Danger for Chelsea in the slump being more permanent

The Juventus, Italy and Chelsea great was blunt. His motives could not be questioned. Antonio Conte cannot wait to leave Chelsea, said Gianluca Vialli, a teammate and predecessor.

The current Chelsea manager’s analysis has also been cutting but, unlike Vialli’s, laced with self-interest that requires interpretation.

One era ended on Sunday, with Tottenham Hotspur winning at Stamford Bridge for the first time in 28 years.

A rather shorter one seems certain to conclude in the summer.

Conte’s departure has long gone from possibility to probability. Five defeats in seven league games, a slide to fifth and downbeat rhetoric casting the club as culprits while he has sought to escape the blame have seen to that.

There is a temptation to assume Chelsea’s peculiar cycle of boom and bust will start again, that the newmanager effect at Stamford Bridge will again turn underachievement into title-winning glory before the pattern repeats itself.

Yet there is another scenario. Chelsea are now eight points behind Tottenham. For the second time in three seasons, they should be confined to the role of spectators in next season’s Uefa Champions League.

For the first since Roman Abramovich’s takeover, they will enter the Europa League in the group stages, which poses the question if this is not an aberration, but the start of a shift in the pecking order. Is it partly because Tottenham and Liverpool seem to be building something sustainable?

Chelsea have become a business model, generating prices for players they do not pick. Yet if Conte’s claim that he has gotten the maximum from his charges this season when they are 28 points behind Manchester City feels a selfjustifying deflection of failure, it is undeniable that they no longer possess the most gifted group.

That, in turn, could deter the finest managerial targets from taking on the challenge.

When Conte said that Chelsea deserve the season they are having, it seemed a veiled criticism of his employers.

They are entitled to argue that transfers are not as simple as he assumes and that even Chelsea do not possess a bottomless pit of money.

But the consequence of missing out on a host of A-Listers – Romelu Lukaku, Alexis Sanchez, Virgil van Dijk, Leonardo Bonucci, Alex Sandro, Radja Nainggolan and so on – is that Chelsea have become disproportionately reliant on a select few: Eden Hazard, in particular, plus N’Golo Kante and Cesar Azpilicueta.

The Belgian has appeared disgruntled at times in a season when he has shouldered too great a burden. His talks about a contract extension have been postponed.

Chelsea may yet reap a long-term benefit for replacing Nemanja Matic and Diego Costa with Tiemoue Bakayoko and Alvaro Morata, but they might simply have downgraded.

They can look for youthful recruitment but they still have an ageing squad with Pedro, Olivier Giroud, Cesc Fabregas, David Luiz and Gary Cahill in their 30s and Willian soon to join them.

They have bought expensive squad players, in Davide Zappacosta and Danny Drinkwater, at a combined price that could have bought a high-class starter.

Now each of the top four look more talented. Perhaps Abramovich will spend or Tottenham sell to change that, but a side that ran 7 kilometres more than Chelsea on Sunday are also a more vibrant and harmonious club.

Certainly Tottenham and Liverpool have had a feelgood factor that a fractious Conte has denied Chelsea.

It explains why they are higher in the league.

But defeats to Tottenham can assume a significance. Just ask Liverpool. They almost won the league in 2009, lost the opening game of the next season at White Hart Lane to what soon appeared a stronger Spurs group and became strangers to the Champions League.

The parallels are inexact but the risk for Chelsea is that the top four will be reshaped without them in it. And not just for one season.