5 factors that derailed Chelsea's 2017/18 season

#2 Conte’s disagreements with the board

Manager Antonio Conte has had some bitter disagreements with the Chelsea board

Despite winning the Premier League title in 2016/17, problems between Chelsea’s board and manager Antonio Conte were being reported as far back as March 2017.

At that stage the reports were simple rumblings that Conte and technical director Michael Emenalo were having disagreements over which players to sign in the summer transfer window, but soon other reports came out too – supposedly Conte wanted to appoint an Italian to replace assistant coach Steve Holland while Chelsea’s board felt it important to keep an Englishman in that role.

By the end of the summer not only was Conte supposedly unhappy with the amount of money that had been made available to sign new players – despite spending a club record £70 million on striker Alvaro Morata – but he was also unhappy with the fact that the board had spent so much on Morata and that they’d left the transfer so late, meaning the player didn’t have as much time to train with his new side during the pre-season period.

Disagreements between the board and manager were always going to spell disaster for Chelsea, but an on-pitch crisis could easily have been averted had the tensions been calmed before the beginning of the season. But that didn’t happen and in April 2018 Conte outright slammed the board in an interview, stating that the club didn’t seem willing to match his ambitions when it came to signing new players.

That interview came in March – during which Chelsea were in a slump that saw them pick up just 3 points from 5 league games. With such an unhappy atmosphere around the club and simmering tensions between the board and a manager who seemed to be engineering his exit, is it any wonder that Chelsea’s season fell apart?