Antonio Conte now a ‘dead man walking’ at Chelsea

Daniel Storey

You can imagine the glee with which Duncan Castles wrote his latest Yahoo Sport column, on the demise of Jose Mourinho’s successor at Chelsea.

When Antonio Conte does leave, Castles will make some point about Mourinho being one of their longest-serving managers of the modern age or other such guff. More on that later.

Anyway, Castles believes that Conte will be sacked before the end of the season. That probably depends on results, in fairness.

He writes that Chelsea staff describe Conte as a “dead man walking”, which is little unfair for a man that won the title five months ago.

In fairness, Castles makes the same valid points on poor communication from the club’s hierarchy and inefficient player recruitment that most have discussed over the last two months.

But he goes on to to say that Marina Granovskaia, Chelsea’s head honcho, is annoyed at Conte’s ‘disrespectful behaviour’ and that the players are annoyed by the intense training schedules at the club.

And then, of course, the money shot as the final paragraph:

‘Should Conte become the latest casualty of Chelsea’s structural dysfunctionality he will be the fourth Premier League winning manager to be sacked by the Russian. Only Jose Mourinho – in his first period at the club – survived longer than a year after securing the English title.’

Boom.