5 ways Chelsea can avoid second season syndrome

Each time Chelsea have looked to be on the brink of something enduring under Roman Abramovich, the rug has been pulled out from beneath the man charged with delivering it.

Be it the failure to make signings in Jose Mourinho's title follow-up summer – regardless of the dysfunctional landscape of his then relationship with the club – or the removal of Ray Wilkins from Carlo Ancelotti's staff, it sometimes appears that the club can be its own worst enemy.

Conte needs backing: a new deal; the players and staff he wants, plus an acceptance that he is the man for the job. Surely Chelsea's leadership can now see the value in taking that line with the title-winning boss.

Another area where the club fell down following the side's two most recent pre-Conte title wins, was in recruitment.

The prevailing wisdom is that they were caught napping believing the existing squad to be adequate for the task ahead, although that is only part-true with other factors at play in the summers of 2010 and 2015.

But the clear issue this summer is that while Chelsea's tight first team squad was able to fight on a single front over this Premier League campaign, the addition of battles in Europe adds a greater need for new signings.

Six or seven first team options need to be brought into the squad, and the lion's share of those need to be in place before pre-season starts.

Success and failure have often shared a common theme over the last decade. Managers who got their team in proper shape for the commencement of hostilities have tended to succeed. Others have fallen by the wayside for that very reason.

Some of it, as with in summer 2015, has been down to players returning for work unacceptably out of shape. Other issues revolve around the planning: too many games in pre-season, not enough games, or too many miles travelled in too short a timeframe.

Flights are sapping for any sportsman, but hanging about in airports is as troublesome as the sitting on the plane itself. Chelsea's single long-haul trip to Beijing and Singapore is probably less of an issue than the zig-zag air miles that, for example, Manchester United have planned.

Titles are a blessing, not a birthright.

Conte's triumph was utterly unexpected, and it should not be suddenly seen as a minimum requirement. There is every chance it will not be retained as Champions League football returns to Stamford Bridge, with potential for over a dozen extra fixtures from last term.

But with the Manchester clubs, in particular, looking to improve on pretty disastrous league campaigns, Abramovich needs to be prepared to accept that second or third place is not a failure.

After the success of Mourinho's first tenure with the club, the talk was all about how the owner wanted to do it all again 'playing sexy football'.

Often, as the ensuing years showed, the grass simply isn't greener on the other side.

There was very little sexy about Roberto Di Matteo's machine-like grinding towards the club's greatest ever success in Munich – though if you were in Camp Nou for that Ramires chip, then you may well disagree.

Sometimes you have to reach the conclusion that the manager really does know best – and the last season has shown Conte knows better than most right now.

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