A blog of two halves

Forget Rio, the action is in SW6

Who needs Special Ones when you’ve got Animated Ones? With touchline sprints, pirouettes and long jumps that wouldn’t have disgraced Rio, Antonio Conte instantly endeared himself to Blues fans as he managed a winning start to the new season.

19 August 2016
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Antonio Conte. Picture by Action Images

Who needs Special Ones when you’ve got Animated Ones? With touchline sprints, pirouettes and long jumps that wouldn’t have disgraced Rio, Antonio Conte instantly endeared himself to Blues fans as he managed a winning start to the new season.

The image of him dashing halfway to the Shed to high-five supporters in the front row after Diego Costa fired home a late, late goal for a 2-1 victory over West Ham on Monday is one that will live long in the memory.

This is a manager who simply cannot bottle up his emotions… and is all the more entertaining for it.

Next up is a trip to Watford in the Premiership this weekend, then the hosting of Bristol Rovers in the League Cup (or whatever it’s called this week) on Tuesday.

That’s a game that will allow him to give a start to everyone who has missed out so far; notably Cesc Fabregas, who made way for newcomer N'Golo Kante, the £32million signing from Leicester.

“I don't know if I’ll sleep tonight because the adrenaline is high,” the manager said after the frantic ending to the West Ham match. Fans felt much the same.

It was shaping up to being one of those possession-filled, but ultimately frustrating, games – the kind Chelsea regularly made their own during last season’s downbeat campaign.

There may be slightly more fluency detectable at Liverpool and Manchester United in these early-season matches, but nobody can doubt Conte has hiked the overall fitness levels of all the players.

Jose Mourinho (remember him?) handed the physical development side over to his sidekick Rui Faria at the Bridge. Last season, that was found wanting as complacency replaced endeavour and hunger.

Conte praised the Blues’ ‘intensity’ after Monday’s win. He wasn’t joking.

It means, astonishingly, that the Italian is now unbeaten in 28 successive league home matches as a club manager since January 2013.

With Eden Hazard back on form, Costa looking even more like grumpy Captain Haddock – but finding the back of the net, and Branislav Ivanovic having a barnstormer of a game, it’s as positive a start as anyone could wish for.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham.

Tim Harrison

Tim is our Chelsea FC blogger.

Tim has been writing Chelsea match reports since the late 1980s for newspapers and, more recently, websites.

When he first reported on the Blues, the press box was a metal cage suspended over the lip of the old west stand - and you reached it via a precarious walkway over the heads of the fans.

But he has been a Chelsea fan since his father took an excited seven-year-old to watch Chelsea v Manchester United in the mid 1960s... and covered his ears every time the chanting got too ripe.

In July 2005 he wrote The Rough Guide to Chelsea, published by Penguin, which sold 15,000 copies.

His favourite player of all time is Charlie Cooke, the mazy winger who lit up Chelsea's left wing in the 60s and 70s.

When he isn't watching the Blues, Tim acts, paints, writes and researches local history.

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