Chelsea are now without a win in the league from their last three matches following a humiliating 3-0 defeat at the hands of Arsenal.
The Blues’ defence capitulated once again in the absence of John Terry in a display which far outshone the nightmare 2015/16 season, as three first-half goals from Alexi Sanchez, Theo Walcott and Mesut Ozil condemned Chelsea to successive league defeats under Antonio Conte.
And though I was shocked with the performance I witnessed from Chelsea on Saturday evening, what I saw on Twitter shocked me even more.
Somehow, a number of Blues fans on Twitter were calling for Conte to be sacked as manager, suggesting he is the reason for Chelsea’s struggles against Swansea, Liverpool and Arsenal.
Firstly, have they not learnt that sacking managers early in the season and hiring ‘interim’ bosses until the end of the season doesn’t work; it never has.
All that does is ruin that manager’s opportunity to build something at a club and gloss over problems that lie beneath the surface until a new manager is brought in, and then the cycle repeats once the going gets tough under the new boss. Chelsea fans have seen it all before.
Secondly, Conte joined up with the squad for the first time in July after inheriting a side devoid of confidence and in a complete mess following last season. July!
Miracles do not happen overnight nor in the space of a few months. Conte took charge of a squad that needed to be rebuilt and refreshed. This was always going to be a ‘transitional’ season.
Now by no means does that give him or the players any excuse to turn in the sort of performance they did against Liverpool and Arsenal respectively, but calling for him to sacked already? Come on.
What more can the man do?
Ultimately, the board failed to land some of his initial transfer targets which left him with last season’s confidence-ridden squad, plus N’Golo Kante, Michy Batshuayi and the panic-buy signings of David Luiz and Marcos Alonso on deadline day.
And whilst Kante and Batshuayi were two of his initial targets, and therefore look settled after joining early on in the transfer window, Conte failed to land the likes of Kalidou Koulibaly, Radja Nainggolan and Leonardo Bonucci, all of whom were strenuously linked with the Blues during the summer.
Though they would not have been an instant fix to Chelsea’s problems, they would have provided Conte with the opportunity to ship some of the dead-weight in the squad out, and begin to implement his style and philosophy on a squad he would be happy with.
Instead, he’s left with Cahill and Branislav Ivanovic who appear to enjoy giving needless fouls away and losing the ball when they’re the last man; an erratic Luiz; Nemanja Matic (say no more) and a squad with no desire.
John Terry and Diego Costa are the exceptions to this, of course. However, we can’t expect Costa to produce something special every single appearance. And should we really be relying so heavily on our 35-year-old captain at the back?
I understand a share of the blame for Chelsea’s disappointing displays against Liverpool and Arsenal needs to be directed towards Conte as he is the manager, after all.
But when you compare our squad to what Jurgen Klopp and Arsene Wenger have available to them, the confidence in both squads and given that the former has had just over a year to build his and the latter an eternity, the result at the end of the day is hardly surprising when we take the Chelsea tinted glasses off.
Winning the league this season was always out of the question, given the calibre of the players our rivals have acquired this summer.
The main focus for Conte was, as previously mentioned, rebuilding a team – a squad.
And whilst the defeats suffered in our previous two matches are considerably hard to take given how Chelsea usually fare much better in said matches, those calling for Conte to be axed purely as a result of them need to look at the bigger picture. Or just the one below…
…because when Conte gets the squad back to where we were, scenes like the one above will become a regular feature at Stamford Bridge and in stadiums all over England, I’m sure.
Just give the man a chance.
