In football, there are perhaps two types of crisis. There is the Arsenal type that festers for years until after a decade of stagnation and low-level grumbling you suddenly find all your best players are out of contract and you are battling Everton for sixth place. And there is the Chelsea type that bubbles up from nowhere, threatens to derail everything, and then blows itself out just as suddenly as it arrived. Whatever was going on at Stamford Bridge in August essentially ceased to affect performances on the pitch as soon as Antonio Conte put on a suit again; the semiotics of a Chelsea manager’s dress sense remain a fertile area of research. The squad still looks a little slender to...
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