The phrase 'crime against football' gets thrown around a lot these days. By these days, we mean at the weekend when Jamie Redknapp gave a Pictionary definition for the word overreaction.
The Sky pundit claimed Antonio Conte's defensive tactics against Man City in their one-nil loss over the weekend, while Gary Neville labelled the display disgusting.
John Giles joined Off The Ball's Nathan Murphy to discuss the week's football talking points, and rode in behind the Chelsea manager, saying that the Sky pundits need to look further behind what's going on at the club and not base their opinions on a single game.
"I think it was very harsh on him, Redknapp's saying 'this is a crime against football'. Actually, my take on it is the crime against football is the way the directors have treated him all year, for a fella that's done a brilliant job for them. They're actually forcing him out in my opinion, and he's taking the brunt of it".
Giles claimed that Chelsea did Conte a disservice after he won the Premier League last season, as they should have given him the money to not only buy players, but buy the players he wanted. Instead, Giles said that the board sold Nemanja Matic against Conte's will, and that with him and Kante, who was ill on the day, Chelsea wouldn't have played so defensively.
"There's players there he didn't want. Well I'm not saying he didn't want, but he wouldn't have been in charge of it. A manager can only play with what he has, and if he had of had Kante and Matic playing in that match the other day I think it would have been a different approach altogether".
"The directors committed the crime on football, because instead of embracing Conte when he did what he did last year. Instead, Matic out, gone. It's well known, it's in the public domain, the manager didn't want Matic to go".
"Neville said the directors wouldn't have liked this today. Well Conte wouldn't have liked Matic being sold and players being given to him that he didn't want".
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