Antonio Conte won't be playing it cool despite Mourinho's etiquette lesson

“You don’t do that at 4-0,” he said. “If you’re going to do it, you do it at 1-0. At 4-0, it’s humiliating.”

Conte looked at him non-plussed at the time. And he was equally non-plussed when the media asked about Mourinho ahead of tomorrow night’s FA Cup quarter-final between

Chelsea and Manchester United.

“I think I’ve shown in my time at Chelsea – and not just here, but

everywhere I have managed – that I live the game with great passion,” Conte said. “Sometimes I want to share my enthusiasm and passion with my players and my fans. It’s normal. [Mourinho and I] are not the same. Have I spoken to him about it? No, but it’s not important. There is nothing I need to clear up with him.”

So much for the “mind games” angle. Getting a primer on local etiquette from a guy with a laundry list of disciplinary citations seems a bit much. Then again, it’s Mourinho, Manchester’s man of mystery. We don’t know whether the upbraiding of the over-enthusiastic Conte was simply an expression of spontaneous

concern for a fellow manager, an

attempt to deflect attention from the pounding his players were getting on the pitch or, perhaps, a stab at sowing the seed of future mind games, establishing a chapter in the narrative to which he can refer back later.

That’s the thing with Mourinho. You’re not sure what’s real and what’s part of some cunning grand design. We saw it in midweek away to Rostov in the Europa League. Granted, the pitch wasn’t exactly of the lawn bowls variety. But did it

really warrant the 48 hours of moaning, as if his players were being sent out to play on rubble? Rostov play there every week. They seem to survive.

Mourinho simply sent on his heavyweights – Marouane Fellaini got the start, naturally – and United hung on

in a war of attrition to earn a 1-1 draw which leaves the tie in the balance.

Of course, United will be without Mourinho’s other heavyweight,

Zlatan Ibrahimovic tomorrow night. The big Swede accepted the three-match ban offered by the FA for his

elbow/decapitation attempt on Tyrone

Mings against Bournemouth last week, probably because he realised taking it further and into a possible appeal might mean a heftier ban.

United have actually coped well in the half-dozen or so games he hasn’t started, though none – other than a draw against Arsenal early in the season – were against an opponent of Chelsea’s calibre. But there remains an obvious hurdle. When Ibrahimovic

isn’t around, it’s not as if he gets

replaced by a lesser version himself, for the simple reason that few players in the world have his unusual skill-set. No, without him, United need to play somebody entirely different,

whether it be Marcus Rashford, Wayne Rooney or Anthony Martial. Fine players all, but guys who make different types of runs and have

different attributes. This means

shifting to a Plan B that is entirely different and, in United’s case, given the huge numbers of minutes

Ibrahimovic has played this season and the fact they have gone deep into three different competitions, it’s a Plan B they have had little time to work on in training.

And that, perhaps, is the most

striking contrast. Not only will

Chelsea be at close to full strength, Conte will have had a lot more time to work on different solutions.

Repetition builds muscle memory and chemistry. Ten Chelsea players have played at least 75 per cent of the club’s Premier League minutes – for United, that number is five (Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba, David de Gea, Ander Herrera and Antonio

Valencia). What’s more, because they have been out of Europe, Chelsea have played 13 fewer matches in all competitions. Given that clubs don’t have full training sessions on the eve of and day after matches, that’s a full 39 extra days of full-on work that Chelsea have enjoyed relative to United. That makes a huge difference for most managers, but it’s especially true for guys who are new to their clubs, like these two.

What it boils down to is that tomorrow night you will have one side executing and the other improvising. And that tilts the balance

decisively towards the home team.

ARSENAL’S majority

owner Stan Kroenke

understands consumer markets. He made his billions in commercial real estate development. Acquire land under or near the sort of shops that attract customers and interest and, in the long-term, you will make

money. Buy land and build shops that nobody wants to visit and you won’t. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt to marry one of the heirs to Wal-mart, the biggest retailer in the US.

Walmart’s mantra, as outlined by the founder, Sam Walton, was “pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap”. He understood the power of volume better than most. He squeezed suppliers to get the lowest possible costs and then passed the savings on to customers. That generated sales which, in turn, allowed him to drive out the competition and make billions, one tiny sliver of profit at a time.

Football, of course, is a slightly different business. Arsenal’s wage bill has been in the top four for most of the past decade and their net spend, after years on a shoestring, has been creeping up too, though it remains far lower than most of their competitors near the top of the

Premier League heap.

It is not a perfect parallel, but here’s where it fits: Walmart are hugely in tune with their customers. They sell value products that consumers want. And they rely more on physical sales than they do on market surveys because they know that folks often lie: they say they want those organic carrots when, in fact, they end up buying the cheap, microwave meal.

For all the bile spewed at Arsene Wenger and the way Arsenal have been run over the past few seasons and all the angry Gooners on ArsenalFanTV, Kroenke knows they still show up, buy merchandise and value the brand (and, crucially, so too do their commercial partners). That is what matters. Actions, not words. Wenger provides a product that puts bums on seats and generates volume and he does it in a cost-effective way. Until that alters, don’t expect Kroenke - no matter the number of 10-2s on aggregate - to make changes.