The grudge match

Ever since he became Chelsea manager, one of the main ambitions of Antonio Conte has been to go out of his way to prove to the powers that be at Stamford Bridge as well as the fans is that he is a better manager than the sacked Jose Mourinho. His claim was given a helping hand when he won the Premiership on his debut season, but the bubble burst when he realised Mourinho did the same during his first love affair with the West London club when he took over from dead man walking, Claudio Ranieri.

Conte must have the feeling that his achievements at Chelsea are being weighed against Mourinho’s, that is why he tries to use every opportunity to put down his predecessor.

At the start of the season, he came out with a public statement saying “don’t let us have a Mourinho season“, in reference to the shabby title defence Chelsea had that led to the Portuguese’s sack.

Although Chelsea are not playing as badly as they did during the “Mourinho season,” things are not so much better. There are rumours that Conte is losing the dressing room, there are rumours that players are sending text messages to Steve Holland, a former coach at Chelsea, complaining about Conte’s training methods. They may be rumours, but if you look at Conte’s general body language since the beginning of the season, if you check out the players’ body language, especially in the 3-0 loss to Roma in the Champions League, you need no prophet telling you all is not well at Stamford Bridge.

However, whatever bad blood that exists between Conte and his players will be put to one side this Sunday. Public enemy number one is coming to town.

Jose Mourinho, the man who enjoys equal measure of love and hate at Chelsea will be bringing his Manchester United players to the Bridge. There have been a lot of arguments and disagreements at Chelsea lately, but if there is one thing everybody in the club, including the owner, the board, the fans, the manager and the players agree on, it is that under no circumstances should Mourinho be allowed to beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in front of thousands of Chelsea fans.

Conte will want to prove to the owners that they made the right choice by replacing Mourinho with him. The players will want to prove that they were right when they said Chelsea’s problem came because Mourinho became a bad manager and not because they became complacent and lost form. So everyone as a team will come out fighting to make sure Mourinho leaves Stamford Bridge on Sunday a very sad man.

When the two sides met in the same feature last season, Chelsea won 4-0, a repeat of that will make Chelsea faithful very happy folks.