WHY SAY ANYTHING?

Antonio Conte will not resign as Chelsea manager. If he did that he wouldn’t be entitled to any compensation so, from his point of view, it wouldn’t make sense.

Roman Abramovich will not sack Antonio Conte at the moment because that is exactly what the Italian wants him to do and the Russian doesn’t do what others want, only what he wants.

So an uncomfortable impasse is now in place whereby Chelsea have a manager who doesn’t want to be there and an owner who doesn’t really want him there, but he is going nowhere.

The other consideration for Abramovich of course, apart from his own pride, is that the timing, if he were to sack Conte now, would be inconvenient, to say the least.

Chelsea are still in the Champion’s League although probably not for much longer, they are still in the FA Cup, which would be the competition most likely to produce a trophy for them this season, and they are still aiming for a top four finish in the Premier League. So changing manager at this juncture may not be the best idea regardless of any petty squabbling between Conte and the owner.

The best solution for all concerned is for the club to wait until the end of the season when Conte can depart for pastures new with the best wishes of Abramovich still fresh in his ears. Winning nothing, however, and finishing outside of the top four may mean he has to forego the “best wishes” bit.

A Manchester United old boy returns…..

Patrice Evra, ex-Manchester United, Juventus and Marseilles “winger” has pitched up at the London Stadium where West Ham United have agreed to pay his pension.

Always a chirpy, yet volatile, character he was loved at Manchester United simply because he loved Manchester United.

Very reminiscent of what Antonio Valencia has now morphed into, Evra was very good at bombing forward with the ball but pretty useless at returning to his defensive duties. In fact, defending was probably his weak point.

He would invariably set off on one of his headless chicken runs only to lose the ball and, therefore, be caught miles out of position when the opposition countered.

One typical ‘Evra moment’ was when Pedro scored for Barcelona in the Champion’s League final of 2011. Watching the video below again reminds us of the night in question when, as the ball is fed through to an unmarked Pedro who is in the inside right position at the time, screams of “where’s Evra?” went out in the WSA household.

Evra was, in fact, in a central position, jogging back towards his own goal, completely oblivious to what was going on around him! Just as Pedro scored Lionel Messi, completely unnoticed by the Frenchman, ran past him to be in a position for any rebound.

That is just the type of player he was and, probably, still is. The only difference is that now he will have lost a bit more pace meaning that he won’t be able to get as far forward as fast as he once could. This, in turn, means that he should be able to spend more time doing what he is paid to do, defending.

Good luck to him at West Ham who, along with their other ageing players are looking forward to the 2010/11 season.

Arséne has yet another opinion…..

Stubborn Old Man who, nowadays, can be relied upon for comments about practically anything has entered into the debate about diving, proclaiming that the English can now be considered world-beaters at that particular “skill”.

He said, “I remember there were tremendous cases here when foreign players did it but I must say the English players have learned very quickly and they might even be the masters now.”

He should know because in his previous teams he had some of the best exponents of the dive ever known to mankind.

Not only that but they were, more than likely, the foreigners from whom the English learned the art.

With the likes of Marc Overmars, Robert Pires, Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Freddie Ljungberg playing regularly, he was able to watch, first hand, the different ‘degrees of difficulty‘ achieved by those five!

And finally…..

Jürgen Klopp has been remarkably quiet since the draw against Tottenham when, after ranting and raving about how much he would be fined if he said what he thought, he was proved wrong by TV replays of the penalty incidents about which he was so aggrieved.

It is obviously proving difficult for him to get over his disappointment.

Get well soon Jürgen, it isn’t the same without you!