Antonio Conte is going nowhere. Not yet, anyway.
For now at least, keep those Guud Hiddink jokes to yourselves.
Reports prior to Chelsea’s 4-1 hammering at Watford on Monday night had suggested Conte would be sacked if his side failed to get the right result. Although the result was very clearly not the right one, it’s now being reported by the BBC that the Italian won’t be given the boot. Yet.
Chelsea, not helped by the first-half sending off of Tiemoue Bakayoko, went behind in the first half to a Troy Deeney penalty. Although Eden Hazard’s equaliser looked to have salvaged them an unlikely draw, late goals from Daryl Janmaat, Gerard Deulofeu and Roberto Pereyra sent them to their second league defeat on the spin.
Given the manner of their performance, you might mistakenly believe Conte would summon his players to the Chelsea training ground at the crack of dawn the next day as punishment. In actual fact, the former Juventus and Italy boss has taken a different approach.
According to the BBC, his players were not asked to report for training on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or even Thursday. Nope, instead, Conte deemed it appropriate to ‘punish’ his players with three days off, enough time for them to “look at themselves in the mirror”, as he put it after the game.
With a Champions League double-header against Barcelona and trips to both Manchester clubs on the horizon, Chelsea’s players might be in for plenty more reflection time if they don’t improve their form quickly.
