Terrace Talk: Lesson learned — we need to have faith in Conte
Chelsea fans understand that losing anything to Spurs is simply not acceptable but the demons in my head were conjuring up visions of us gifting them the double.
So by the time Saturday morning came around I had almost convinced myself I couldn’t go to the match and would instead sit in a darkened room devoid of any means of communication with the outside world.
The only thing that brought a chink of light to my dark world was the fact Pochettino and many of the Tottenham players had been pretty gobby beforehand.
The Argentinian manager would have done well to remember that, despite being highly regarded, he is yet to actually win anything.
Also, comparing Tottenham in terms of history to both United and Liverpool is laughable.
To follow it up with a claim Spurs were bigger than Chelsea or their north London rivals is downright delusional. The players too perhaps needed to reel things in a bit.
There is nothing wrong with a bit of confidence, but this needs to be tempered by a sense of reality in terms of where you sit in the grand scheme of things. And the Tottenham players, vastly improved though they are, seem to be talking like they are the current powerhouses of English football.
They were very much like this last season before they completely lost their bottle and although I feel they will have learnt some pretty harsh lessons from that, they seemed to be making the same mistakes all over again.
Their fans too were very vocal — they were absolutely convinced that the semi-final was there for the taking. And as stories broke of various members of the Chelsea squad succumbing to a mystery illness so their confidence grew.
Matchday arrived and an hour before kick-off the team news filtered through — Cahill out, Hazard and Costa on the bench and two players starting their first game of the season.
I went into meltdown and Tottenham fans were literally celebrating their win as they walked up Wembley way.
But it seems they and I had hugely underestimated Conte.
Poch, as the papers love to call him, had probably drilled his players all week on man-marking Hazard and winding up Costa — Ake and Batshuayi were an unknown quantity and it took Spurs a while to settle in the game and find their feet.
It is a credit to them that they did steady themselves, and come back twice, but Conte again got things spot on by bringing Costa and Hazard on at exactly the right moment.
The introduction of the Belgian especially seemed to have an affect on both the Tottenham players and fans and you could almost visibly see their resolve weaken.
Almost inevitably Hazard scored and even with still only a goal in it, thousands of them started to stream out of Wembley. Matic’s thunderbolt ended the story. The enemy had been vanquished once again — everything was right with the world.
Tottenham fans swamped social media claiming they were the best side, that they dominated the game – quoting possession stats etc. They still do not get that this means nothing.
How you can claim to be the best side when you conceded four goals is another thing that they need to think carefully about.
Has it broken them for the season? Will we see them falter in the league now — or will this strengthen their resolve. Impossible to tell.
The title is still in our own hands and that is all that matters; the cup win over the in-form side will have done our team no harm either in terms of confidence. It’s also been a lesson learned for fans like me whose faith wavered — we need to trust Conte
