2016/17 Premier League Manager of the Season

[Guest]

Well actually they were on course to finish lower than that with mourinho

[SirBalon]

7 hours ago, LFCMadLad said:

I'm going to agree that Conte deserves to win it because he's done a great job but I'd like to remind you (even though nobody else is worthy) of how fortunate Conte has been in his first season. 

Injuries to key players. In fact in Chelsea's case, any injuries at all. 

I'm going to use us as an example because obviously I have more knowledge of our situation than other clubs (but I know other clubs have suffered with injury problems as well). 

We haven't had our first 11 available for 95% of this season. For a significant amount of time we've lost Coutinho, Mane, Sturridge, Henderson, Lallana, all at the same time in some periods and we've only been able to play our first choice CB's for about 50% of games. Even Emre Can has been playing the season through injections. Our bench for the second half of the season has been made up of teenagers from the under 23's. 

Conte has had the luxury of having basically zero injuries for the duration of this season. Imagine they had lost Hazard, Costa, Kante, Matic, Pedro as well as not being able to play their first choice CB's for large parts of the season? 

They have been brilliant Chelsea and I'm not taking anything away from them but they have been extremely lucky to have been able to play basically the same 11, week in week out and with no European football it's just all fell into place. 

So no, I'm not wearing it that nobody else is worthy because although Conte has been good, he's also been extremely fortunate in his first year in England  

 

I understand what you're saying there mate and yes it's true they've been lucky on the injury front.  You could also add that they weren't in Europe this season and with that type of squad, you've definietly got a chance of competing for the title when you've got all week to think about games.  I've already stated this during the season earlier on.  But all the same, he took a broken side and fixed it....  Then after they got beat by us, he then goes back to the drawing board and changes everything  on how that team usually functions on the pitch.

We don't know how difficult that it to do to be honest...  It's like getting a Japanese digital watch which isn't all that interesting but works fine although boring (Mourinho's Chelsea), dismantling it to pieces, all its insides and then putting it all together again in a different way where it's suddenly turned into a Swiss watch!!!   That's not easy to do with footballers, to change the very essence of the tactics upside down and to make them understand what he wants to perfection.  Put it this way...  (I know many have used it) He made others use it here in the Premier League and it made me laugh a lot when Wenger started to use it.