Antonio Conte has said his heated touchline argument with assistant coach Angelo Alessio during Chelsea's 3-1 win over Arsenal was caused by a mistake on marking assignments at a corner kick, and admitted that his desire to win makes him "capable of killing anybody" in the heat of a match.
Alessio incurred Conte's wrath shortly before half-time at Stamford Bridge when Gabriel forced a save from Thibaut Courtois with a free header from an Arsenal short corner, the Chelsea head coach grabbing and shouting at his assistant before sending him down the touchline to relay a message to the team.
Chelsea were leading 1-0 at the time and went on to beat Arsenal 3-1 to maintain their nine-point lead at the top of the Premier League, but after the match Conte gave an insight into his management style.
"Angelo is my right-hand man and also, if you will, my most regular 'victim' because he is the closest man to me, the one I have the most direct relationship with," Conte said in an interview with Sky Sport Italia.
"Basically, what happened is that before the game, in training, we had clearly prepared a number of situations arising from corners and so forth, and on that occasion Arsenal had a sixth man in the box, and that meant that [Victor] Moses, who was originally meant to be on the edge of the area, had to go mark the sixth man.
"In such cases, [N'Golo] Kante needs to move back from his usual position further forward next to Costa, to take Moses' place further back, so as not to leave that part of the box uncovered. They failed to do that, and I got angry [with Angelo]."
Asked jokingly by presenter and former Juventus teammate Paolo Di Canio if he would have done the same to fiery striker Diego Costa, Conte added: "Look, Paolo, in such moments I am capable of killing anybody.
"I am such a 'your death is my life' kind of person that all manners go out of the window in the heat of the moment: the only thing that matters is winning. But that's because at the end of the day we're all working towards the same goal and we are all united."
Selene Scarsi contributed to this report.