At the final whistle, a disappointed Conte, 52, headed straight to the dressing room on his own. And he said: "I came here to help the club and if the problem could be the coach I'm ready to go, no problem." Conte emerged for his post-match media engagements, but refused to talk about the game and instead spoke about his current plight. "I am not used to this situation. I am trying everything but the situation is not changing," added the Italian. "I am available and open with the club to do what the club wants. "I want to help the club, I work a lot, I work very hard. I am giving 20 hours a day to Tottenham and the other four hours I sleep but it is not enough. "The performance can be good and the commitment was good but we lost. For me the situation is unacceptable. To lose four of five [games] for Tottenham has to be a disaster. "I came in to try to improve the situation. Maybe in this moment I am not so good to improve the situation. I am too honest to close my eyes and continue in this way. "For sure we are to speak and have a conversation with the club to try and find the best solution to help the team not have this type of situation. "It is the right moment to make assessment. I repeat, I am really frustrated." When asked specifically by another media outlet whether he would still be in charge for Saturday's game at Leeds, Conte walked away from the interview without answering the question. "In the last five games, we are playing like we are in relegation [trouble]," he said. "This is the reality. Maybe there is something wrong. "I want to take responsibility. If I have that, I'm open for every decision. I have ambition, I hate to lose. To take my salary, it is not right at this moment. "I want to help Tottenham, from the first day I arrive, but four defeats in five... This is the first time in my life this type of situation has happened. "At the moment we could finish 10th, 12th, 13th. We could finish in the same position as when I arrived here." He's another Mourinho isn't he? Woe is me to the press.
The latest interview with AC is worrying but having worked in Burnley years ago lastnights weather and the place can have that effect on you
4 defeats in 5 leagues games is ridiculous, especially when you look at the teams they’ve lost to. Conte is a winner so people shouldn’t be surprised he’s upset and emotional about the current situation. The current squad is a mish mash of players signed for different managers and a lot of players aren’t good enough or suited to the system Conte wants to use for his team. I don’t think it’s woe is me to be honest and say he’s struggling to help the team at the moment.
It's interesting that talkBALLS, talkBALLS, are the ones putting out headlines saying that Conte's post-match it was Conte issuing a rallying cry to his players You'd have thought they'd be the first carrion birds to descend upon the carcass
Conte is a proven winner with great ambition and extremely high standards, but the people that run Spurs are the polar opposite with no ambition other than to fleece the fans for as much money as possible, there should be no surprise when it turns sour.
Like it did with every other club he's ever been at within a year or two. And that famously cheap and unambitious Italian national team.
please log in to view this image Interesting analysis of Conte's results, depending on how many day preparation he has for them.
It is interesting and it either suggests he is struggling to get his ideas across, the players are struggling to internalise them, or both.
Alternatively, that the players' fitness levels are still below where they were at under Poch While the squad fitness clearly has improved compared to how embarrassing it sometimes was under the ubermensch and Nuno, at present it does feel like if we have two games in a week there is a decision being made where one game is the one where we play with full intensity and the other we ease off
This'll be a long winded ramble through what passes as my mind...enter at your own peril! Our current issues go back a long time. This suggests are structural problems (and still are) that are the fault of various people. 1. There has been and still is a double standard to how players are treated. Pochettino got rid of "problem players" such Kaboul, Lennon, Townsend and Walker yet Rose was rewarded for appalling behaviour in the summer of 2017 with remaining as a first choice player because Pochettino personally liked him (even though he was dross when he played). Players were dropped when not delivering (Janssen) yet Dele Ali was undroppable under Pochettino. To my mind this led to a culture of arrogance and of players being stiffled. Aurier cost £20m plus and not only did we have to pay him to go we lost KWP due to lack of game time while we persisted with him when it was obvious he was not good enough. Managers have under used players causing us endless issues. Llorente, Bale, Vinicius, Rodon all spring to mind for me. We released Llorente and didn't replace him like 2 strikers was a luxury. That was finally addressed in 20/21 season yet Vinicius and Bale rarely got a start. 2. Our transfer record has been appalling. Lo Celso, Ndombele, Rodon, Clarke, Sessegnon, Doherty, Gil, Nkoudou, Fernandes, Sanchez, Aurier and Njie have all been signed and delivered nothing. Not saying all were bad but Gil, Clarke, Rodon have all barely played (they cost us £50m approx) and the others cost well over £200m. This shames our scouting system imho. This (points 1 and 2) is down to Pochettino, JM, Nuno and the scouting system. 3. We have hung onto players for far too long. Aurier, Dele and Rose should all have been sold much earlier. Aurier has been an issue since 2016 when he joined. We could have got some money back on him but ended up paying him to leave. We could and should have ditched Rose in 2017 but even if Pochettino believed he could "change his attitude" it was clear by 2018 that he was not the player he was. Apart from the CL in 2019 and JMs first 5 games and then one over head kick Dele has been dross. No matter what your view of why, it has been clear that he was not worth keeping. Yet we waited until no one was prepared to pay anything up front before accepting reality. This has cost us at least £50m imo. That is down to Pochettino, JM and Nuno as managers. 4. This has meant that we have lost young players because they see no future at the club. The only players to come through in the past 5 or 6 years are Tanganga, Carroll Winks, Walker Peters, Fredericks Onomah and Carter Vickers Only Winks and Tanganga have really been given a run. Prior to 2016 there was Rose, Lennon, Walker Townsend, Kane, Mason, Caulker, Livermore, Bentaleb and Coulthirst. Most were given a good run at Spurs. I think that points 2 and 3 have contributed to young players leaving. This is the responsibility of Pochettino and JM. 5. We have been in our new ground 3 years in April yet still have no sponsor. This has cost us a minimum of £75m - £100m. That is down on Levy and the board. 6. We gave Pochettino £150m to spend then sacked him cos they didn't gel quickly. That seems insane to me. We then compounded that by employing JM when it was clear he was a busted flush that would provided terrible football. We then compounded that by not sacking him in January/February 2021 when it was clear he needed to go. Only to wait until SIX days before a cup final against runaway league leaders City and put a complete novice in charge. We clearly had no plan for sacking JM. When Pochettino was sacked JM was in post within days which should they'd been in touch with him. So we ended up starting off cold with those we approached which led to a long and quite frankly embarrassing 10 week search which gave us Nuno and 3 months of yet more turgid football...before wasting yet more money sacking him to get our 3rd permanent manager in just 6 months. It meant we have a manager who is working with a team who he didn't choose trying to get players in during January when clubs didn't want to sell. This is all on Levy and the board. 6. Off the field the furlough decision and ESL debacle and ticket costs have caused the rift between the club and the fans to become severe. The long hard truth is that the culture within the club needs to change and ultimately Levy as Chairman is responsible for this. And in my view he has and continues to fail. Unless Levy and the board accept the need for change then Conte goes this summer. I hoped (and still hope) that getting rid of Dele for no guaranteed fee and letting Clarke, Ndombele and Lo Celso go on loan for free to getting them out and save on wages was the first step in this change happening but, every time I hear Conte speak, I fear the club has failed to learn from it's mistakes (again). Coys
I wouldn't disagree with most of your points. I do think however that the bumps and potholes we've faced over the past 3-4 years are far too disparate to be able to hold any one person or entity to account, and I think you've alluded to that in your post. For example, although I personally do not think ENIC or Levy are the entity to take us forward, especially given the way the PL has shifted since they took over, I struggle to lay the blame solely at Levy's door. One obvious example here is our abysmal recruitment of players. Yes, there are isolated incidents (Grealish, Skriniar, Diaz) where perhaps a stronger resolve and greater ambition would've got a deal over the line, but the truth is for the vast majority of our transfers the vast majority of the time, we can't afford to target players in the same stratosphere as the Citys, Liverpools and Inters of this world, and so we must be shrewd and smart when it comes to incoming players. The list of failures in this category is catastrophic and surely cannot be labelled as Levy's responsibility. We've spent money and plenty of it in recent windows, but we've spent it atrociously. For me, the watershed has to be this coming summer. We either choose to fully back Conte which will look remarkably like the way we backed Poch in 2015. This means fully embracing his preferred 'system' and committing to signing (again: within financial reason) players who suit that system. It also means moving players on who do not suit his system, often at a loss (something usually unconscionable to Levy therefore a clear marker of support). Just as Soldado, Paulinho, Chiriches, Kaboul and Capoue were all sold at a loss, we absolutely need to consider letting go of Ndombele, Lo Celso, Bergwijn, Doherty, Sessegon and Royal and taking a similar hit to do so. Or, we rinse wash and repeat the failed approach of the past 3 years, which has been to ignore the advice of the best manager we've had in the modern era and pretend everything is hunky dory and if the light fittings in the stadium toilets were selected nicely, so too were the players. We've gone for quick fix solutions to our detriment and the end result is we've got a patchwork, lopsided squad built by 3 (now 4) different managers with different philosophies. It's the equivalent of giving a million apes 5 minutes on a million typewriters and expecting them to write Shakespeare. In short, we have comported ourselves like Chelsea or United despite our spending power being a fraction of those clubs. The fact that both are struggling and miles off of the PL summit as a result of years of instability didn't seem to register in the upper cortex of our club, so we opted for yet another classic quick fix in Conte - an appointment which makes zero sense unless we are prepared to deploy the scorched earth policy described above. It is still early days for him as manager and I am personally reserving judgement until the end of August (if he hangs around that long). But right now, I am relatively calm - if only because I do see a lot of similarities in what is happening now with what happened in 2014/15. Go back and refresh your memory of that season. Conte has been in charge for 3.5 months. His PL record in that time is: W7 D3 L4. Poch after 3.5 months was W6 D3 L6. Very similar, incosistent, mid-table style pattern of results. Things only really started clicking for Poch from his 16th match. Before then we were 10th in the table. After that we didn't drop lower than 7th. So I'm urging patience for the time being. It'll be a long and painful road but IF Conte sticks around next season and IF the owners give him true control over comings and goings, I am confident we'll have a good season next year. However, I do appreciate that those are BIG ifs.
Conte does not appear to be a coach/manager who can (for his inherited squad) : - raise the technical ability of lots of players above their current levels - put Fergie "fear of god" into players so their performance never slacks below a decent baseine For his "system" , Conte is going to need a lot of new players. We know : 1. from summer 2013 how that works out in the short term 2. such players are not going to come cheap (irrespective of the level of clear-out of the current squad) Computer says : Conte is gone in the summer..
I agreed with a lot of that, but there's a few points that I don't. Rose became an issue when Walker left due to being tapped up. He got injured, did an interview with The Scum and never got back on track. I'm not sure that we ever had an opportunity to sell him after the stupid rant to the media. The stadium sponsorship delay is down to a few things, in my opinion. The initial delay on the ground opening put people off, then we got covid and that killed it. The other factor is getting the right sponsor. Not sure if this is an issue for Levy. Could've been very embarrassing if we were playing in the Gazprom Arena, though. I'd agree that ticket prices are an issue, but I'm not sure that's a massive factor in complaints. It should be and it's one that I agree with, having to pay them. The Levy Out group with the largest voice don't appear to be that bothered about it, though. They're more interested in trophies, which is a reasonable point too, I guess.
I remember reports about enquiries for Rose throughout 2018, once he returned from injury. I would have refused to play him so he had no choice but to take the offers. But I could be remembering wrong. As for trophies, I would love use to win one but, like you, it ain't something that causes me to get annoyed at the club.
Spurs has a tradition of frequently being in finals and winning most of them, at a healthy frequency. But no club is entitled to be so, and irrespective of the angst it may otherwise cause, supporters would do well to remember this.
ENIC are literally the only owners of Spurs since the 60s who have the ambition to make Spurs one of the best clubs in the world. Unfortunately that actually requires raising revenue. There are only two possible sources of that revenue. The fans and money laundering.
It's all a lot simpler than people are making out. We've got the fifth most revenue about jointly with Arsenal. So on average we should finish 5th or 6th. If we get lucky and make good signings or have a coach who can get more out of the players then we can get top 4. If we make poor signings or the coach is below average we might come 7th or 8th.
