The Blues were forced to come from behind at Vicarage Road but did so with aplomb, and the Italian will have been heartened by their early-season displays
If Antonio Conte has done anything since taking over at Chelsea, he has instilled a fighting spirit that is going to see the Blues win a fair few games this season.
After finishing 10th last term, Conte has come in to blow away the cobwebs; leading Chelsea back to the top of the league and doing so with a s3xy, cosmopolitan swagger. It may not be attractive, but the Londoners will certainly be hard to beat.
Watford are unlikely to pull up the same trees as Leicester City did last season over the next 36 games but they have an astute manager in Walter Mazzarri and a team that trades stardust for grit and determination. They relished their day against Conte’s men at Vicarage Road, asking all sorts of questions to which the visitors simply had no answer, prior to Conte's inspired changes.
They deserved their goal when it came. Etienne Capoue’s brilliant second-half strike, a stinging half-volley from just inside the box, looking set to give Watford a deserved victory. Michy Batshuayi, however, had other ideas, as he pounced after Heurelho Gomes could only parry Eden Hazard's bobbling long-range shot. Fellow substitute Cesc Fabregas then supplied the winner, sending a brilliant pass through to Diego Costa, who sprinted away and beat Gomes with a cool finish.
Chelsea have gone through three managers in the space of a year and are yet to truly gel as a Conte side, but he will have taken heart from an excellent fight-back.
Suspect defensively – Cesar Azpilicueta and Branislav Ivanovic were terrorised by Watford’s wingers – and blunt in attack in the first-half, it remains clear that this side needs work. Throughout the first half, Watford pressed forward, with the pacey, tireless Nordin Amrabat both annihilating Azpilicueta and tracking back to limit the threat posed by Hazard, and the experienced Troy Deeney dropping deep to link play before surging forward to help Odion Ighalo.
But when Conte shuffled his pack, it worked. Victor Moses came on to replace Pedro and immediately offered more of a threat on the wing, with the introductions of Batshuayi and Fabregas ultimately turning the game on its head.
The performances of Oscar and Pedro, though, will have troubled the Italian. The Brazilian was anonymous, marked out of the game by Watford’s brutish screens of Capoue and Adlene Guedioura, while Pedro created nothing of note from the right wing.
After a dramatic 2-1 win over West Ham at the start of the week, however, Chelsea fans will not mind too much. Six points from two tricky games give them a platform on which to build as they attempt to banish the ghosts of last term.
The feats achieved by Conte at Euro 2016 cannot be forgotten, either. The Stamford Bridge faithful were rightly salivating over the prospect of being led by a manager who took a widely derided Italy team to the quarter-finals in France, only to be eliminated in a penalty shootout by Joachim Low’s ever-efficient Germany.
The 47-year-old led a squad including former Southampton striker Graziano Pelle, Sunderland flop Emanuele Giaccherini and West Ham’s occasional centre-back Angelo Ogbonna to within an inch of victory over the reigning world champions.
And while there is hardly similar deadwood at Chelsea, Conte will surely bring the best out of this side, though he must be allowed to add more to his squad.
He knows this, having admitted in midweek that he is scouring the transfer market for new additions. The club are reportedly pursuing a deal for Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly, but he is valued at £60 million, while a move for Romelu Lukaku now appears unlikely given Everton’s similarly inflated asking price.
The signing of N’Golo Kante was a fine start to the window, the Premier League champion arriving from Leicester City for £32m – a bargain in today’s crazy market. Batshuayi, too, is already paying back his some £30m fee following his arrival from Marseille.
But more is needed; the core at Chelsea rotted away last season, and yet the likes of Ivanovic, John Terry and Gary Cahill are continuing to be picked. This, too, is not Conte’s fault; he simply does not have the numbers.
However, one thing is becoming abundantly clear among those who watch the Blues on a regular basis; Conte may well be the man to return the Blues to the pinnacle, the club having won the title only two seasons ago.
Twenty-four months is an awfully long time in football and, after the extravagant largesse of their rivals in the transfer market, Chelsea know that they too must continue to make moves in the transfer market.
Their start, though, points to a bright future. If Conte is allowed to build the squad he wants then the Blues will be back in the title race, instead of fighting for a top-10 spot.
- Goal