Arsenal 3 Chelsea 0: Antonio Conte insists talk of formation is irrelevant if Blues continue to concede soft goals

1/11
James Benge24 September 2016

Antonio Conte insisted that the question of what formation Chelsea play in is irrelevant if their defence continues to struggle as it did in their 3-0 loss to Arsenal.

Chelsea are languishing in eighth place after a second league defeat in succession against a potential top four rival and rarely threatened their hosts after a first half blitz from Alexis Sanchez, Theo Walcott and Mesut Ozil.

Conte withdrew Cesc Fabregas, who looked a shadow of his former self on his return to the Emirates, and brought on Marcos Alonso in defence, switching to a three man central defence with the substitute and Cesar Azpilicueta as wing-backs. But be it 3-5-2 or 4-1-4-1 Chelsea will continue to struggle if they give away two goals every game, their manager warned.

“I had to solve the situation, the most important things,” Conte said. “The situation now is that every game we concede two goals at minimum.

“For this reason three at the back or two or four, I don’t care about it. It’s important to solve the situation. I must find the right solution because every game we’re conceding twice. If there are issues, I don’t care.

“I work a lot to find the right solution.”

Though Conte’s side had battled back from a 2-0 deficit to win 4-2 in the EFL Cup against Leicester in midweek Saturday’s loss made it consecutive league defeats for Chelsea against potential top four rivals, Liverpool having departed Stamford Bridge with the points last Friday.

That leaves Chelsea with a great deal of ground to recover from early pacesetters Manchester City, who are eight points clear of the Blues after their unbeaten start to the season. Indeed Conte was reluctant to answer questions of what the defeat meant for their title hopes and urged his side to show “humility” as they try to understand why they have struggled recently.

“It can happen in one game that you have a bad performance, but I hope to improve the situation,” he said. “This is the second consecutive defeat to a great team, Liverpool and Arsenal.

“We must reflect on this because we have had two defeats in two big games. For this reason we must have the humility to understand that we need to work a lot to improve and change our story.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in