Despite weeks of unrest and rumours about leaving, Antonio Conte seems close to signing a new contract to stay at the club.
Chelsea manager Antonio Conte is close to signing a new contract at Chelsea following a meeting between Conte and the Chelsea CEO. There had been reports throughout the last few weeks of a rift between Conte and Chelsea with the Chelsea manager frustrated at the lack of transfer activity with the club stalling on targets over prices and the type of players being targeted not the ones that Conte prefers, in particularly with Conte notably informing Diego Costa that he is not going to feature in Conte’s plans next season at Chelsea via text message and the club being linked with a mega fee to bring Romelu Lukaku back to the club from Everton.
The positive meetings between Conte and the board should indicate that the club are willing to go after the kind of players that Conte is looking for regardless of the price in order to strengthen the club.
Chelsea keeping a hold of Antonio Conte is vital for them, his transform of the club has been nothing short of sensational and allowing him to walk away from the club would be foolish. When Conte signed on to become the manager of Chelsea last summer after an impressive Euros competition with Italy, he found himself with a team that was in disarray and chaos after a toxic season under Jose Mourinho.
Conte has successfully managed to turn this around and bring stability and positivity to the Chelsea dressing room along with surprisingly guiding Chelsea to the title comfortably when many had not expected them to properly challenge for the title while breaking the wins record over the course of a season and the most wins in a row.
History shows that if Conte has seriously threatened to quit Chelsea over frustration about transfer targets that it should be believed, as he did resign from his managerial position at Juventus in 2014 over his frustration at the way the club were dealing with transfers. Conte’s concern about Chelsea’s transfer strategy is valid as Chelsea’s last two summer transfer windows have not been particularly impressive and speaks more to Conte’s managerial ability that he was able to win the league with the likes of Marcos Alonso and Victor Moses than anything.
Chelsea will need to make serious moves this summer and add more players to their team as they will not have the benefit of having no Champions League or Europa League football and the rest of the top six, barring Arsenal, are looking to get stronger this season.
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It does look as if Chelsea will be making serious moves now if they do intend to keep Antonio Conte as their manager and they have already been linked with a move for Juventus left back Alex Sandro, who would be a marvellous buy for Chelsea. If Chelsea is able to get their targets in Romelu Lukaku, Alex Sandro and Tiémoué Bakayoko from Monaco, it would increase depth to their team while also massively strengthening them in other areas of the team.