Taras Udut tells why the Italian should roll up his sleeves and stop complicating the situation for both Chelsea and himself.

After the defeat from Manchester City on Antonio Conte from all sides, a flurry of criticism - both justified, and not entirely fair.

Moving away from the fourth place, which gives the right to participate in the next draw of the Champions League, already by five points, the "blue" did not have the right to make another mistake in the final nine games of the current season.

Despite this, the main claims to Comte after the match against the "citizens" were addressed not because of the fact of defeat, but because of how they lost. Throughout most of the match, Chelsea sat on the defensive and allowed Manchester City to control the ball so easily that in certain episodes it was absurd - Guardiola's wards were calmly perepasovyvalis in someone else's half of the field, while Chelsea players did not try to create even the illusion of pressure.

So pragmatic approach to the game can really be christened negative, because no pleasure can such passiveness bring. Strange it seemed, and how Chelsea continued to take the ball forward to a low Eden Azar, who this season won only five of the top martial arts (25%), while from the bench behind all this watched just two central strikers - Olivier Giroux (33 won dueling, 61%) and Alvaro Morata (39 won dueling, 45%). And the way Chelsea lacked intensity, although they rested for four days longer than Manchester City, was at least illogical. After the game Sky Sports experts Gary Neville and Jamie Redknapp summed up all this harsh outcome - the first called such tactics (or her incarnation) "unacceptable", adding that "it hurts to look," and the latter went even further, saying that the Chelsea shown - "anti-football" and in general "crime against the game".

"You need to take any criticism, but I'm not so stupid as to play against Manchester City in open football and lose 0: 3 or 0: 4. If my memory serves me, a few days ago, everything was criticized by Wenger, when Arsenal missed three goals in thirty minutes against the City, "retorted the Italian at the post-match press conference before opening fire.

Experts need to think with their heads and understand that you should talk about tactics only if you understand it, and not just open your mouth and carry stupidity.

Conte's passive aggression can be understood. The fact is that behind this pragmatism there was an almost successful game plan. At least, from the point of view of the Italian himself, who noted that the players were performing his installation for the match to prevent any gaps between the lines. Chelsea, in contrast to Arsenal and Tottenham, managed to avoid the defeat, to which Conte warned before the match. And although even a minimal defeat to call the ideal result will not turn the tongue, the "blue" were close to leaving Ethihad with one point.

In the match against Chelsea, the "townspeople" for the first time this season inflicted less than four strikes on the target and only for the second time scored less than two goals in the Premier League home game. And it's not that the players of Manchester City, one by one, squandered dangerous moments.

Model xG (from Understat), statistically estimating the quality factor of the created goal chances, shows a value of 0.95 for the "blue moon". Since January 16, 2017, that is for the last more than 13 months, it was lower in only one fight (0.72 against Liverpool, when Pep Guardiola's team suffered the first defeat in the current campaign), with the average score in this season 2,54. And if, after the blows of Victor Moses or Marcos Alonso the ball was in the net gate of Ederson, then this approach to Conte would have been completely justified.