Antonio Conte is the last manager to deliver Chelsea a Premier League title but the Italian coach believes two signings could have seen the Blues dominate the English game.
The West London club finished seven points ahead of Tottenham to win the 2016/17 Premier League title but Chelsea would finish fifth in the next campaign and the swift decline would see Conte get the sack after only two seasons in charge at Stamford Bridge.
Many managers have followed the Italian coach at the Premier League giants, with only Thomas Tuchel bringing the Blues any major success by winning all three international trophies.
Conte returned to England in the meantime with Tottenham and failed to take the North London club forward but he believes his time at Chelsea could have been much longer if the Blues signed two players.
Antonio Conte is the last manager to deliver Chelsea a Premier League title
Those two players are Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk and Chelsea’s very own Romelu Lukaku, who have had great careers in England’s top flight.
“It’s not easy,” Conte said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. “Guardiola is the best coach in the world. And then when you can match the best coach in the world with a club that can back you and can invest to bring in important players to improve the team every season because they want to stay at the top of the world, then it is very, very difficult to compete at the same level.
“My history says that I always arrived at my clubs in a difficult situation with problems. I always build. After my first season at Chelsea, when we won the title, we could have become dominant in England.
“We spoke with Lukaku and Van Dijk, and with those two important players we could have changed the situation.”