He's broken himself. He's been awful for the last month or so and keeps making the same mistakes. Bruno Lage knew what he was going to get wrong and so did I. That's not something that people should be saying about a top manager. It took him 25 minutes to work out that his stupid system wasn't going to work. By then we'd already lost the game.
Most goals conceded are through mistakes and a lapse of concentration, and that is usually a knock on effect for either a lack of confidence or inability to read the game. I'm not sure Conte can coach that.
Mistakes and lapses of concentration also matter less when they're up the other end. We don't have the team to play counter-attacking football without our full squad. Mourinho and Espirito Santo already demonstrated that. Conte's just repeating it.
A coach can never cut out mistakes completely but by coaching a structure and setting the team up correctly, they can try and minimise high pressure situations and simplify the game for players so they have less to think about in the moment. When the midfield is overrun and you’re not confident in your defensive partners then you have more to think about and are more likely to make mistakes. If you know your wingback is covering the winger, the midfield will pressure the ball carrier, and your CB partner will cover a run in behind then you’re more comfortable stepping out to track a striker dropping off, for example. We’ve had no real competitive midfield for the last few games and have been mostly completely overrun, that compounded with missing Dier, who is the most vocal (and seemingly the only real) defensive organiser in the squad, means our defence has been at sixes and sevens while being put under a lot of pressure, with no way of relieving it. Mistakes are bound to happen eventually.
He's a great coach when things are going well, but seems to fall out with clubs and walk away when they aren't. Is he on his way out of Spurs already? He has some great attacking plsyers but the midfield likes balance and the defence is a basket case. He won't be given money to overhaul the weaknesses quickly. Is he capable of sitting in for 2-3 years to rebuild and accept that getting 4th place might be the height of his ambitions realistically?
I love how people are blaming the manager when the club has been getting worse and worse since 2019. Trust me, the problem isn’t the manager.
It's the issue with any systems manager: if a component of the system is missing, things fall apart rapidly In Poch's case he could rotate almost any player in and out of the squad with one exception: Dembele, as without him our moves never got started let alone broke down because the key component wasn't playing - and our downturn in form coincided with Dembele's physical deterioration and cackhanded attempts to replace him as our midfield lost the press resistance that Dembele brought With Conte the key components are a CB who spreads the ball out from the back which Dier has done and a CM with the workrate to keep the ball moving that at various times SKipp and Hojbjerg have done, and with Dier out we've regularly tried CBs in that role that aren't suited, be it Sanchez whose passing and control are nowhere as as reliable or Romero who can play that role but in doing so removes him from his main role of moving the ball upfield, and that causes our moved to judder to a halt and saps our forward momentum even before we get to talking about the issues with our midfield if Skipp's out of Hojbjerg's having a flat performance - which is why I highlighted the refusal to play Rodon in spite Conte saying he's Dier's understudy, as a back three of Rodon in the centre with Romero and Davies would have at least been more balanced...but midfield would likely have been problematic because Winks lacks press resistance, so Wolves' press was always going to find some joy in that part of the field
You might be right, but the question is, if Dier, Skipp and Hojbjerg were on the pitch, does Lloris make the same mistakes? Do Wolves even get to have the goal under siege in the same way as they did? Do the opponents play with such conviction against us at the home ground? I'm not convinced. Also... the problem was the midfield, or lack of it, hence Conte changing the formation early. We were being overrun in midfield.
I find myself agreeing. Winks is a slight upgrade on Tom Carroll. Can be useful in the right formation, with the right players around him. Give him too much of the midfield to hold up though, and he doesn't have the stature or ability to control things confidently enough for it not to be a s^&*show.
Whilst I agree in principle he is not helping himself at the moment, by being so inflexible with his approach, constantly being outnumbered in midfield has been a constant issue and whilst the players maybe not be good enough making their job harder before they even set foot on the pitch is clearly not helping.
Similarly important is how many goals do Spurs score when the above players are on the pitch. Stopping the opposition is one thing, but if you are not striking at the other end then the best result you can get is a draw,
Again, pragma over dogma. I would take any ****e play for the rest of the season, if it got the CL slot to bring in the revenue to fund the squad rebuild needed to get back to the Pochettino days (both style of play and performance) .
It's not so much that he walks when things aren't going well. He left Juve and Inter having just won the league and Chelsea having just won the FA Cup and in the previous season, the Premier League. It's more that he walks when he feels that he's not controlling squad issues and getting the support he wants. I don't see him as unhappy at the moment. He's talking long-term, praising players for effort and asking fans to be patient. The issue is and was always going to be, what backing he gets come the summer. If the club won't get him the quality of player he wants, he'll lose it and walk. He's not going to accept the familiar Spurs 'make do and mend' transfer policy, with Levy providing bargains' who are almost as good as Conte's picks. If we buy Conte enough of what he wants, he'll stay...the problem is, will Levy come up with the money needed?...especially if we don't land a number of the FoC targets we'll be targeting and have limited/no funds forthcoming from European football.
As Utd and Spurs fans we should feel like blood brothers at present. We have some very good players, some who are not as good as we were led to believe they were, a team which doesn’t function as a team, work as hard as it should or appear to have the ambition or commitment required and managers who seem to have been taken in by the glossy brochure. Both clubs seem to prioritise the commercial activities- whether is the stadium with its high ticket prices and non-football income or photo opportunities with Ronaldo- without acknowledging that those revenues will dry up if the club isn’t cutting it on the pitch.
The issue is our midfield's lack of press resistance since sometime in 2018, when Dembele's decline started in earnest, and we're still trying to remedy that the best part of four years on When our midfield is beating the press you get Winks dinking the ball over the top to Son and Kane as we had a few weeks ago - but when the midfield is getting pressed the easy percentage balls sideways or backwards become the norm. On the face of it you'd think, okay, bin off Winks and move on - but how many of our CMs of the last 3-4 years are press resistant? Sissoko wasn't as, while he had the physicality to break though, his control and passing were lacking when he did Hojbjerg isn't as, while he has the workrate to battle against the press, his passing's too conservative so it doesn't turn the press on its head Ndombele isn't/wasn't partly as while he could dribble though a press, he could only do that for 60 minutes tops...when he could be bothered Lo Celso isn't/wasn't because, while he'd ride tackles until his ankles bled (literally) he played too deep to link play up The jury's out on Skipp and Bentancur, although it does have to be said our midfield has coped much better against pressing teams under Conte when Skipp has played - although on the other hand Bentancur showed press resistance against Brighton but didn't against Wolves - and while it's easy to blame Winks entirely for that, realistically it has to be said the entire midfield was the issue as Sessegnon and Doherty were equally anonymous
I'm genuinely curious to know - in your opinion, what is the best way to maximise the most from the players you have? How do you think you should be playing? If you don't play counter-attack, are you saying you want a more possession-based approach?
personally I think the rope-a-dope approach Conte used early on could work well for us: allow opponents to come at us for the first 10-20 minutes, and once we've twigged their combinations hit them on the counter and with the wind out of their sails keep poking away so they can't regain momentum Coincidentally this is similar how Poch set us up in 2017-18, as we'd alternate between letting opponents come at us and pressing them so one phase they'd have their rhythm but risk getting suckerpunched the next they were pressed back, and it was the combination of the two which pushed teams back
I think with (hopefully) no more stadium closures due to Covid we can finally make the most of having more matchday revenue than before and this will be reflected in a better ability to compete for players on wages, especially those on free transfers. The kind of transfer fees we can pay will be dictated by the level of European football we qualify for.
