Antonio Conte does not score highly on trusting his Chelsea strikers
IT was Jimmy Greaves — the scorer of 132 goals in 169 appearances for a very average Chelsea team — who put it best.
He was often accused of being a player who ‘just scored goals’.
The allegation was false but Greaves would often play along with it, saying: “I’ll accept that — until they decide to settle the outcome of a football match on the basis of something other than ‘just scoring goals’.”
What Greaves did; what Diego Costa did and what Alvaro Morata still does for Chelsea is the single most important and difficult task in football by a country mile.
And the deeper the game gets into a morass of impenetrable statistics, the more that simple truth seems to get lost.
But it’s why, in the summer of last year, Crystal Palace agreed a fee of £31.6million to take Michy Batshuayi from Marseille — causing the world to splutter simultaneously.
And it’s why Chelsea then gazumped them and signed Batshuayi as a £33m understudy.
The Belgian is a goalscorer — and boy how Palace could do with one of those right now.
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OK, he’s not as deadly as Costa or Morata and certainly not Greaves, but he’s scored consistently for Standard Liege, Marseille and Belgium, as well as 14 in 35 appearances for Chelsea, the vast majority off the bench.
He scored the one which clinched the title for Chelsea last May; the one which earned a hugely-significant Champions League victory at Atletico Madrid last week; and a League Cup hat-trick against Nottingham Forest the week before that.
Yet when Morata pulled up lame during the first half of Saturday’s six-pointer with Manchester City, manager Antonio Conte replaced his centre-forward with winger Willian and left Batshuayi on the bench for a further 38 minutes, until Chelsea were over-run and trailing.
The most obvious theory is that Conte simply doesn’t fancy Batshuayi — but then, as the player has said, if the Italian didn’t trust him, wouldn’t the club have off-loaded him this summer?
It sometimes seems as though Conte doesn’t have a whole lot of trust in centre-forwards as a breed. He made it obvious that he felt Costa wasn’t worth the hassle, despite the old anti-hero finishing as Chelsea’s top-scorer in two title-winning campaigns.
Conte is a gifted coach — as confirmed by last season’s title success and this season’s outstanding away form.
He does the archetypal Italian defensive masterclass outstandingly — as exemplified by Chelsea’s Wembley win over Tottenham in August.
And Conte’s title defence is shaping up better than the disastrous attempts overseen by Jose Mourinho or Claudio Ranieri over the past two seasons.
But there has been a lack of belief about Conte, ever since pre-season, which has gripped his players when they’ve been expected to make the running in home matches.
The opener against Burnley — when Morata was weirdly benched and Batshuayi started — was a car crash; a goalless draw with a crisis-torn Arsenal was desperately disappointing and the manner of the defeat by City was distinctly troubling.
Because when you’re the champions of England and you’ve shelled out almost £200m (£90m net) in the summer, you might expect to be able to take a Premier League game by the scruff of the neck.
Of course, both Manchester clubs — inspired by Chelsea rejects Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku — have spent even more and, of course, that should make them favourites.
But Conte has been too defeatist about City and United, too keen to get his excuses in first and, when faced with City at the Bridge, too keen to settle for a point, only to end up with nothing.
Had he believed in Chelsea’s ability to defeat City, he’d have sent on a centre-forward when Morata was injured.
When he didn’t, his players must have known he didn’t believe.
Now that the Spaniard’s lay-off with a hamstring injury looks like being lengthy, Conte will need to show some trust in a squad which might not be as strong as he’d like, but should be at least as strong as last season’s.
And he will need to start believing in the proven match-winner in his ranks.
Because while football may be ‘a funny old game’ — as someone once said — it really isn’t as peculiar as all that.
It's a pity England can't unearth more like Cole
WITH his Los Angeles Galaxy side having failed to make the Major League Soccer play-offs, 36-year-old Ashley Cole is likely to play his final game of professional football this month.
Cole was one of very few English players over the past 40 years who, at his peak, might have been included in a World XI.
He won 107 caps, a Champions League, a Europa League, three Premier League titles and a record seven FA Cups, yet his likely retirement will receive barely a mention.
Why? Because Cole was once too honest about his wage demands then fell out of love with a pop-star wife with an effective publicist.
Cole was very good at football and not very good at PR. It could be argued that England need a few more men with similar priorities.
Wal for nothing
SO Theo Walcott is preparing to negotiate a new contract with Arsenal.
You might think: ‘Is it really that long since he finished negotiating the last one?’
And you might wonder: ‘What has he achieved since then?’
You might also assume: ‘We’re going to be reading an awful lot about this very rich young man bidding to become an awful lot richer on the basis of not very much, aren’t we?’
And do you know what, you might well be right.
Pep's bit on the snide
PEP GUARDIOLA was not actually being snidey when he referred to Tottenham as ‘the Harry Kane team’.
The Manchester City boss was actually trying to laud the prolific striker rather than denigrate his Spurs team-mates with his comments over the weekend.
But the reason why so many people assumed he was being snidey, was that Guardiola seems to be snidey most times he opens his mouth.
Mo can Stoke up Ashes fire
OF course Ben Stokes’ likely absence from The Ashes tour is a blow to England’s hopes.
But it may not necessarily turn out to be the terminal one that many cricket fans assume it inevitably will.
After all, it’s not as if England don’t have another six-hitting, wicket-taking, box-office all-rounder to take with them when they fly out to Australia at the end of this month.
And Moeen Ali also seems to possess a distinct advantage in being teetotal.
Fifa's video on the blink
SO, Fifa may ditch their plan for Video Assistant Referees at next summer’s World Cup after extensive trials suggested the system causes more rows than it solves.
It’s almost as if the people who screamed “video technology!” every time a referee made a bad decision had never thought about how it might actually work.
Snub Maj of the Day
IF Arsenal v Liverpool really is staged at 4pm on Christmas Eve, then boycott it.
Don’t go or watch it on TV. Let them know they’ve gone too far, so they won’t do it again.
Otherwise they’ll kick off at 3pm on Christmas Day next year, in a direct attempt to nobble the Queen’s ratings.