THE last time they met, Jose Mourinho took Antonio Conte aside and schooled him on Premier League etiquette. The Special
One did not appreciate the Chelsea manager jumping around and egging on the Stamford Bridge crowd.
“You don’t do that at 4-0,” he said. “If you’re going to do it, you do it at 1-0. At 4-0, it’s humiliating.”
Conte looked at him non-plussed at the time. And he was equally non-plussed when the media asked about Mourinho ahead of tomorrow night’s FA Cup quarter-final between
Chelsea and Manchester United.
“I think I’ve shown in my time at Chelsea – and not just here, but
everywhere I have managed – that I live the game with great passion,” Conte said. “Sometimes I want to share my enthusiasm and passion with my players and my fans. It’s normal. [Mourinho and I] are not the same. Have I spoken to him about it? No, but it’s not important. There is nothing I need to clear up with him.”
So much for the “mind games” angle. Getting a primer on local etiquette from a guy with a laundry list of disciplinary citations seems a bit much. Then again, it’s Mourinho, Manchester’s man of mystery. We don’t know whether the upbraiding of the over-enthusiastic Conte was simply an expression of spontaneous
concern for a fellow manager, an
attempt to deflect attention from the pounding his players were getting on the pitch or, perhaps, a stab at sowing the seed of future mind games, establishing a chapter in the narrative to which he can refer back later.
That’s the thing with Mourinho. You’re not sure what’s real and what’s part of some cunning grand design. We saw it in midweek away to Rostov in the Europa League. Granted, the pitch wasn’t exactly of the lawn bowls variety. But did it
really warrant the 48 hours of moaning, as if his players were being sent out to play on rubble? Rostov play there every week. They seem to survive.
Mourinho simply sent on his heavyweights – Marouane Fellaini got the start, naturally – and United hung on
in a war of attrition to earn a 1-1 draw which leaves the tie in the balance.
Of course, United will be without Mourinho’s other heavyweight,
Zlatan Ibrahimovic tomorrow night. The big Swede accepted the three-match ban offered by the FA for his
elbow/decapitation attempt on Tyrone
Mings against Bournemouth last week, probably because he realised taking it further and into a possible appeal might mean a heftier ban.
United have actually coped well in the half-dozen or so games he hasn’t started, though none – other than a draw against Arsenal early in the season – were against an opponent of Chelsea’s calibre. But there remains an obvious hurdle. When Ibrahimovic
isn’t around, it’s not as if he gets
replaced by a lesser version himself, for the simple reason that few players in the world have his unusual skill-set. No, without him, United need to play somebody entirely different,
whether it be Marcus Rashford, Wayne Rooney or Anthony Martial. Fine players all, but guys who make different types of runs and have
different attributes. This means
shifting to a Plan B that is entirely different and, in United’s case, given the huge numbers of minutes
Ibrahimovic has played this season and the fact they have gone deep into three different competitions, it’s a Plan B they have had little time to work on in training.
And that, perhaps, is the most
striking contrast. Not only will
Chelsea be at close to full strength, Conte will have had a lot more time to work on different solutions.
Repetition builds muscle memory and chemistry. Ten Chelsea players have played at least 75 per cent of the club’s Premier League minutes – for United, that number is five (Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba, David de Gea, Ander Herrera and Antonio
Valencia). What’s more, because they have been out of Europe, Chelsea have played 13 fewer matches in all competitions. Given that clubs don’t have full training sessions on the eve of and day after matches, that’s a full 39 extra days of full-on work that Chelsea have enjoyed relative to United. That makes a huge difference for most managers, but it’s especially true for guys who are new to their clubs, like these two.
What it boils down to is that tomorrow night you will have one side executing and the other improvising. And that tilts the balance
decisively towards the home team.
ARSENAL’S majority
owner Stan Kroenke
understands consumer markets. He made his billions in commercial real estate development. Acquire land under or near the sort of shops that attract customers and interest and, in the long-term, you will make
money. Buy land and build shops that nobody wants to visit and you won’t. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt to marry one of the heirs to Wal-mart, the biggest retailer in the US.
Walmart’s mantra, as outlined by the founder, Sam Walton, was “pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap”. He understood the power of volume better than most. He squeezed suppliers to get the lowest possible costs and then passed the savings on to customers. That generated sales which, in turn, allowed him to drive out the competition and make billions, one tiny sliver of profit at a time.
Football, of course, is a slightly different business. Arsenal’s wage bill has been in the top four for most of the past decade and their net spend, after years on a shoestring, has been creeping up too, though it remains far lower than most of their competitors near the top of the
Premier League heap.
It is not a perfect parallel, but here’s where it fits: Walmart are hugely in tune with their customers. They sell value products that consumers want. And they rely more on physical sales than they do on market surveys because they know that folks often lie: they say they want those organic carrots when, in fact, they end up buying the cheap, microwave meal.
For all the bile spewed at Arsene Wenger and the way Arsenal have been run over the past few seasons and all the angry Gooners on ArsenalFanTV, Kroenke knows they still show up, buy merchandise and value the brand (and, crucially, so too do their commercial partners). That is what matters. Actions, not words. Wenger provides a product that puts bums on seats and generates volume and he does it in a cost-effective way. Until that alters, don’t expect Kroenke - no matter the number of 10-2s on aggregate - to make changes.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here