Chelsea have lifted three Premier Leagues, three FA Cups and a Champions League since Tottenham last won anything… so why would Antonio Conte say he wants to be more like them?
ANTONIO CONTE will today no doubt be toasting victory over Tottenham as the rest of football suddenly declares the crisis over at Chelsea after a ‘week from hell’.
Turn up with half a team missing against one of your fiercest rivals - tick.
Battle as if your very lives depend on it - tick.
Grab a precious away win inflicting serious psychological damage on the opposition - tick.
Perhaps Conte does actually know a thing or two about managing a football club after all. Except for one big error of judgement.
Just why does the Italian claim Chelsea need to be more like Spurs?
24 hours before kick off at Wembley, Conte lost his head momentarily and declared that Chelsea should model themselves on a team which hasn’t won a major cup since 2008.
Conte went on to add that Tottenham have had "four years" to build the team which went all Icarus when it got close to winning the Premier League title not once but twice in a row.
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The Italian says that Chelsea need that kind of time to construct their own dynamic dynasty because patience is the key.
Not so. After all it was Conte who rolled up at Chelsea last year and inherited a disillusioned, divided squad that really had endured a genuine crisis with two managers in one season and missing out on European football altogether.
It was their worst season in Premier League history.
Less than 12 months later, the players were spraying champagne around the dressing room at West Brom and threatening journalists with a fire extinguisher having completed the biggest turnaround in football history.
Makes Usain Bolt look like a snail having a duvet day.
Chelsea’s not about laying foundations, building from the bottom only to lose. It’s gung-ho football.
Stack ‘em high and sell ‘em quick - look how they run the academy and the loan system for further proof.
Cone doesn’t need to copy Mauricio Pochettino’s or Daniel Levy’s business model... and he certainly doesn’t need to launch a full-scale pursuit for Danny Rose.
Chelsea seem keen and Rose keener to try to secure the kind of dramatic cross-London transfer that would shake up football in the capital.
Rose is a fine, player, a good athlete and an England international.
But Chelsea’s current left back Marcos Alonso is every bit his equal. Look at the numbers from his incredible but unsurprising performance yesterday:
100 per cent shot accuracy, 100 per cent tackles won, 100 per cent take-ons completed, six clearances, two goals...
Even at a glance, those stats make Alonso look like a one man team. Even better, the Spaniard’s best mate is a bullfighter.
Incidentally, Chelsea have won three league titles, three FA Cups, a League Cup and the Champions League since Spurs last lifted a pot of any significance.
You can see why Conte’s jealous.