Conte Arrival Should Urge Chelsea to Learn from AVB Era with Terry

As John Terry paraded around the Stamford Bridge pitch after Sunday’s draw against Leicester City, fans chanted that they wanted him to stay. Terry himself, taking the microphone for an emotional address, agreed that ,"I want to stay, the club knows that, the fans know that." And the club, at last, it seems, want him to stay, but on less money and in a different role. What that means exactly, or what the contract offered last Friday entails, is not clear. But keeping Terry on in any capacity seems a very strange idea.

Terry, at 35, remains a very fine defender, although it’s intriguing that his WhoSored.com rating of 6.55 this season is around half a point down on his average over the past five seasons. But he showed towards the end of Jose Mourinho’s reign that he is still not somebody to take being rested kindly. He still seems to believe he should be leading from the front and that means being on the pitch. Last season, when he achieved the remarkable feat of playing every minute of every Premier League game, also ended with him with a microphone on the pitch, taking pops at Rafa Benitez for having, two years earlier, suggested he couldn’t play two games in a week.

As age saps further at his powers, Terry will be rested increasingly frequently.  There is no evidence he will acquiesce and that makes him a problem. The last thing a new manager needs is a grumpy senior player undermining morale, even if it is only by looking disgruntled on the bench. At some point time catches up even with club legends – Steven Gerrard and Francesco Totti, in their own ways, had, or are having, fraught finales to their club careers – and it would have been entirely reasonable had Antonio Conte asked somebody else to wield the knife so the situation was resolved by the time he arrived.

But beyond his age, there is another reason why Terry may not find an obvious role under Conte. Conte is often described as a coach who naturally favours a back three, and it is true that he has used that shape to great success with Juventus and Italy. But with Bari, Atalanta and Siena he preferred a back four, Rather, he is a coach who plays a pressing game and, finding Leonardo Bonnucci, Andrea Barzagli and Giorgio Chiellini at Juve, decided to field all of them. At Chelsea he may play a back three or a back four, but he will definitely press.

Terry, for all his many qualities, is not quick. Ask him to push up the pitch and he is extremely vulnerable to the ball in behind him. He does not turn quickly. In Chelsea’s swirl of recent managers, only one has really tried to impose a pressing game: Andre Villas-Boas in 2011-12. If there is a defining image of his reign, it is Terry sprawling hopelessly in the 5-3 home defeat to Arsenal. Although he rallied under Benitez, despite his frustrations, that spell under Villas-Boas was by some margin the worst the mature Terry has had under any manager at Stamford Bridge.

That season, regularly caught out of position, desperately trying to recover, Terry committed roughly twice as many fouls per game as he usually does. He picked up eight yellow cards, more than he has in the four seasons since combined. Of the eight he collected that season, seven came before Villas-Boas was sacked on March 4.

If Terry was too slow to play a high line under four years ago, he will be too slow now. Play Terry high up the pitch and he will be undone by balls in behind him. That means his role next season would be limited even if it weren’t for his age. It may be that the new contract offer is part of an elaborate game to make it seem as though it is Terry’s decision to leave but if he does end up staying, it’s hard to see the outcome being anything other than frustration and acrimony.

Are Chelsea right to have offered John Terry a new contract or should they have let him leave? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below