Where Mourinho and Conte differ on Chelsea

When last did you see Chelsea score in the 89th minute to win a match? Well, we saw the latest edition of the Blues do just that against London rivals, West Ham on Monday.
Jose Mourinho can be remembered running down the Old Trafford touchline and on Monday Chelsea fans were introduced to the passionate celebration of Antonio Conte – but aside the passion, these two managers are radically different in their game plans.

Though the justice or injustice of the scorer is another issue, that outcome completely showed why Chelsea under Antonio Conte would be a different animal to the one we saw under the ’special One’, Jose Mourinho.
Conte has been lauded as been a master tactician and a passionate trainer but he showed the Blues’ fans at Stamford Bridge in the season’s opening match that he will be taking risks in order to win some matches.
Normally, the match against the Hammers would have ended in a draw under Mourinho because his first thought would have been to protect a point – this is not saying that Mourinho did not take risks as a manager – but his most pressing objective would have been to protect a point, not to press for a win.

One thing, John Terry mentioned in the post-match interview was the fact that most of the time last season, the team were overly dependent on Eden Hazard to pull the chestnut from the fire. That in itself is not a problem but when a team does not have a plan B, that becomes a major challenge.
But Conte was not averse to pulling out Hazard and Oscar [two of his best performers], for Victor Moses and Michy Batshuayi for the last five minutes of the game which allowed Batshuayi to join Diego Costa in attack – a partnership on which the second goal was forged.
Definitely, Chelsea are still not going to wow most away fans with their tiki-taka, but one thing is for sure – they are not going to play with the hand brakes on – there will be one or two risks taken to swing draws into victories and to eke out life-saving draws.
Welcome to the reign of football-obsessed Conte!