Chelsea’s Kante No 1
N’GOLO KANTE has been voted the Professional Footballers’ Association player of the year. The tireless midfielder, 26, has been central to Chelsea’s surge to the Premier League summit. The Frenchman, bought from Leicester for £32million in July, is on course to win back-to-back titles. He secured the most votes from his peers, seeing off competition from team-mate Eden Hazard plus Tottenham’s Harry Kane, Zlatan Ibrahimovic of Manchester United, Everton’s Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Sanchez of Arsenal. Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli, 21, was awarded the young player prize for the second successive season at London’s Grosvenor Hotel last night.
ANdRE Villas-Boas was ridiculed when he dared to ask Chelsea’s substitutes to celebrate the goals. It is one thing to issue orders, and another to conjure the spirit to make it happen.
When four flew past Tottenham at Wembley on Saturday, the reaction of the bench behind Antonio Conte was striking.
John Terry and diego Costa hugged as Willian curled in a free- kick and Kurt Zouma wailed in disbelief and fell into the arms of Nathaniel Chalobah as Nemanja Matic fired the fourth into the top corner.
‘Everyone was together and celebrating,’ said Cesc Fabregas, who won the FA Cup with Arsenal, 12 years ago. ‘We are full of winners and I’m proud to be here.
‘The strength, that’s what you need to win titles. And that’s what we will need to do in every single game until the end of the season if we really want to win something.’
Eden Hazard, Costa and Fabregas all started on the bench as Conte selected a team with games against Southampton tomorrow and Everton on Sunday on his mind.
‘You never want to accept it as a player, whoever you are,’ said Fabregas of starting on the bench. ‘When you are used to playing all the time you feel a bit down. What I like is that we scored the first goal and everyone on the bench was together and celebrating.
‘The togetherness we had on the bench, scoring the goals and then coming on and not with the feeling like “Oh, I was on the bench”, but coming on to make a difference and show character and hunger to win.
‘It means the whole squad is ready to go. Whoever plays is ready to step up. It’s good to see.’ For this, Conte can take great credit. Just as he can for the tactical acumen which has led Chelsea to the brink of the double.
Hazard, unleashed after an hour with the semi-final poised at 2-2, put Chelsea in control with his 15th goal of the season, a reminder of his maturing talent and ability to influence big games. ‘Eden can be whatever he wants to be,’ Fabregas said. ‘Ability-wise, there is only one player above him and we all know who he is, Lionel Messi.
‘He’s up there with the best. For me, he has to be more selfish as all the top players are and have that killer instinct to score more goals. I’ve told him many times.
‘Sometimes when we have a counter-attack and he passes the ball, I tell him: “You have the capability to score by yourself, do it”. I’m sure he will improve in the future. And then he will be unstoppable. We have to help him to achieve that.’
Securing a place in the FA Cup final helped Chelsea cleanse memories of their league defeat at Manchester United as they prepare for Southampton and their bid to close out the first half of a possible double before returning to Wembley at the end of May.
‘Southampton didn’t play for 10 days and it will be a very tough game,’ Fabregas said. ‘It’s one of the most important games of the season. To achieve the double would be something special, especially in England.
‘Sometimes you need a bit of luck and definitely we need to be very, very consistent until the end of the season.’
Tottenham go to Crystal Palace on Wednesday trying to keep the pressure on Chelsea by ensuring their form does not drift away as it did last year.
‘A lot of people will be looking at us and waiting to see what will happen,’ Harry Kane said. ‘Are we strong enough to bounce back? I think we are.
‘We were the better team but for one reason or another we didn’t get over the finish line.
‘It’s not easy but we will fight until the end. We can’t control what Chelsea do. They will obviously be buzzing from this game but it doesn’t always mean you’re going to win every other game you play.’
NO MANAGER can be expected to win a trophy every season. Nor should it have been a given that Pep Guardiola would win one in his first year in England.
Nevertheless, these are uncharted waters for the Manchester City manager and the enormous significance of his next fixture cannot now be over-stated.
Manchester United are next up for Guardiola on Thursday. When his team won at Old Trafford in September, everything looked rather simpler than it does today. That was the sixth victory of a 10- game winning sequence with which Guardiola introduced himself to English football.
Back then, some said Guardiola was about to teach the game in this country a few things. He would educate us, they said. As it turns out, it has been Guardiola learning the lessons and all he can hope now is that his players can absorb the impact of another punishing afternoon in time for their engagement with Jose Mourinho’s team at the Etihad.
United are the polar opposite of their neighbours at the moment. They have had their own problems but currently Mourinho is getting the best from what he has. Guardiola cannot lay claim to the same.
City are inconsistent and unpredictable and, at this late stage of the season, that is the worst combination for a manager who will end the campaign without silverware for the first time in his coaching career.
This is one of the reasons he came to England. He knew it would be harder to win here. At times, though, it has all seemed to represent a much bigger puzzle that anyone thought.
When City are running hot, they can gallop away from teams. But too often they have been stymied when teams try to frustrate them. That is what happened yesterday and it has also happened often enough in the Premier League for City to be in very real danger of missing out on a top-four place.
That, rather than what happened at Wembley yesterday, would be truly catastrophic. Failure to qualify for the Champions League — a competition we once suspected he would own — would do much more damage to brand Guardiola than a defeat in the semi-final of the FA Cup.
Against a surprisingly dogged Arsenal, we saw City’s familiar failings. They led through an exquisite goal and also struck post and bar. In the first half of normal time, with the game goalless and ordinary, they had a good goal disallowed.
They had more possession and territory in the game but they were not clinical and seemed to suffer physically as the game wore on.
Extra-time at Wembley will drain the juice from many players’ legs but on this occasion, it was City who failed to last the distance.
Before the game, the City midfielder Fernandinho had admitted his team struggled when opponents suffocated them defensively through weight of numbers. Though we did not expect it, that was what happened here.
It goes against everything Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger knows not to send out his team to go toe-to-toe with the opposition. He has been