Antonio Conte's Winning Machine: The Premier League Review

In our Premier League Review, we discuss the main talking points from the weekend's top-flight encounters. Here, we analyse Chelsea's early-season revival under Antonio Conte, who has the air of a vintage Bond villain.

According to the old adage, it's not about winning, it's about taking part. Whoever thought up that adage was a fucking idiot, clearly, as human existence is about winning, winning and winning again, winning relentlessly while clambering over the heads of our fellow man and giving each of them a sharp kick in the face for good measure. In their first two games of the season, Antonio Conte's Chelsea have shown themselves capable of winning by any means possible, and have certainly shown that they're willing to give their opponents a vicious boot to the face/shin/ankle/gonads in the process. Both of their victories (first against West Ham and, this weekend, Watford) have come late, but that only serves as proof of Chelsea's renewed ruthlesness. Having briefly forgotten the value of three points last term, The Blues are back, and just as nasty as they were in their golden era under Jose Mourinho.

If anything, Conte's Chelsea look like an upgrade on Mourinho's when it comes to the unscrupulous side of things. Diego Costa has been a marvel so far, mainly in that he's avoided being sent off. How any referee can look at his petulant face and not want to immediately produce a red card – simply as punishment for being a dickhead – it's hard to say. When they see him poleaxe Adrian, or dive theatrically against Watford, ditto. Maybe it has something to do with Conte on the sidelines, emanating menace like a suave but unhinged Timothy Dalton-era Bond villain.

This is the implicit threat of Conte's Chelsea, see. Cross him, and he will throw you to his man-eating iguanas, or explode your head in a decompression tank, or throw you into a vat of molten metal in front of a consortium of unfairly stereotyped Asian businessmen. Costa is his evil henchman, the sort of bloke who would engage Bond in a 15-minute knife fight before being accidentally impaled on a conveniently placed forklift. Together, they will make Chelsea winners. Their methods may be questionable but, fuck it, nobody gets anywhere in the Premier League by being nice.

You can read this week's full Premier League Review here.