Don’t necessarily disagree with Conte. Where I baulk though is that he is (was) the manager. It’s literally his job to make them a team, to prepare them mentally, to manage them. He’s not a journalist from the outside who now is proved right. He was the boss blaming the players by essentially telling us how he failed himself, without accepting any of that failure.
And lets not act like things would be much better if he stayed. We have been playing the exact same way with his coneman Stellini in charge. Maybe he doesn't go to 4atb today (although that it was in part enforced by Lenglet not being fully fit and Davies injury) and we don't get smashed but we are simply following the trajectory we have been on since before he left.
It was also obvious. He said what we all know is true. It was not insightful. It was unhelpful to squad morale. His job as one of the most well paid and elite coaches in club football was to get the most out of what we had, identify what was required (within budget) to improve. What he’s done is take us to the edge of a full on crisis. It’s worse now than I can remember. To remove any blame from him for that is just weird.
100%. In retrospect it looks very much like he was holding things together.
100% doesn't matter if he was the right manager or not, professionals don't do what our squad did today.
Whether it was accurate or not, it wasn’t the forum for doing it!
See?
Doesn't say much for the players either though does it? Whether you liked him or not the fact of the matter is, what he said was right, regardless of his reason for saying it.
It was his job to impact that; his hands weren't so tied that the best we could've hoped for was barely registering a shot on target against Milan and losing to a second division team in the FA Cup. I'm not having that he was doing the best that he could do. If you're coming out every week and saying your team isn't good enough, it's hardly a surprise the team starts to believe it.
