The Table Doesn’t Lie: Conte’s Chelsea rage on, Bilic sacked

Chelsea bounced back from a difficult week with a big win against Manchester United, while Slaven Bilic was finally sacked by West Ham.

20. Crystal Palace (preseason prediction: 11th, difference: -9)
19. Swansea (17th, -2)
18. West Ham (10th, -7)
17. Bournemouth (8th, -9)
16. West Brom (12th, -4)
15. Everton (7th, -8)
14. Stoke (16th, +2)
13. Southampton (9th, -4)
12. Leicester (15th, +3)
11. Newcastle (14th, +3)

There are many worthy contenders for the title of Saddest Moment of West Ham’s season so far, but Liverpool’s opening goal at the London Stadium on Saturday deserves a spot on the shortlist.

What happened was that Edmilson Fernandes made a silly decision to try to nip a Reds counter-attack in the bud following a West Ham corner, diving in on Sadio Mane, who proceeded to run 60 yards entirely unchallenged and pass the ball to Mohamed Salah, also unchallenged, who scored.

Mane and Salah are very fast and very good, and they will make a lot of players look stupid this season, but the real sadness of that goal was that they were never even given that opportunity, such is the stunning lack of pace that has been assembled at the London Stadium over the past two seasons.

As the two forwards streaked into the Hammers’ half, they were trailed — really, really trailed — by Mark Noble, Winston Reid and Fernandes, which was exactly as sad a sight as it sounds. You can’t give up. You can never give up. But if Mark Noble didn’t spend the entirety of that very slow sprint wondering how in the name of Bobby Moore his otherwise exemplary West Ham career had come to this, everyone watching was wondering it for him.

And so as endearing as Slaven Bilic is, the news he was fired on Monday can’t have been met with anything but a very brief pang of sympathy for a man who has seemed for at least a year to be completely out of ideas. That was until it emerged his replacement will be David Moyes, who has presumably spent the past six months trying to convince himself the past six years didn’t happen.

Moyes is a good manager, probably, even now, but the days when his signature qualified as a coup have long since passed. More importantly as far as West Ham are concerned, it’s hard to imagine a less inspiring character taking over at a club that have been desperate for inspiration since leaving Upton Park two seasons ago.

That he’s set to be offered a contract only through the end of this season, with his position to be reassessed in the summer, suggests he’s been brought in primarily to ensure West Ham don’t get relegated. Given how well the newly-promoted sides are doing, and generally how wide open the league table is outside the big six, the fear of relegation is real for the Hammers, and it makes sense they would take a short-term approach to this hire.

But even setting aside for a moment the fact Moyes was relegated last season, his appointment must appear something of a cruel joke to Hammers fans, who have spent the past two seasons cheering on a team who have given them almost nothing to cheer for, in an attempt to create an atmosphere at a stadium that seems unable to sustain one. The cycle is vicious and a little sad and now, somehow, more uninspiring than ever.

10. Huddersfield (18th, +8)
9. Watford (13th, +4)
8. Brighton (20th, +12)
7. Burnley (19th, +12)
6. Arsenal (6th, –)
5. Liverpool (3rd, -2)
4. Chelsea (5th, +1)
3. Tottenham (4th, +1)
2. Manchester United (2nd, –)
1. Manchester City (1st, –)

What exactly the hell is going on at Chelsea Football Club? The defending champions have had, to put it mildly, an erratic start to the season.

After a deeply confusing and slightly angry summer transfer window, they opened their campaign with a loss to Burnley (which featured a failed, but still kind of inspiring nine-man comeback in the second half), and followed that up with a run of seven wins in eight matches, culminating in a 2-1 victory against Atletico in Madrid that seemed to position the Blues as legitimate Champions League contenders.

They’ve spent the month since then threatening to come undone. In that time, during which N’Golo Kante missed six games, Chelsea lost to Crystal Palace, threw away a 2-0 lead against Roma to draw 3-3, were fortunate not to lose to Watford, barely beat Bournemouth and got thrashed by Roma in a performance that reportedly sent Antonio Conte into some kind rage-inspired fugue state.

The loss to Roma appeared to signal the bona fide unraveling the Blues had been flirting with since their 1-0 loss to Manchester City at the end of September. And so of course they responded with an emphatic return to form against Manchester United, whom they beat 1-0 at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.

It’s tempting, in the wake of that performance, to attribute the inconsistency of the past month to the absence of Kante, whose return at the weekend had a significant knock-on effect. It gave Tiemoue Bakoyoko the defensive support he needs, which freed up Cesc Fabregas to play further forward, which got the best out of Alvaro Morata, which made it much harder for United to devote all their defensive energy to fouling Eden Hazard.

(What a pleasure, by the way, to have Hazard back to full fitness. Kevin De Bruyne, the best player on the best team in the league, has built up a healthy lead in the Player of the Year race, but Hazard still has a strong case for being the best player in the division. He was stunning against United, playing pretty much wherever he felt like playing, a masterclass in dribbling and balance and the ability to receive a ball under pressure.)

But the fact Chelsea have become so reliant on the Frenchman is an indication of how delicate a balancing act Conte is currently being forced to perform at Stamford Bridge. Indeed, the Blues’ on-pitch flirtations with disaster are merely a reflection of the off-field shenanigans that have threatened to consume the club roughly since Conte broke up with Diego Costa via text message in August.

Conte, not renowned for his even-keeled approach to management, has made his way through this season in a state of increasingly angry state of flummox, and has directed his anger at everyone from his employers to the media to, most recently, his players.

Add to this the recent non-controversy surrounding marquee summer signing Alvaro Morata, who may or may not enjoy living in London and who also may or may not want to play for Chelsea for the next decade, reports that players are unhappy with Conte’s training methods, other reports that Roman Abramovich has already made up his mind to sack the Italian, and the actual real news Michael Emenalo has stepped down as technical director, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion something very weird is going on.

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Presumably many of these reports exist on the wrong end of the journalism-nonsense spectrum, as Conte has suggested, but these sorts of stories don’t typically come from nowhere, and Conte’s frustration has been apparent to anyone who’s caught a glimpse of one of his press conferences this season.

Concerned Chelsea fans will also recall their side’s recent history of effort-optionalism, which has reared its head only fleetingly this season — the first half against Burnley, the middle third of the match against Watford and the two Champions League games against Roma — but enough to rekindle some bad memories of their last title defense.

Despite it all, Chelsea have held it together, mostly thanks to the intensity of Conte’s ever-smoldering rage. Manchester City have built up an imposing eight-point lead at the top of the table, but the Blues are fourth, only a point behind United and Tottenham, and well placed to capitalize in the unlikely event City experience an extended loss of form. This is, in its own strange way, a remarkable achievement by the Italian.

The Chelsea job isn’t an easy cross to bear, and Conte wouldn’t be the first manager to be crushed in the gears of the Abramovich machine, but for now, he’s clinging on. The Blues were superb on Sunday, fully deserving of a win that, among other things, served as a reminder how this team finished on 93 points last season, the second highest total in Premier League history.

Perhaps the hardest part of defending a title is simply maintaining the level of intensity required to not screw up for nine months straight. Buying new and better players, increasing competition for places, building a long-term culture of success are all proven means to that end. In the absence of any of those things, sheer force of personality will have to suffice. Conte, it seems, is a force to be reckoned with.