Two strategies – but who called it right?
AT Chelsea’s Cobham training ground last Tuesday, there were hugs and handshakes.
Diego Costa was welcomed back into the fold after what at first appeared to be an almighty – possibly title-deciding – strop.
The Spanish striker is said to have fallen out with the club’s fitness staff over a back injury.
But there were dark suspicions that he was trying to engineer a move to China, or perhaps use Tianjin Quanjian’s reported interest to bump up the terms of a new Chelsea contract.
So Antonio Conte went to Leicester without his top scorer, won 3-0 and straight-batted all questions, other than to confirm that Costa had a back complaint. The player stayed schtum. Least said, soonest mended. So when the pair met up for their showdown, no bridges had been burned.
They can still work together, the fans haven’t had to choose sides and if Costa shows the attitude he did during the first half of the season, he can make a big contribution to the club’s run-in.
Contrast that with the situation at West Ham, where Slaven Bilic called out Dimitri Payet and announced that he was refusing to play for the club.
Payet, the Hammers’ best player, wants to go home to Marseille and Bilic wanted the world to know.
He didn’t even have to be asked. He just came right out and said it.
The fans, faced with a choice of backing their manager or a player who was perceived as having spat out his dummy, unsurprisingly decided that Payet was disloyal and had let them down.
West Ham’s directors dug in their heels and said the Frenchman is going nowhere. So, unlike Chelsea, here we have an impasse. It’s almost inconceivable that Payet can play for West Ham again. His relationship with Bilic, teammates and fans is beyond repair.
By making their stance so public, the Hammers Board have painted themselves into a corner. It’s a mess.
Yet there’s something about the mess that you have to admire.
Bilic could have played it diplomatically and strategically – as Conte did – and given himself, the club and the player some wriggle room.
Instead, infuriated by the prospect of a player who’s just signed a whopping new contract getting his own way, he let everyone know he felt betrayed.
Privately, Conte may have felt the same way, but in public he used his head. Bilic allowed his heart to rule, which might have been unwise.
But at least it was honest.