Buck up or you’ll Luiz out as well

IT WAS a great piece of management from Antonio Conte to drop David Luiz.

It showed his willingness to look at anyone in the team and say if you’re not doing well we are going to change it.

Luiz’s replacement against Manchester United, Andreas Christensen, has been touted as a next big thing for a while.

Now it is about how this young lad reacts to playing, the situation and to having somebody like Luiz behind him who is going to be working double hard in training, you hope, to try to get back in the team. It was the right move. Luiz (above) in a very good team is a player who can break out into midfield, will score the odd spectacular goal but when the going gets tough, he can at times be a liability.

Conte has looked at it and said, ‘Great player, take a step back, get back to basics, I’m going to give the young lad a chance and I want to see a reaction’.

Or that’s at least what he should have said. These days that is a risk because with these big-name players, being left out of the team for a game or two means they are on the phone to their agents and he might be at AC Milan or Bayern Munich in January.

A weak manager wouldn’t want to tackle the big names in his squad. He might be a bit worried about a players’ revolt or poisonous characters in the dressing room.

But this is Conte (above) reasserting his dominance and leadership in the dressing room and it is a fantastic thing to do.

The message to the other players will be clear – pull your fingers out.

And in a dressing room that does not have John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba anymore, it’s a chance for Conte to say: “Those guys are gone. I’m the boss now.”