The Conte Thread

[Magic Lamps 11,692]

6 minutes ago, OneMoSalah said:

Aye so it took one game after 13 STRAIGHT wins for people to suggest 1) we need a new system 2) Conte will fail 3) Azpi is not a CB 4) we've not shown any progress... need I go on? Quite embarrassing. One game doesn't win or lose you a championship in January. We will definitely finish top 4 and I'd be very surprised if anybody thought that we'd achieve that this year based on last season. 

Nope. The cracks have been there all the time with people on this forum pointing them out continuously. Just visit the Alonso, Cahill, Matic and match threads. Off this is criticising on a high level but it is still allowed. 

Also

1) 433 is hardly a new system. But we might ponder changing the formation to add some tactical flexibility. No one suggested we have to adapt to something completely different.

2) no idea who said that. Sure he will fail at some point. Might be this season or in 5 years. But who knows...

3) Azpi is no CB and people here insisted that since the very beginning of 343. He also is no lb and no wing back. But he is too good to leave him out.

4) I thought that was irony by whoever posted that.clearly we have shown progress esp in games against minor opposition. Though I expected more from us today and I guess I am not the only one.

 

Finally ofc we should be top 4. We got the 3rd best squad in the league, 4 absolute world class players and loads of decent ones. We got the 3rd highest budget and world class facilities, a huge brand etc. We should be top 4 consistently without doing an Arsenal and celebrating top four like a trophy. That is the bare minimum you should expect from us no matter what kind of toxic atmosphere killed us last season.

 

[OneMoSalah 8,887]

1 minute ago, Magic Lamps said:

Nope. The cracks have been there all the time with people on this forum pointing them out continuously. Just visit the Alonso, Cahill, Matic and match threads. Off this is criticising on a high level but it is still allowed. 

Also

1) 433 is hardly a new system. But we might ponder changing the formation to add some tactical flexibility. No one suggested we have to adapt to something completely different.

2) no idea who said that. Sure he will fail at some point. Might be this season or in 5 years. But who knows...

3) Azpi is no CB and people here insisted that since the very beginning of 343. He also is no lb and no wing back. But he is too good to leave him out.

4) I thought that was irony by whoever posted that.clearly we have shown progress esp in games against minor opposition. Though I expected more from us today and I guess I am not the only one.

 

Finally ofc we should be top 4. We got the 3rd best squad in the league, 4 absolute world class players and loads of decent ones. We got the 3rd highest budget and world class facilities, a huge brand etc. We should be top 4 consistently without doing an Arsenal and celebrating top four like a trophy. That is the bare minimum you should expect from us no matter what kind of toxic atmosphere killed us last season.

 

We got humiliated at Arsenal and Liverpool (score line wasn't exactly flattering but we were really poor until 75th minute) playing with 433, I don't think it's right for us or Conte would never have changed it.

I would hardly call them major cracks, there is no perfect team with a perfect system, the best team I have ever seen which is Barca under Pep or Spain couldn't defend against long balls. We struggled with pressing. It's a work in progress, to ditch 343 would be stupid because we've seen more improvement with it than anybody expected including myself. It's something that we need to keep using and keep adding players to, competition/a better player in for Alonso and Moses wouldn't go  amiss or a creative midfielder but that will come. If you get in a new manager of Conte's calibre let him work, he switched the formation after a few games and we went from top 4 contenders to title favourites without any major additions bar Luiz, Kante and Alonso. Imagine if he can get other players in that could fit in this team, to bring it up a level like Kante has done and perhaps even Luiz has done.

Everybody forgets where we were last season, regardless of winning the league the previous year or not, because even in the last 6 months before we were confirmed champions we were piss poor a lot of the time. 

Axpilicueta has played some of his best football for us at CB. So people who criticized him regarding today's performance or whatever must have not been watching the last 3 months because he's been our best defender in my eyes.

[petre.ispirescu 4,928]

What a journey this has been, enjoyed every bit of it. We was bound to this kind of result at some point, but if there is someone at the club that has earned the right to it then it's this wonderful manager we now have in charge.

No signs of improvement?! Oh give me a break. 13 on the trot and the 14th match was away at a very, very good Tottenham side and we've managed to limit them to only two shots on target. A team that would normally dominate opponents with ease at home and create tons of chances to score.

Had Hazard not missed them two sitters then probably the drama queens would still be under their rocks now. It was a pretty even game in which probably Chelsea could have got a better result, but by no means it was that bad as some of you make it sound.

Chelsea could open an eight point gap next round when Liverpool play United away and City visit Everton. We then play Hull at home where the three points should be an easy task, then Liverpool away and Arsenal at home. Take 8-10 points from this four matches and title is pretty much ours to lose. We'd be left with only two big matches until the end of the season, both against the Manchester clubs in April.

Personally I can't see anyone past Chelsea to the league title. If we keep the concentration levels high, which I know we will given our manager in charge, then Chelsea should win it. 

[Alabama 1,992]

The atmosphere right is quite abysmal...words are not enough to quantify or describe how Conte has been a revelation to the team and d club entirely...bearing in mind most of his transfer target were not gotten at the end of the day...barring the high pressure and intensity we failed to cope with we were okay yesterday cos of the number of chances we limited them to...IMO we even cope better and fair better than City when they visited WHL...13wins in a row different shapes formation conditions we were subjected to in the 13 winning run yet we came out triumphant and won d matches gallantly...yet some fellas clamouring we didn't improve under him...absolute hypocrisy...m done here...

[kellzfresh 7,229]

7 hours ago, Blue-in-me-Veins said:

James York had a very good stat highlighting how night and day we are vs the top 6 and the rest. 

But if you look at today's result, we broke that trend. 

Today's match was not horrific. A la Liverpool/Arsenal. Spurs were the better team, no doubt, but they didn't really "destroy us". What today's match does show, is that, much like we've been ruthless towards other clubs, Spurs were ruthless when they created their chances. Look at the Xg map. 

What annoyed me the most about today was just the abjectness of the wingbacks in Alonso/Moses. They really really let us down today. Failed to keep possesion/win their battles. Alonso  kept getting beat 1v1 vs any body he faced, and Moses played Alli onside for their first goal, and offered very little in attack until we went 2-0 down. 

 

Exactly. This explains it perfectly. Conte didn't do well by taking longer to bring on fabregas, but the individual performances of our players were shocking. Kante, Luiz, Pedro, Moses, Alonso, and even Azpi were terrible. None of them could complete a pass all game, they were so bad under pressure.. Tottenham just matched us in formation and dominated us in midfield with better combination of dembele and wayanma (who had hazard in his pocket) while rose and walker dominated us on the wings against terrible Alonso and Moses on the other side. 

The individual quality of the tottenham players showed over us. While hazard is the 2nd best dribbler in Europe, he's normal in finishing and Alli got two chances and scored, hazard bottled his two chances. Like I said before, once hazard ain't dribbling well we struggle and wayanma hustled him all game.

Conte has been protecting the poor technical quality of our players with his tactics but Tottenham matched us with the same style of play, and they had the better back three who are all one on one defenders, better wingbacks who are both fast and can beat their man one on one and midfield duo who are fantastic under pressure compared to Matic/kante and it showed.

[manpe 10,861]

3 hours ago, OneMoSalah said:

Aye so it took one game after 13 STRAIGHT wins for people to suggest 1) we need a new system 2) Conte will fail 3) Azpi is not a CB 4) we've not shown any progress... need I go on? Quite embarrassing. One game doesn't win or lose you a championship in January. We will definitely finish top 4 and I'd be very surprised if anybody thought that we'd achieve that this year based on last season. 

Chill, number 2 and 4 were obviously sarcastic jokes, written by @Leif. Need I say more? And claiming Azpi not to be a CB and suggesting a system change are all valid discussions, you may not agree with those statements, but they are valid points of discussion for an internet forum.

 

8 hours ago, MrExcalibur100 said:

Let's not forget how the board failed him last summer, the same board that is now singing his praises. Our transfer window was an utter failure. He got none of his targets.

Kante, Alonso.

[Henrique 9,133]

8 hours ago, OneMoSalah said:

Aye so it took one game after 13 STRAIGHT wins for people to suggest 1) we need a new system 2) Conte will fail 3) Azpi is not a CB 4) we've not shown any progress... need I go on? Quite embarrassing. One game doesn't win or lose you a championship in January. We will definitely finish top 4 and I'd be very surprised if anybody thought that we'd achieve that this year based on last season. 

OMFG.

What is embarrassing is saying Azpi  suddenly became a CB after playing 13 games in that position as a 27 years old player. Azpi is not even a LB, he is a RB playing out of position as a CB because Conte didn't have enough CBs available when he decided to play with 3 CBs, but didn't become a CB because the team won 13 straight games while he was playing in that position, he was always a temporary fix. So people are not "suggesting" Azpi is not a CB, they are stating a fact.

[Fernando 6,586]

7 minutes ago, Henrique said:

OMFG.

What is embarrassing is saying Azpi  suddenly became a CB after playing 13 games in that position as a 27 years old player. Azpi is not even a LB, he is a RB playing out of position as a CB because Conte didn't have enough CBs available when he decided to play with 3 CBs, but didn't become a CB because the team won 13 straight games while he was playing in that position, he was always a temporary fix. So people are not "suggesting" Azpi is not a CB, they are stating a fact.

Just like Stones is not a CB because he sucks right?

Listen you need to take a pool of games to come to conclusion. You can't just take one game and make up your opinion. 

If you look at the past 10 games has he done good as a CB or bad?

Then that's the answer. 

[Cosmin 2,484]

13 hours ago, Leif said:

We will clearly fail under him, we have shown no signs of progress 

#BringMouBack

[Adnane 1,101]

We sacked the special one for this...

The board should be ashamed.

#BringMouBack #ConteOut 

[BoyBlue96 990]

Some of our fans make it very easy for other team's fans to call all of us plastic. My god some of our fans are really embarrassing. 

Not pointing my finger at some of our users here but also on Twitter, these "popular" Chelsea fan twitter account with the over a thousand followers coming up with "Uh, Conte did have a poor result in Europe with Juve...13 wins are great but still think we should've went for Simeone...Uh"

Do these people really think we were going to win all our games this season? Ridiculous. Conte is working with players he doesn't even wanted to work with in the first place and look what he did. We are still 5 points clear. Arsenal bottled it against the Cherries, Liverpool typically bottled it against fucking Sunderland (and their fans are the most optimistic about their chances now after our Spurs defeat LOL) and those two will have many more fuck ups, because it's in their DNA. City is inconsistent, Spurs is Spurs and United is in a top 4 race as Mou already said.

 

We still need to go to Anfield. Match of the year for the Scousers to come closer to us. They will give 150% as they always give in big games and maybe even more againstus. Play there as yesterday and Klopp will SCHPÄNK us.
Also, Old Trafford where Mourinhochester United wants to take revenge on us for that embarrassing 4-0 loss against us on the Bridhe. And it's also Chelsea vs Mourinho so he fires the match up even more.
Everton at Goodison Park. Difficult away game as always and they also give their all for that 5-0 beating we gave them.
Then there is still Arsenal and City at the Bridge and many other away games who can turn difficult to us. Next Premier League game is Leicester at the King Power. It's not going to be easy.

This is the Premier League. 5 points clear in this League is absolutely nothing. It's enough for a Juventus in the Serie A, Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga or a Laurent Blanc PSG in Ligue 1 but not for Chelsea. Not for 'Pool or Arsenal. For no one. And the reason is that we have much more competition in this League. Difficult opponents. But also, because teams like Juventus and Bayern Munich do have MUCH better players than we do.

On to Leicester at the King Power stadium. A MUST win. We can't fuck up there like City did. We need to get those 3 points to stay ahead. Those 5 points clear are like snow in the sun: gone before you know it. 

 

Dedicating my avatar from now on to the one and only Johan Lokhorst. An non-football ex-director at the KNVB (Dutch FA) who said the legendary saying last year when the Dutch national team was going to miss out on the EURO 2016:

We must put everything on the fact that from now on, we have to win every single game.

[AlesJuve 264]

Seeing calendar January is the month that can give you the victory of PL:

Leicester (14 january),Liverpool (31 january) and Arsenal (February 4)

If you can get at least 7 points in these 3 games Chelsea will put a mortgage on PL.Conte's team rarely lose points against "small" team maybe some draw but not defeat.Direct clashes in April with MU and City might be irrelevant for purposes of the rankings

[El P. 1,354]

I'm still very optimistic, but if we win the title at the end of a season, it will be because of our remarkable and out-of-this-world fight, focus, spirit, etc brought by Conte and followed by players. NOT as a product of our insane team and player quality. And that is the hardest way - fighting every game for a win, most frequently till last minutes, being dominated in the middle of field in big games and still winning on counter attacks.

From what I saw, we only dominated Man United in the middle, speaking about big teams. With Spurs in first game we were so-so and terrible until half time and Pedros' perfectly timed wonder-strike which gave us a lift; City dominated us totally, Arsenal and slightly Liverpool too (not with 3-4-3 though), and now Spurs slightly dominated. We lack technically gifted players in middle, our midfield just cannot cope with big boys and we cannot always rely on counter-attacks, because some teams know how to defend.

I would kill for one player in mold of Dembele for our middle, from cheaper options. Of course Verratti, Vidal or some other world-class player will do, but even Dembele will be ok. In place of Matić, or even maaaybe Kante in some games, depends of who we bring. It would really improve our play and make all the things a lot easier. Upgrade on Alonso/Cahill or even Moses is needed, too, anyone of them. Right AM too, Pedro disappeared against Spurs, or anyone with big muscles, actually. And don't give me this "we don't need new players, let's wait until summer" crap. We are now having best chance in years to win a league, and we will need all help available. We won't have chance like this often, some of Manchesters, Liverpool or even Spurs could be world beaters next year. Time is now, let's win this shit!

Also, I was totally for a new players even before this Spurs game, of course. They actually gave everyone of our fans, who thought that this team is even close to Drogba-Lampard-Terry-Cole-Čech team, a good reality-check.

Hard work is great, fighting is great, but let's bring some quality reinforcements!

[Ledg 643]

Our performances have gone down during the festive period because of our thin squad.

Now that is over and we'll be back in a month to the one week per game schedule I think we'll be slightly better. Not spectacular but good enough to get the job done.

The record also played a part in my eyes and from a lot Juve supporters Conte seem obsessed with these kind of things. They say he basically sacrificed a Europa league final in their own stadium just to trash Sassuolo for some kind of Seria A record (most points or undefeated I'm not so sure).

Losing yesterday was bound to happen someday. It sucks it was against Spurs but better than let's say versus Liverpool just days before a game against Arsenal.

We're still in the driver's seat and one loss doesn't change that. If we continue our form against the sides outside top 6 for the second half of the season it won't matter that much if we loses some points at the end of this month.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Polo7 3,496]

1 hour ago, Ledgi said:

Our performances have gone down during the festive period because of our thin squad.

Now that is over and we'll be back in a month to the one week per game schedule I think we'll be slightly better. Not spectacular but good enough to get the job done.

The record also played a part in my eyes and from a lot Juve supporters Conte seem obsessed with these kind of things. They say he basically sacrificed a Europa league final in their own stadium just to trash Sassuolo for some kind of Seria A record (most points or undefeated I'm not so sure).

Losing yesterday was bound to happen someday. It sucks it was against Spurs but better than let's say versus Liverpool just days before a game against Arsenal.

We're still in the driver's seat and one loss doesn't change that. If we continue our form against the sides outside top 6 for the second half of the season it won't matter that much if we loses some points at the end of this month.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You reading my mind??!!

great post!

[Unionjack 7,531]

Yes we are very thin and dont have that strong of a bench to rely on neither.

Another thing that worries meis Ive read that Conte is 'wary' of having 8 HG players out of the 25 allowed  Right now we have 6. BUT with rumours of Bego going on loan, JT out of here it leaves us with 4.

I dont quite understand the under 21 suppliment but seems we rely on them somewhat.  RLC,Tomori,Aina,Solanke plus Kenedy/Musonda training with 1st team right now.

Well we are pretty sure those under 21s wont see tyhe ball wearing blue - also RLC off on loan none too soon So we are desperately short of HG players.

So WTF we gonna do guys?

[Tomo 21,751]

3 hours ago, El P. said:

I'm still very optimistic, but if we win the title at the end of a season, it will be because of our remarkable and out-of-this-world fight, focus, spirit, etc brought by Conte and followed by players. NOT as a product of our insane team and player quality. And that is the hardest way - fighting every game for a win, most frequently till last minutes, being dominated in the middle of field in big games and still winning on counter attacks.

From what I saw, we only dominated Man United in the middle, speaking about big teams. With Spurs in first game we were so-so and terrible until half time and Pedros' perfectly timed wonder-strike which gave us a lift; City dominated us totally, Arsenal and slightly Liverpool too (not with 3-4-3 though), and now Spurs slightly dominated. We lack technically gifted players in middle, our midfield just cannot cope with big boys and we cannot always rely on counter-attacks, because some teams know how to defend.

I would kill for one player in mold of Dembele for our middle, from cheaper options. Of course Verratti, Vidal or some other world-class player will do, but even Dembele will be ok. In place of Matić, or even maaaybe Kante in some games, depends of who we bring. It would really improve our play and make all the things a lot easier. Upgrade on Alonso/Cahill or even Moses is needed, too, anyone of them. Right AM too, Pedro disappeared against Spurs, or anyone with big muscles, actually. And don't give me this "we don't need new players, let's wait until summer" crap. We are now having best chance in years to win a league, and we will need all help available. We won't have chance like this often, some of Manchesters, Liverpool or even Spurs could be world beaters next year. Time is now, let's win this shit!

Also, I was totally for a new players even before this Spurs game, of course. They actually gave everyone of our fans, who thought that this team is even close to Drogba-Lampard-Terry-Cole-Čech team, a good reality-check.

Hard work is great, fighting is great, but let's bring some quality reinforcements!

That team are on another level due to the support players, the actual spine of the sides is closer than people think.  If we keep evolving in the windows we have the potential to match our 04-10 squads.

[El P. 1,354]

5 minutes ago, Tomo said:

That team are on another level due to the support players, the actual spine of the sides is closer than people think.  If we keep evolving in the windows we have the potential to match our 04-10 squads.

Spine of Costa-Hazard-Kante-Azpi-Courtois is great, I agree!

[BoyBlue96 990]

Doubt Antonio is going to be happy with this news.

[kellzfresh 7,229]

Tottenham's tactics

1.) Get the ball to Walker and Eriksen and create an overload with Alonso
2.) Force Cahill to come across to help
3.) Make sure David Luiz is busy with Kane
4.) Dele Alli makes a forward run to get on the end of crosses vs Azpi and Moses

We had no answer…

We have Cahill who was too slow to close down erikson, while walker was occupying Alonso, hazard can't come back to defend that space Cahill leaves as well as Willian/Pedro  on the right and combined with an easy person to beat in the air in Azpilicueta, this is a weakness. Mancity did it with DeBruyne and now tottenham with erikson. 

If we're not going to get into the market and improve on the quality of our wide players and central midfielders, we have to play 3-5-2 against the big teams from now on. The third midfielder will cover that space where Cahill doesn't like closing down the diagonal crosser and hazard doesn't cover that space effectively.

Thankfully tottenham scored us from two similar goals so Conte should spot that obvious weakness before our big games against liverpool and Arsenal. Giroud will eat Azpi alive if ozil is allowed to put early diagonal crosses from the Alonso-cahill-matic triangle.