Nick appearing out of the blue to say "'Ello Ma, fancy a cuppa?", the football void was momentarily broken by a bittersweet memory. On Sunday afternoon the BBC cast our minds back to something which, despite coming 30 years ago, still fills football fans with tear-inducing nostalgia: Italia ’90.

The 1990 FIFA World Cup, to give it its full name was, for England fans at least, a moment of mass cultural change. Football was still in the doghouse after the 1985 Heysel disaster and, just a year before, the Hillsborough tragedy in Sheffield. The game didn’t exactly disappear, but it certainly wasn’t where it is now - or at least was before that nasty little virus arrived on these shores. Italia ’90 was a football tournament, obviously, but it managed to transcend that in England, largely thanks to the BBC’s coverage of it. Fronted by the smoother-than-silk Des Lynam (“Desmond”, as commentator John Motson consistently referred to him), the Beeb bought into the dreamy Italian vibe with Luciano Pavarotti’s rendition of Nessun Dorma from Puccini's opera Turandot as its theme tune. “You’ll be humming it soon – you’ll know the words to it by July 8”, Lynam quipped on the opening day, setting an incongruously cultured tone to coverage of a tournament normally less sophisticated. I’m not going to recall the whole thing here - Roger Milla corner flag dance and Totò Schillaci’s eye-bulging reaction to scoring a winner notwithstanding - rather than reminisce over last Sunday’s unexpected flashback: West Germany-v-England.

By 1990 England had been bereft of international footballing success for a full 24 years (“30 years of hurt” would prevail beyond Euro ’96), so England reaching a semi-final against Frans Beckenbauer’s pre-unification West Germany was a big deal. Before the tournament had begun the usual negativity surrounding England had been added to by news that manager Bobby Robson would leave after the competition to join PSV Eindhoven. Then came England’s opening game, a dismal 1-1 draw against Ireland. For the next match, against the Dutch, Robson changed the system around, allowing the-then 23-year-old Paul Gascoigne’s talents fully into the fray. England would win their group, raising prospects - “could this be the year, finally?”. Gazza became a joy to behold and easily England’s breakout tournament start. His supply to David Platt in the last-16 tie against Belgium, enabling the striker to volley spectacularly into the goal with seconds to spare in extra time, marked the youngster as the one to watch. Next came Cameroon in a quarter-final, from which England progressed, just. By this time of the World Cup, Italia ’90 fever had reached its peak. As Des had predicted, Nessun Dorma had become the soundtrack of the summer (along with New Order's World In Motion). Coupled with England’s run, with a team comprised of players in their prime, like Gary Lineker, John Barnes, Des Walker and even Peter Shilton, who seemed old in 1990 (he retired soonafter) but looked absolutely rock-solid between the sticks, we were lured by the charms of the Italian peninsular, its islands and its football culture. Channel 4's Football Italia would come not long after (and could be a whole separate blog post, as I waxed on about James Richardson laconic Saturday morning magazine show).

In that Italian excursion in the summer of 1990 there was one last challenge: that semi-final, on Wednesday, 4 July at the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin. The last group of Englishmen to get out of the northern Italian city with their dignity intact was probably Charlie Croker’s men in The Italian Job, but here was Bobby Robson’s team, on the back of lucky but scintillating results, facing the mighty Kaiser, Franz Beckenbauer, and his imperious collection of blond, mullet-haired grafters. I could go on lengthily about that game, except that I won’t. If you missed Sunday’s streamed broadcast then I hope the BBC will dig it out again sometime, and you’ll be able to relive what felt like the first truly romantic football experience of my life. It had highs and lows, and some of the best England football I’d seen at that stage, Gazza in particular proving to be so inventive through the middle, until his rashness showed through and ‘Gazza’s Tears’ became as much an icon of Italia ’90 as Pavarotti’s aria. And the lows? England hitting the inside of the German upright in normal time and then again in the extended period after Lineker’s 80th minute strike had kept them in the game, only for the penalty shootout to end in disappointment for Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle (though lucrative commercials for Pizza Hut must have alleviated the pain for the England left back).

Sunday’s airing of the 1990 semi-final brought back the memory that, in some small way, football had been excused, especially in England. It was OK to talk about the sport again amongst friends and colleagues. England hadn’t just come close to their first final in a generation - indeed, closest to winning the World Cup on foreign soil than any England side before or since - they also played with an aplomb the national side’s critics had hitherto been bating them for. Some might argue that the euphoria of England hosting the Euros six years later - and suffering a similar fate to the Germans… - beats the Italian World Cup in 1990. I just see it as a turning point in football’s reputation, when the classical surroundings of stunning Italian cities, some broadly decent games sprinkled with era-defining moments, did much to restore football. You could even say that Italia ’90 recovered the sport from the neanderthal ugliness that had periodically impaired its profile in the '70s and '80s. It was fun to be transported back 30 years to that July evening. Strangely, it didn’t make me hanker for football to return yet in 2020. Football will come back, like everything else - going to the pub, shopping for clothes, going to the gym - when it’s the right time. Yes, some clubs will suffer. Many will even go out of business, like so many other commercial activities. But it will come back.

Be careful what you wish for

Picture: Tottenham Hotspur FC

What a time to be alive. Senior members of the royal family trying to grease their way out of guilt-by-association, doing it badly and keeping the news cycle going for almost a week; the leaders of our two biggest political parties showing themselves to be about as trustworthy as a balsa wood ladder in heavy weather; and then Mauricio Pochettino being sacked as Tottenham manager on the Tuesday night, only to be instantly replaced next morning by the high-maintenance, highly expensive and highly self-opinionated José Mourinho.

As a Chelsea fan I am supposed to be shocked, appalled, even, by this news. After all, Mourinho is the man who said, in 2015, he couldn’t manage Tottenham because his emotional attachment to Chelsea was so strong (though to be clear, after Roman Abramovich sacked him for a second time, he was legally prevented from managing another English club for two years. Ironically, that sacking came after an abysmal away game at Tottenham, at the end of which Diego Costa petulantly threw his training bib at the Portuguese manager, and Chelsea hovered over the relegation trap door). The truth is that I’m not shocked at all. Frankly, I don’t think that Pochettino had been doing anything particularly badly, but 14th place in the Premier League is clearly not where Spurs would want to be, given the talent at their disposal. But something clearly wasn’t right, and despite Tottenham’s persistent excellence, nothing ever came of it in terms of trophies. Oddly, there were parallels in Tottenham’s fortunes to Chelsea’s profile under Mourinho in his last spell there - overseeing a decline that took them from Premier League champions in May 2015 to 17th place by the beginning of December. Being a serial runners-up just doesn’t cut it in modern football.

Spurs’ decline isn’t anything near as bad as Mourinho's final denouement at Chelsea, but you’d have thought that going from a Champions League final in June to midway of the bottom half of the Premier League in November is hardly conducive to support from Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman. Rumours have swirled in recent weeks of Pochettino becoming progressively detached from his squad. It’s hard to judge whether this was simply the Argentinian running out of enthusiasm for a “project”, to use modern managerial parlance, that had, over five and a half years, seen him preside over Harry Kane’s progress as one of England’s best-ever strikers, the development of Dele Alli - as objectionable an individual as he might be - to be a forward of some lethality, along with the evolution of Dier, Eriksen, Walker and Son as players of great potency. It’s just there hasn’t been any product from it. Too many Spurs players have gone missing at vital moments. Too often the team has gone Spursy.

So, when considering the lack of any silverware to line the trophy room at Tottenham’s lavish new stadium in N17, it makes obvious sense to look at Mourinho, even more so than apparent left-field candidates like Eddie Howe, the star-on-the-rise Brendan Rodgers, or the experienced Carlo Ancelotti, who’d apparently hinted at throwing his hat in, should the Spurs job come available. It is, perhaps, too easy to point directly at an empty trophy cabinet and blame that for Pochettino’s frustration and subsequent departure. But there’s no doubting where Levy was coming from when he declared that: "In José we have one of the most successful managers in football" - 25 trophies spanning seven clubs is not a stat to be ignored. How he acquired those trophies is another matter.

When he was appointed as Chelsea head coach for the first time, Mourinho had just won the Champions League with Porto in 2004. In between his first and second spells at Stamford Bridge, he won a league/cup/Champions League treble with Inter in 2010 and led Real Madrid to the La Liga title in 2012. Back at Chelsea, he won the Premier League, again. None of these achievements have been without their strife, and when Mourinho took over what had been pitched as his ‘dream job’, Manchester United, the dystopian spiral only continued.

Picture: Tottenham Hotspur

Which makes his appointment to Tottenham, while undoubted box office news, questionable. Yes, by reputation, he may bring Spurs closer to silverware than at any time since their last trophy, the League Cup in 2008. But this is assuming that Levy is prepared to bankroll the programme. Mourinho is already rumoured to be earning double Pochettino’s weekly salary, which means someone - presumably José’s agent - has managed to prise open Levy’s wallet wider than it had been previously known to hinge. And, as previous proprietors have found, Mourinho will want money to buy in Europe’s most expensive talents, a move likely to make Spurs’ accountants as nervous as the youngsters Pochettino blooded through, even if not to ultimate success. For his part, Pochettino was already harrumphing back in the summer about his lack of influence over club decisions in areas like player acquisition (the club failed to buy anyone new for two successive windows). Compare this with the £89 million Mourinho persuaded Ed Woodward to pay for Paul Pogba, or the £75 million for Lukaku. And look where that got him. It may be wise to stock up on popcorn before the January window opens.

Whatever happens, things around Tottenham Hotspur are unlikely to be dull for the next three seasons (the typical length of a Mourinho managerial cycle). One of football’s more enigmatic managers is now in charge of one of football’s more enigmatic clubs. Where this prospect might fall down is, crucially, on the field of play. Will Tottenham’s young stars, who have at least been afforded the freedom to be creative under Pochettino, adapt to Mourinho’s notorious brand of pragmatic football? We Chelsea fans put up with five-and-a-half seasons of jeers and jibes about parked buses, criticism that never abated as the silverware rolled in. In fact, it only increased, and it’s only now under Frank Lampard’s stewardship of youth that neutrals and the occasional rival are beginning to say nice things about the club. Not wishing to curse the coming months at, arguably, our bitterest London rival, I do wonder just what the José Effect will be. And just how much Arsenal fans might be breathing easier right now.

Sarri seems to be the hardest word - part 2

Since my post on Monday, in which I tried to examine the wisdom of Maurizio Sarri questioning the mentality and motivation of his players, the Chelsea head coach has continued in this vein by questioning the leadership skills of Eden Hazard.

"I don't know," the Italian said at yesterday's press conference ahead of tonight's EFL Trophy semi-final second leg at Stamford Bridge. "At this moment he is more an individual player than a leader. He’s very important of course as he’s a great player and he can always win the match in two minutes, sometimes in one minute, but at the moment he’s not a leader. He’s a great player, one of the best in the world."

Now, with Hazard arguably one of the best players in the world, if not at least in England, and with speculation about him moving to Real Madrid continuing to swirl about like the snow flurries outside my window, you might say that Sarri is taking an even bigger risk by drawing any negative focus on the Belgian. Clearly, though, Sarri knew what he was saying, why he was saying it, and when he was saying it.

"I think we need to react on the pitch, all the rest is nothing," Sarri had said earlier in the presser when asked about how his team will respond to his criticism of the team after their dismal defeat to Arsenal last weekend. "We need to discuss our problems. The first step, if I want to improve, is to accept the mistake otherwise its impossible to improve. It’s a normal discussion for improving." But, in talking about the kind of reaction he's looking for, the question of leadership emerged. "It depends on the atmosphere around the players," he said, "but we have some players with the characteristics to be a leader, such as Azpilicueta, David Luiz, so I think they can help all the other players to get the right mentality."

Hazard can be a confounding figure. There's no doubting his brilliance, but sometimes it can be dimmed, either because his box of tricks gets stifled by defenders, or by the player himself dropping down a couple of gears. Sarri, and Antonio Conte before him, should share some of the blame in this. Playing Hazard as a false 9 is clearly not what the player wants to do and, equally clearly, when he's played as a target man when there's little dropping in for him, it would be understandable for Hazard to get frustrated. But is that necessarily a leadership issue? When Chelsea had a spine of leadership - Čech, Terry, Lampard, Drogba - the authority and effect was tangible. Today, it's patchy. Azpiliqueta is a great defender and a worthy captain, but he's no John Terry. Likewise, David Luiz has passion aplenty, and when he's not making silly mistakes, evokes some of the blood-and-thunder JT used to exude. But there is something lacking throughout the current team. Jorginho was brought to Chelsea by Sarri to act as his lieutenant, but his influence in the holding role has faded of late, and with the manager stubbornly refusing to rotate his No.5 (ideally by playing Kante there), the midfielder has offered little in the way of being the engine room.

So what, then, is Sarri's expectations of Hazard? And why has he chosen to rattle the Belgian's status just as Chelsea are hoping he will shun Real Madrid's interest and sign a new contract? Obviously, reverse psychology can't be ruled out, but again, it seems an extremely high-risk strategy where Hazard, precariously poised over a new deal, is concerned. Perhaps, though, "leadership" was the wrong choice of words. Perhaps Sarri was getting at something else. Earlier this week Hazard made an alarming admission to France Football magazine, saying that he's been a source of frustration to his past managers...and will continue to be so. "I didn’t just frustrate Conte," he said. "In my career, I’ve frustrated all my coaches. And with Sarri, once again, I frustrate him. They think that I need to mark more, do more of this and more of that. And the next coach that I have, I’ll frustrate him as well."

Hazard is, however, a consummate wind-up. His ambiguity over his Chelsea future has been conveyed playfully, with a trademark twinkle in his eye suggesting that the witty and bright Hazard is just messing around half the time. Probably only he and his agent knows where he wants to go, or even where he will actually end up. Which brings me to tonight's game against Tottenham. If Sarri wants to get a reaction out of any one player with this fixture, Hazard is probably the player to poke with a sharp stick.

Hazard, you’ll remember, was in the thick of it two years ago when Spurs blew their Premier League title chances at Stamford Bridge. "We don't want Tottenham to win the Premier League; the fans, the club and the players," he said before the ill-tempered 2-2 draw in May 2016 that ended Spurs' hopes of preventing Leicester City from winning the league title. Hazard's stunning 83rd-minute strike brought the scores level...and led to temperatures boiling over. So, with Sarri looking for a reaction, both from the Arsenal defeat but even from the painful 3-1 loss to Spurs in the league in November, a defeat that ended Chelsea's 12-game unbeaten run, it's possible that the Italian coach is engaging in some mind games with his mercurial Belgian.

Quite how Hazard will react remains to be seen. If, tonight, Hazard is again played out of preferred position in the false 9 role, he may well continue to go through the motions. Without the newly-signed loanee Gonzalo Higuain, and with Álvaro Morata seemingly on his way back to Spain, if Sarri chose to start with Olivier Giroud up front and have Hazard play in from the left, his preferred position, he might just get the positive response he's looking for. But, as has now been well documented, Sarri's reluctance to try something as adventurous might mean that, until Higuain can be integrated, Hazard might stay, unhappily, in the middle, and now with his own coach questioning his seniority, too. Not good, really...

Do you know the way to sack José?

I'm not even considering the fact that Tottenham beat Manchester United 3-0 at Old Trafford last night, nor even how they did it. Sorry, Spuds fans, this one's not about you. José Mourinho made sure of that. It wasn’t necessarily about how Manchester United lost at home, either. It is - because it always is - all about José.

Turning up half an hour early for his press conference the other day only to stick around long enough to deliver a handful of surly answers; then last night, almost theatrically applauding the home fans after the match was over, lapping up their adulation as if what had happened in the previous 90 minutes or so hadn’t mattered one bit; and then another post-match presser in which The Sulky One asked of the assembled [on time] journalists: "What was the score?" before angrily holding up three fingers and asking "What is this also? Three Premierships I have won, more Premierships than the other 19 managers put together. Me three, them two," followed by "Respect, respect, respect", repeated as he made his exit.

The fact is, if José wants respect, he’s got to show some himself. On Sunday Genovese fans maintained silence for the first 43 minutes of Genoa's home fixture to Empoli, one minute for every victim of the Morandi bridge collapse. Now that is respect. Respect is earned or deserved, not petulantly demanded from journalists asking legitimate questions about how Manchester United managed to lose at their supposed home fortress to one of the Top 6 by a three-goal margin. Yes, it's only three games into the season, and a season's results can never be gauged over just 270 minutes of football at the sunburned end of the term, but it's worth pointing out that in Mourinho’s first season at Chelsea the team conceded just 15 league goals all season. Whether by parking the bus or not, Chelsea were ultra-disciplined at the back, and ultra-watertight. Manchester United are already halfway towards that goal record, and we're not yet out of August.

Whatever it is causing Manchester United to be so poor, the root lies with Mourinho. Once again, he has adopted the truculent manner that led to "palpable discord" between him and his Chelsea players in that disastrous, four-month nosedive in defence of the 2014-15 Premier League title. It left Chelsea in 17th place at the point of Mourinho's departure...ironically, following another defeat to Tottenham. That was when Third Season Syndrome became a thing: it was the realisation that in Season 1 he builds, Season 2 he achieves and in Season 3 it all falls apart. Well, this is a blockbuster Netflix would probably pass over. Because Season 2’s pattern was ignored, mainly by the supposedly classless Manchester City.

Mourinho’s demeanour last night as he boorishly lectured journalists was nothing new. This wasn’t a sudden, Keeganesque implosion, one where sympathy might be afforded Mourinho’s mental state. No, because this is José. When he first appeared on these shores in 2004 to declare himself a "special one", the press went giddy. Sports desks ordered extra notepads from stationery departments at the lip-smacking prospect of a new and highly quotable Clough, funded by Roman Abramovich’s largesse, and with success with Porto behind him to underwrite the hype. And so he delivered Chelsea’s first league title in 50 years, and then another. Buying the league? Nah. We loved him, and sang ebulliently from the Stamford Bridge stands, “José Mourinho! José Mourinho!”. And then, within a few weeks of The Third Season starting, he was gone. One indifferent performance in the Champions League, and mutterings of discontent over Avram Grant’s role as Director of Football, and club and manager parted company.

The cycle was in full effect, and thus it would repeat itself at Internazionale and Real Madrid, coming back to Chelsea in what might seem now like an ill-fated marriage of convenience in 2013. But this was no Burton and Taylor giving it yet another go: the suspicion was always that José coveted the-then unavailable Manchester United job. So Chelsea just had to do. And so he dutifully added another Premier League title before it all went horribly wrong on the opening day of the 2015-16 season, and José jumped up and down like a enraged, tanned Basil Fawlty as Dr. Eva Carneiro and her assistant ran onto the pitch to attend the felled Eden Hazard. This was just 8 August. And it set the tone for the next four months, with Mourinho publically demoting Carneiro, and team morale disappearing before our very eyes. Week after week, the Mourinho mood worsened, some genuinely fearing for his mental state as press conferences and post-match interviews became increasingly monosyllabic. All leading up to the inevitable parting of the ways and Michael Emenalo's extraordinary admission of discord between manager and players. On that occasion there was suspicion that Mourinho had engineered the whole thing to get himself out of his Chelsea contract and onto the radar of Manchester United's HR department (despite there being no vacancy to fit his experience and talents).    The idea of Mourinho attempting 'suicide by cop' by appearing to invite Roman Abrmovich to fire him might seem extreme, but if there's one thing we know about José, there are no rules for him to follow. There are times when everything about him seems staged and contrived; even his march last night to the Stretford End looked rehearsed, at least in his mind, to calculate maximum effect when he faced the press afterwards.

There was a time when we believed that all of this egomaniacal behaviour was a distraction, that by pulling the supertrooper onto him, Mourinho would deflect attention away from his players. But if there's one thing we took out of that dismal four months in 2015, his actions did everything but. He was, by all accounts, a miserable sod to be around, and that appears to have replicated itself over the summer at United. Even if he managed, miraculously, to get Paul Pogba onside, that scowl and the apparently demeaning comments about some of his players will have been felt throughout the squad.

So, three games in to this season and we have already reached the level of petulance that provided the weekly narrative of those final few months of Mourinho’s time at Chelsea. Chelsea’s PR people must have needed counselling during that period and I can see United’s media team going in the same direction. Surely Manchester United must be alerted to the warning signs? Could he be sacked sooner than later? Logic says he won't go just yet: even in this insane world of football, three games - one of which won - does not lead to dismissal. But the look on executive vice chairman Ed Woodward's face at the final whistle yesterday was not one of stoic reflection. Even if, as the Daily Mail has revealed today, he and Mourinho had a "positive" conversation, drawing on United's first-half performance, rather than its second-half collapse, there surely must be those in the Old Trafford board room wondering whether history is repeating itself before their very eyes, and not necessarily in the best way, either...

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...

Quelle surprise

I'm sure a good psycho-analysis expert can explain that common theme in people's dreams, when they're running to escape something and but can't seem able to get ahead of it. As a child I used to have a dream in which I was being chased down by an object which resembled a giant kneecap, much like that enormous round boulder that tumbled after Indiana Jones (or, in the form of Homer Simpson, down the stairs after Bart).

The only reason I bring this up is that I currently have the same sense of weak-legged uselessness by the current state of the world, especially the encroaching political and social divisions in my home country and in the US, where the needs of certain individuals to satisfy their ambitions are running roughshod over decency and respect.

But in a somewhat lesser ranking, global importance-wise, I also feel frustrated by yet another woeful England performance at an international football tournament. The ignominy of England going out of Euro 2016 to Iceland compounds a four-day period in which the UK chose to leave the EU, it's prime minister resigned (and in the process triggered a contest amongst people like the gormless Jeremy Hunt who have precious little to offer the post other than "that job looks a lark, I might give it a go”), and Her Majesty's Opposition began collapsing faster than a house of cards in a tornado thanks to a well-meaning and well-principled but lukewarm leader. But enough of all that. The less pressing, but more acutely annoying boil du jour in need of lancing is that of England (the football team, not the increasingly isolated corner of the former Great Britain).

No one went into Euro 2016 with much expectation about England's prospects, but there was at least a modicum of excitement about the attacking options at Roy Hodgson's disposal - the it-shouldn't-work-but-it-does goal prowess of Jamie Vardy, Harry Kane's prolific season with Tottenham, Daniel Sturridge's return to hunger, the mercurial Raheem Stirling and even the untried but exciting prospect of Marcus Rashford. But there were also the same-old, same-old problems of midfield cohesiveness and the even bigger lack of real strength in defence.

We can analyse these points to death, of course, but the frustration we're all left with is that surely there was enough in the 23-man Hodgson took to squad to France that would have had some fighting chance of progress? But, no. A promising first half against Russia on the opening weekend was undermined by a dozy second half (and not helped by the savage hooliganism in and around Nice's Stade Vélodrome). A spirited win over Wales reminded us that luck can work for you at these competitions, but then it was back to usual against Slovakia with a forgettable 0-0 draw. And thus England just about progressed into the knockout stage, with little to be really proud of but, progress is progress, and bring on Iceland and a slew of corny jokes about Kerry Katona and Bejam supermarkets.

When I first took up blogging six years ago, almost to the day, it was to vent a considerable amount of froth at England's ejection from the World Cup in South Africa. Apart from a very valid complaint about a disallowed Frank Lampard goal against - guess who? - Germany, much of my fizzing was about the ever-present hubris that has followed England into these tournaments, pretty much ever since the penultimate day of July 1966. It's that sense of entitlement - because England invented association football, because it created the first national team, because it hosts the world's most lucrative domestic league, because it used to be the seat of an empire, and because England won the World Cup once in the competition's 86-year history. No wonder our soon-to-be former EU partners can't wait to see the back of us...

This time around the expectation may have been worse: a squad comprised of players like Kane and Vardy, who'd enjoyed remarkable domestic seasons, on top of a ten-out-of-ten record in England's somewhat soft qualifying group for Euro 2016 gave false hope. And with this Roy Hodgson, a decent enough journeyman of a manager, masked his inadequacies in being able to make the right decisions at this level.

Hodgson did the decent thing by resigning on the spot after last night's defeat to Iceland. The FA even dragged him back to face the press today, though it's hard to tell what they intended to achieve. "I don't really know what I'm doing here," he told reporters in his first answer, "but I was told it's important for me to appear as everyone is still smarting". On reflection, we didn't know what he was doing in France either. Certainly not adhering to the sporting adage about playing to your strengths, which he didn't with dozy substitutions and starting line-ups that undermined the entire 90 minutes' performance.

As for the "everyone still smarting", that will probably include Danny Baker, who launched into a Krakatoan tirade on Twitter during the Iceland game and was still going when I went to bed. Already flaming the dreary statements-of-the-obvious of ITV commentator Glenn Hoddle (sample: "Oh we are getting Glenn Hoddle's reaction now. Next up the reaction of a paving stone in Blackpool."), Baker went into a fury of tweets - almost all unrepeatable - about the state of England, its manager and the motiviation of its players, including "I simply do not buy that footballers feel bad after game like that when they will be back on £200k in a few weeks. Its impossible."

While it is right for Hodgson to take responsibility - and some blame - for England's performance, the players will need to take a long hard look at theselves. Baker, again: "Absolutely disgraceful, #England. You useless over paid, over indulged mollycoddled shits. You are beyond shame. Disgrace to working people" and even ex-England forward Chris Waddle on BBC Radio 5 Live: "We haven't got leaders. They're all pampered, they're all [listening to] headphones and you can't get anything out of them."

And there lies the real rub. An England squad populated by some of the highest paid young men on the planet, with a manager earning a salary of £3.5 million a year, who went about Iceland with a patent lack of respect that came back to bite them on the arse. It was plain for all to see. I've seen it at Chelsea, when lower-tier cup opposition comes along, and the arriviste millionaires in blue play with such palpable disdain you almost end up willing them to lose, not that, on last season's evidence, that would deliver the slap to the chops that was warranted.

Iceland may have been a team drawn from a national population of just 330,000, but they played with determination, discipline and a complete absence of fear when hitting England on the break. And look what happened when they did. But why should they have fear at all? Only in England do we have this view that our footballers are rarified beings, that somehow these young men have ascended the rest of us, simply because they are in their early 20s and driving cars that you or I wouldn't ever be able to afford in a lifetime. That's not a statement of material envy, but a reflection on how England's so-called elite managed to look worse than average against a team managed by a part-time dentist, who took the game to England and were rewarded for it.

So, the inevitable: what next? I've been here before. You've been here before. We've all been here before. We've tried different managers, different nationalities of managers, different coaching combinations, different 'grass roots' initiatives, you name it, England and the English FA have tried it to no avail. This lack of a plan is also informing the suggestions coming forth for Hodgson's replacement. It's a list that includes both the obvious and the just-thought-of random: Gareth Southgate (because he coached the Under 21s so...er...it's his turn); Alan Pardew (because it's his turn to); Steve Bruce (because he may be available); Arsène Wenger (because some people don't really take these things seriously).

Whoever gets the job - and I think I'm even on the list, given the number of possibilities so far explored - the one quality I implore them to apply to their charges is a little humility. England needs a manager prepared to tell the players "Look lads, face facts. They're just as good as you. They may not walk into games clutching their Louis Vuitton washbags like you, with an army of flunkies carrying their luggage for them, as yours do, but they'll match you out there, player for player. What's going to be your reaction to that?". Because up until now, I've not seen much evidence of any of that.

How Manchester United became the club I used to hate

Earlier in this football season it became something of a repeat chore, most Mondays, to have a whinge at yet another calamitous performance during the weekend by Chelsea in their supposed defence of the Premier League title. It was a run which took them to just a point above the dropzone in December, leading to José Mourinho getting sacked and Guus Hiddink coming in to steady the ship with his grandfatherly light touch.

But on this particular Monday I'm not in the least bit bothered by Chelsea's form, or the fact they will end the season in mid-table mediocrity, or even that on Saturday they lost - for the first time in Hiddink's second spell at the club - to the team they played on the opening day of the season, resulting in a lot of harumphing, a doctor getting demoted, and the team diving into the steep decline that then followed.

No, this week's reappearance of the Monday Moan is about Manchester United, a club I have traditionally had little time for simply because we football fans are by nature tribal, that it's either your team or their team - it's that black and white - and Manchester United have always been the wrong tribe. Actually, the moan is specifically about the current Manchester United manager.

Yesterday, when asked by a reporter clearly more interested in sensation than news reporting whether Louis van Gaal regretted turning down an offer to manage Tottenham in 2014, the archly pompous Dutchman said: "I'm sorry for Tottenham but Manchester United is a bigger club," adding with customary arrogance and more than a drop of acid (though with some justification), "It is a little bit pathetic you asked that. It's easy to ask that but, ok, you enjoy yourself."

There is a reason why I have a dislike for Manchester United. And it is a dislike forged in nothing more than profound, unabated and prolonged envy. They have won 20 league titles, more than any other club in English history, 11 FA Cups, four League Cups, three European Cups, one European Cup Winners' Cup, a UEFA Super Cup, an Intercontinental Cup and a FIFA Club World Cup. Two years ago they were the world's second highest-earning club, with an annual revenue of Eur 518 million, and last year were rated the world's third most valuable club, worth slightly shy of $2 billion. They are still the world's most lucrative football brand, and "Bobby Moore" is still (along with "Benny Hill and "Mr. Bean") a universal cypher to striking up conversation around the world.

So van Gaal was absolutely right in saying that: "The challenge was bigger for me at Manchester United and shall always be bigger" because all that reputation is currently straining on his shoulders. The thing is, though, to come out with that on a day when United were so roundly beaten 3-0 by Spurs, and managed to upset everyone's equilibrium at White Hart Lane by the club bus arriving late because it had taken two hours to drive just eight miles from their central London hotel, is a demonstration of a brand of arrogance that van Gaal alone appears to have adopted without any justification for doing so.

The Man United of yore wasn't immune to embarassments, but somehow, even their journey to Tottenham yesterday seemed indicative of their season and, perhaps cruelly, of van Gaal's tenure, too. This is a club still shivvering in the cold shadow of Sir Alex Ferguson's seemingly unassailable 26-year reign. The hapless David Moyes was always going to be in receipt of a poisoned chalice when he took over. But when van Gaal replaced him in 2014, it would be reasonable to assume, given his history, that some semblance of normality would return to Old Trafford. But it hasn't, and after two years in charge - these days, a generous amount of time, even for a club in transition - van Gaal still hasn't restored Manchester United to the team that, as an opposing fan, you dreaded playing.

Yes, I admit, that I would wake up on the morning of league or cup fixtures between Chelsea and Manchester United with very real fear in my stomach. 22 years on I'm still scarred by the 4-0 mauling they gave us at Wembley in the FA Cup Final of 1994. For most of the 1990s we watched Manchester United behind our fingers. They had The Squad - strikers, the midfield, defenders, the goalkeeper, even the stadium, by which everyone else had to aspire. And they had the manager. Today?

I don't buy that van Gaal is still rebuilding. True, Ferguson left them in a lesser state than people will readily admit, but he hardly retired with the club he'd built in any serious disrepair, and certainly not that it could capitulate so poorly as they did in the space of a six minutes against Spurs yesterday. True, they were dogged opposition in the first half, but then what gave way in the second? And why?

Sure, van Gaal is playing a very young team, but so was his counterpart, Pochettino. And yet while Spurs' youngsters have been playing with a verve and vigour matched only by their title rivals Leicester, United's kids still look wet behind the ears. As was once famously said, you probably can't win anything with kids. Ferguson won his titles with the right mix of youth and experience - the youngsters providing the spice, the veterans providing the guile.

Van Gaal is, then, far closer in character to Arsène Wenger. Both can display staggering daddy-knows-best arrogance. And both can suffer from acute myopia. The difference is that van Gaal, who parades about with that leather folio case looking more like a chartered quantity surveyor than the manager of one of the greatest football clubs in the sport's history, is sometimes so puffed up with pomposity that he forgets the legacy of which he is the current custodian.

It hasn't all been that bad this season for United. But when you look at the overall picture of their wins, draws and losses in all competitions, it is still nowhere near the United we used to fear and loathe in equal measure, with all the jibes about buying titles and the politics of envy that football fans used to throw at the club.

Van Gaal may well be on the right road to restoring that legacy, but on current form it will be a long time before the fear returns to opponents' eyes. And with Mourinho's PR machine maintaining his visibility (turning up like a fiendish sprite at football matches and even boxing fights just to say "I'm still here...!"), and the rumours, hints and suggestions about him fulfilling his clear desire to take over at United not abating, time is running out for van Gaal to serve credence to his assertion that he was the right man for the right job at the right club at the right time.

The North London derby - time for Arsenal to grow a pair

Football derbies rarely stand up to the hype and expectation, but then rivalries in football rarely actually deliver the goods when the teams involved actually meet. Tomorrow's encounter between Tottenham and Arsenal at White Hart Lane does, at least, come at a truly fascinating time for the Premier League, with Leicester City finding themselves unexpectedly in the "it's theirs to lose" position, with Spurs - who were hardly regarded as stalking horses back in August - holding something of the psychological upper ground over their near-neighbours Arsenal.

If, though, one expectation has come good, it's the manner with which Arsenal have frustrated yet again with their own shortcomings. In August we were - as is tradition - entertained with predictions that this would "definitely" be their season, and that Arsène Wenger's signing of Petr Čech was a masterstroke (though now he's out for the next three or four weeks with a calf injury, perhaps less so). And, yes, the fact that they're still in-principle challenging for the title pays certain lip service to that general belief.

But then, to anyone with even basic perception, the facts remain as plain as the noses on our faces, that Arsenal are doing just what they always do - dozing off in January and then scraping into the Champions League.

Perhaps that's what Wenger wants? Perhaps he holds so much power around the Emirates Stadium (and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that he does) that the Arsenal hierarchy have no greater ambition than ensuring the turnstiles keep turning and that perpetual European qualification each season can be measured in terms of revenues, profits and a business model, rather than exciting the fans.

Because it can't be fun to start a season with so much self belief that predictably and, apparently, relentlessly, it comes unstuck once the Christmas decorations have been taken down. Arsenal fans surely can't be satisfied with the relative mediocrity of European qualification each season without anything really meaningful to show for it. And, clearly, they're not.

"I have never heard the Arsenal supporters as angry as they were at the Emirates on Wednesday night when their team lost at home to Swansea," Thierry Henry has written in The Sun. "They were less patient than I have ever known, booed one of the manager’s substitutions and groaned every time a pass went astray or a tackle was lost. The stick that Arsene Wenger has been getting is not personal. People judge what they are seeing, although some maybe go too far in the way they express their unhappiness."

Wenger has hit back with a statement that reflects both his perceived lack of passion and his legendary myopia: "Thierry Henry has his opinions. He has not found the measurement of the fans' angriness, of 60,000 people, straight away - because he sits in the best seats of the stadium."

I'm not going to trot out the old 'boring Arsenal' trope because they are, or should be, better than that. But you can't help pointing the finger at Wenger's demeanour as the reason for Arsenal's 'just so' record in recent seasons.

I'm sure any of the Premier League's perennial strugglers would love to have Arsenal's problems, but even I find myself exasperated at Wenger's apparent inability to deliver on the potential. He talks a lot about his team's mental strength, but when it comes to actually applying it, they fail. Look back over the 2007-8, 2010-11 and 2013-14 seasons, when Arsenal had the league's whip hand in the first few weeks of the new year. This season, as in those, history has repeated itself.

Even their remarkable 2-1, dying-seconds victory over Leicester on Valentine's Day should have been the spur to climb to the very top and make camp. And, yet, they haven't won since and are now six points adrift of Claudio Ranieri's league leaders, and three points behind the North London rivals they meet tomorrow.

Football purists are drawn to Wenger because of his footballing intellect and the fact that he has clearly produced teams of elegance and impact. But that reputation is fading before our eyes and if we were to be honest, league positions and European competition oddly mask this fact. The gap between greatness and failure isn't much. Look how Chelsea went from all-conquering champions to relegation-threatened disappointments in the space of just three playing months, only to be picked up again as the Premier League's form side under Guus Hiddink.

This actually prompts comparison between Wenger and his bête noire, José Mourinho: because Chelsea's stunning demise from August to December was clearly the result of the wrong pyschology, attributable to Mourinho's own negativity. Wenger might have the same problem, albeit with a more attritional effect. Yesterday, Arsenal's Alexis Sánchez told US satellite broadcaster DirecTV: "With the players we have, I believe we can win the Premier League. However, sometimes we lack the hunger, the mentality that we are winning 1-0 when we go out on to the pitch. Sometimes we lack this hunger to believe that we can be champion." Isn't this exactly the malaise that befell Costa, Hazard, Fábregas and Co.?

Contrast that with Tottenham: 66/1 outsiders to win the Premier League title when the season began (Leicester, by the way, were 5000/1...) they were expected by several pundits to end the season no higher than 6th. That could still happen, of course, but Mauricio Pochettino has confounded the experts with his young side, one that still shows deficiencies, especially up front, but which has applied greater resillience and without all that much hyperbole, either. Moreover, he has brilliantly exploited the travails of Manchesters United and City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal - all of whom were predicted, in August, to complete the top five.

Compared with Wenger, there is an air of absolute reality about Pochettino. He is neither daunted by the challenge of tomorrow's derby, nor stoked up on hubris to take it for granted. "It’s not a decisive game," he says, "but it is important for us and for them." He knows that the points distribution between the top five can still change as the run-in looms, but his reaction to Wednesday's defeat to West Ham - a game that could have taken them top - contrasts with the blustering from Wenger.

As a Chelsea fan, I'm clearly conflicted as to whom, out of Spurs and Arsenal, I'd like to see win more. Which is why, like almost every football fan in England and, I believe elsewhere, I hope Leicester City go on and pull off the unprecedented. Nobody deserves the league title more out of any of the teams in sight of the prize, even if in the north-eastern part of London there remains a residual sense of entitlement.

As those of us in south-west London have had to concede, bloodlessly it has to be said, success is not only earned, but the effort requires the right mindset. If Arsenal still want to go for it - and there's nothing saying they can't - their manager needs to end the torturous pondering and instill in his team a sense of achievable achievement. And, to put it crudely, a pair of bollocks.