Conte concedes league title after Chelsea lose to West Ham
▶ Champions beaten while Kane scores twice in Spurs win over Stoke
Antonio Conte conceded Chelsea are out of the Premier League title race after their 1-0 defeat at West Ham United yesterday.
Marko Arnautovic’s early goal condemned the defending champions to a fourth defeat of the season and left them 11 points adrift of leaders Manchester City.
And Conte, the Chelsea manager, admitted: “This is the fourth defeat in 16 games. When you have these stats it’s impossible to think you are in the title race.
“If you want to stay in the race for the title in the first part of the season you can only lose once or twice.”
Chelsea are 11 points adrift of leaders Manchester City, and that gap could stretch to 14 today if Pep Guardiola’s men win the Manchester derby at Old Trafford.
Chelsea were carved open far too easily with West Ham’s first attack in the sixth minute, when Arnautovic played a quick one-two with Manuel Lanzini.
The Austrian nipped in behind Andreas Christensen and, as Cesar Azpilicueta stood off, curled his shot around the defender and keeper Thibaut Courtois.
Chelsea had plenty of time to respond, yet it was a strangely subdued display from a side with six wins from their previous seven outings.
When their clearest chance arrived, six minutes from time, Alvaro Morata snatched at his shot and clipped the sidenetting.
“Today it was very difficult, our start was bad and it was difficult to come back,” added Conte.
“We created chances but didn’t take them and now we are talking about a defeat.
“Many of the players were tired. It’s normal. We started our pre-season with the same players, a lot of players are playing almost always.
“Today our ideas were not so clear. We made a lot of mistakes from the final pass. We can do better.”
West Ham looked a rejuvenated side to the strugglers they appeared towards the end of Slaven Bilic’s spell in charge as they secured a first win since David Moyes took over at the end of October.
For Moyes, it was also a first home win as a manager in almost a year, having presided over Sunderland’s miserable relegation campaign last season.
“All managers need wins. That’s the way it is,” he added.
“I think coming to the club everyone could see I have had a pretty difficult run of fixtures, but today we did a job, the game plan worked.
“I’m always happy when I win. The best feeling is the Saturday night feeling after a win. But then I put my jacket on as I left the dressing room and thought ‘oh no, we’ve got Arsenal in midweek’.”
Elsewhere, Tottenham Hotspur returned to form in emphatic fashion as they thrashed Stoke City 5-1 at Wembley Stadium.
Tottenham had only picked up five points from their previous five games but were too strong for Stoke with Harry Kane netting twice. An own goal from Ryan Shawcross and strikes from Son Heung-min and Christian Eriksen accounted for the other goals.
“That was what we needed, we had to get the first goal, we did that and that was it, we were on fire from there,” Kane told the BBC.
“It’s strange. Over the past couple of years we struggled against Stoke, but coming off a few bad results we were always going to be up for it.”
Wilfried Bony gave Swansea City their first win eight games to ease the pressure on manager Paul Clement as they triumphed 1-0 over West Bromwich Albion.
They moved off the bottom at the expense of Crystal Palace, who drew 2-2 with Bournemouth.