The incredible feats of Conte's Chelsea

With a few games left of the 25th Premier League season, champions elect Chelsea just need one more win to confirm their title and round off an incredibly impressive start to the reign of manager Antonio Conte.
After guiding Italy in an impressive Euro 2016 campaign, Conte came to Chelsea after a disastrous season where the Blues finished tenth – the worst ever finish for a Premier League defending champion.

From that starting base, in a season that was billed to be a classic showdown between all the managerial talent at the top clubs, Conte is on course to beat them all comfortably with Chelsea finishing as champions. With that being nine places better than last year, this will be the biggest improvement they’ve had in the Premier League era.
Conte will join an elite group of managers that have won the title in their first season in the division. He’s about to be the fourth manager to win the Premier League title in his first season in English football and interestingly, two of the others, Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti, also achieved this feat with Chelsea (Manuel Pellegrini was the other one to do so at Manchester City).
Of those managers listed above, only Carlo Ancelotti has won a Premier League and FA Cup double, which is something that Antonio Conte could still be on track for with his team facing the prospect of a final against Arsenal at Wembley.

Conte is also set to grow the successful record of Italian managers in general. He’s set to become the fourth Italian manager to win the Premier League, all of them winning in the last 7 years (no country has produced more winning managers).
Finishing as champions will also add to an extraordinary league career run for Conte. It’ll be the fourth consecutive league title in his club career (he led Juventus to 3 Serie A titles before his stint with the Italian national side).
It all makes for an impressive tale as Chelsea are now on the brink of their fifth Premier League title (only Manchester United have more with 13). Not only should they end up winning the league, but this could end up being one of the most dominant title wins in the league’s history.
With 3 matches to go, Chelsea already have more points this season (84 points) than champions Leicester City had at the end of last season (81 points). If they win their last 3 games, they’ll have the second most points ever attained in a season (a record they hold from Mourinho’s first season in 2004/05).
While their points total is impressive in itself, the margin between them and second place has also shown their dominance. Back in March, their lead was as high as 10 points. It’ll be a 10-point lead again if they beat West Brom and secure the title on Friday night. The biggest margin they’ve ever won the PL by is 12 points (in that same Mourinho debut season).
Amidst this seemingly comfortable march to the league crown, it’s worth pointing out that it hasn’t all been plain sailing from the start for the Blues this campaign.
Without doubt, the turning point was a 3-0 defeat at Arsenal last September which came straight after a home loss against Liverpool, which ended up being their only instance of back-to-back losses this season.
Straight after that, Conte made a seemingly permanent tactical switch of a back three supplemented by wing-backs which proved a masterstroke that took the league by storm. After that Arsenal loss, Chelsea immediately responded with 6 clean sheets in a row and a run of 13 consecutive wins (1 off the Premier League record) in a 3-month blitz that took them to the end of 2016.
In that period, Conte set a new record by picking up 3 consecutive Manager of the Month awards.
Chelsea followed that up with consistent performances throughout 2017 where they maintained their tactical discipline and commitment throughout.
A feature of how they have stayed ahead of the rest has been their ability to keep up their high defensive standards throughout the 90 minutes of a match. They are the only team in the top 6 that have conceded less goals in the second half (12) than they have in the first half (17).
Couple that with the best attacking record in the division this season and you can clearly see how it’s resulted in such a dominant showing.
After such an impressive season, what next for Chelsea under Conte? If history is anything to go by, Chelsea aren’t about to rest on their laurels and could be on their way to more growth. When he was at Juventus, each season’s points total was higher than the last, which should be an ominous warning for his current competitors who will need to act smart in response to what the Italian has brought to the Premier League.