Antonio Conte and the Tottenham Way

As much as it pains me to say this Conte was right; you certainly can lay blame at the feet of the players and the board for the situation we find ourselves in.

The mentality of the players has always been up for question. Lloris, Davies, Dier and Kane have played in, or were part of the match day squad for; the 2015 and 2021 League Cup final, the FA Cup semi final defeats in 2017 and 2018, and the Champions League final defeat to Liverpool in 2019. They were all part of squads that came third to Leicester and second to Chelsea. You can probably add Son to this list, because he played in all of those games too, bar the the 2015 League Cup final.

All of them were involved in the Europa League exit to Dinamo Zagreb, the 2022 FA Cup loss to Middlesbrough and the 2023 FA Cup loss to Sheffield United.

These must be the players Conte thinks have a ‘loser’ mentality. Three national team captains, one a World Cup winner and an Asian Cup winner. The remaining player is the club’s record scorer. Are they the problem then, Antonio? No, probably not. So let’s take Harry, Son and Hugo off the list (they might let us down and fuck up occasionally but they aren’t unreliable fuckwits).

Since Poch’s last season Spurs have moved on fourteen of the twenty-four players in the 2019/20 squad. Those who remain are Lloris, Kane, Son, Dier, Davies, Sanchez, Tanganga, Skipp, Sessegnon, and Lucas. Lucas is leaving in the summer and in 2019/20 Tanganga, Sess, and Skipp were (and arguably still are) emerging young players. So that leaves Sanchez to be added to the list of players with a loser mentality.

So was Conte’s outburst about Dier, Davies and Sanchez then? It can’t possibly be, because Conte had Sanchez as 4th centre back last year and wanted Dier to get a new deal this season. And Davies has turned into a fairly reliable, if limited, centre back.

Since Poch left we have signed a significant number of players for Jose, Nuno and Conte. Players who cost a lot but seemingly aren’t suited to the next coach. We lurch from manager to manager, playing style to playing style. We collect players suitable for one manager yet unusable for the next. If we are talking about a loser mentality then it circles back to the manager. We have refreshed sixty percent of the squad. He’s had 18 months to work with them and reshape mentality. We achieved a team spirit and a winning mentality at the back end of last season.

We had complete buy in to Conte in the summer when we completed that physically excessive pre season. Conte has been given all the tools to succeed, beyond what we have ever given to another manager. And whilst that might not be enough, we should have seen some indication of improvement as a result of giving him more control. But of course everything has turned to shit.

You’ll remember that Jose cycled through all our centre backs to find a competent pair and couldn’t do so. It appears as though the same problem is still present for Conte.

In order to play just about any top level brand of football you need technically competent players. In the Premier League, physicality is also important and to win you need the right mentality. Under Poch we had a squad with good technical ability, good physical ability and a weak mentality. Under Conte we have a squad with poor technical ability at the back, good physicality and a poor mentality. We have the defence of a wet paper bag, which also has the inability to use the football. We can’t rely on them to build possession and reset the plays. We can’t rely on them to clear a corner or make a straight forward tackle.

The squad does suit a more defensive or counter approach, as it hides more of our defensive woes and allows the threat of a counter from our competent forward line. But that’s because in the last four years we’ve had counter attacking coaches.

There is no question that we need at least two new centre backs and a keeper in the summer (I think we need a creative midfielder too but that’s a discussion for another day). But isn’t it Conte’s job to train the players? Shouldn’t he be improving them, and if they can’t be improved why wasn’t that clear to Conte at the end of last season?

Antonio is right;, we do need more quality players with the right mentality in the squad. And recruiting those is hard because everyone else wants them. And we have had a history of getting zebras and thinking they can race the Grand National. But this isn’t the case under Conte. Conte got Bissouma, the best central midfielder outside the top six last year. He got Perisic, his man from Inter. He got given Spence, the best right back in the championship last season. Richarlison, Brazil’s number nine. Danjuma, who scored a number of Champions League goals taking Villareal to the semis last season. These are quality players. Yet all of them have regressed and Perisic aside I think you can level that blame on Conte. For sure in recent weeks Richarlison and Danjuma have proven they have a winners mentality.

Conte is also right about Levy.

Levy is a glorified administrator and accountant. He is the longest serving chairman in the league but still makes rudimentary mistakes when it comes to football. The way he has built a football experience around the stadium and managed stadium finances is exemplary. The stadium and training ground are world class and we have to remember that he has taken us from being about the level that Palace are operating at to a level where being in a Champions League group with Real Madrid or Bayern Munich isn’t eyebrow raising.

But this is his ceiling.

Levy cannot get us beyond that line. He can get us close to that line, but rarely do we actually step above it. He doesn’t know how to take a very good team and give the manager tools to get them up to and over it. When Poch was close to that line we didn’t sign anyone for eighteen months. When Redknapp was close he got Nelson and Saha.

It highlights the lack of football voices and experience at board level. Frank Arneson and Paul Mitchell both left after a year. Even Comolli, who was widely derided at Spurs, moved to Liverpool and was responsible for signings that went on to helping them towards a title. The fact these people keep leaving is indicative of the fact that football people aren’t welcome at the top level at Spurs. The only exception to this is Paratici, a man now banned from working in his native Italy and soon to be banned worldwide. Another stellar piece of recruitment by the club.

So there is truth in what Antonio said. But other parts of his outburst are also very very incorrect.

Conte has had money. He might have directed a lot of his outburst at the players but no one in the history of Tottenham has had as much money as he had this season. Are we just supposed to accept that he can’t get a tune out of them because they are ‘club signings’? And what the fuck is a club signing? They only happen at Spurs. I doubt Potter wanted the fifty players he got in January but you don’t hear him dismissing people as club signings. In foreign leagues it’s very common for the signings to be done by a director of football with no input from the coach. So Conte should be used to them. Why is he kicking off now?

Player recruitment has increasingly been about bringing in physically strong players over technically competent ones. As I mentioned above we need a much more technically competent squad. That stops us building from the back. So why was the focus in January on a new right wing back when we had three decent players, and not on the centre backs, where we only have one competent defender? Why wasn’t Lloris’s replacement considered years ago when you could see signs of his regression? Shouldn’t there be a list of potential future transfers to replace players in our squad?

We don’t sign high potential players anymore, we don’t consider long term planning and succession at all. We only lurch into activity when we are in complete disaster. We should go back to what we did well; buying high quality young players we can bring up to the level we need. That was the policy that got us back into the top six under Jol, the policy that got us 4th under Redknapp and the policy that gave Poch the nucleus of his side.

An inability to cut your losses on players who don’t work out creates more of a problem. Sanchez will have completed six seasons at Spurs by the end of this year. It was clear after two he wasn’t up to scratch. But because he cost £40M you knew that we would never get rid of him. Levy would rather chop off his own balls than make a loss on a player. Compare this to other clubs , clubs like Manchester United and Woolwich who have gone through flop after flop in their search for players good enough to take them back to the top of the tree. We don’t do that. We collect all the flops and present that steaming pile of shit to a manager and ask him to find diamonds. This was addressed in part last summer, but there are still a number of players that have to go just to start refilling the squad with players up to grade. It’s all painfully slow, and that slowness increases the frustration further.

So Conte has valid points in his outburst. But why blame the players so thoroughly when he has to take blame for that as he coaches them and why climb back on the criticism of the board when that part is the most valid part?

Instead the biggest criticism was of the culture at Tottenham, something I take issue with.

No one ever acknowledges how far we have come organically. Institutional clubs like Woolwich, Liverpool and Manchester United are somewhat protected in the media. City, Chelsea and now Newcastle are the nouveau riche who are exciting because they can upset the institutional clubs. Spurs don’t fit these narratives, so they are judged against the expectations of the elite but without the acknowledgment of how far we’ve come to even be in this conversation.

It’s unreasonable to expect Spurs to win anything. We don’t have the most money in the league or the best side. And when we did have the best eleven we lacked the squad depth. Every major final or semi at home or in Europe we’ve lost since 2015 has been against one of other the big six clubs. Is that really failing? It’s not like we are going out to Villa or Wolves at the crucial moment is it? Recent cup defeats to Middlesbrough, Forest and Sheffield United point more to me about a lack of direction in the cups. It’s all so flat! It seems like the club don’t have any interest in the cups and that’s why we get these nothing performances.

I was gutted by our performance at Sheffield United as everyone was, but it’s clear the club don’t prioritise these games. So we don’t even compete for the domestic cups anymore. We only compete for the league or Champions League, yet even then we ask our manager to win them with a hand tied behind his back and the other shifting through the bang average players that represent half our squad hoping to find that diamond. Can you honestly expect someone in that circumstance to win?

Whilst the media have merrily twisted the knife and said that Conte has simply delivered some home truths to the board and the players, he dragged our club’s name through the dirt. A rant that revealed to me that he considers us beneath him. The death throes of a drowning man trying to pull others down around him.

Would they be quite so supportive of what Conte said if he was Liverpool manager and had said what he did about them? Or Manchester United? No, because it would be considered unforgivable, an immediately sackable offence.

We haven’t given Conte all the tools that he needs, but he’s had a lot more than anyone else before him. And expectations amongst the fans are so low that if Spurs were to play more exciting attacking football we probably wouldn’t be in the crisis we find ourselves.

And that’s because we do have a DNA. We are Tottenham fucking Hotspur. We have a culture and identity. We know what we are, we know who we are and we know the standards we expect. But these win now coaches we have been hiring have dragged our name through the mud. If the team played to win, in an attractive style and actually put some effort in to every game everyone would be happy. That’s how low our bar now is. A significant proportion of the fanbase just want to watch good football.

And we did used to win stuff, playing our way. You don’t beat Atletico 5-1 or City 3-2 in a Cup Final playing counter attacking, low possession. We have our own way of doing things. The way that works for Barcelona and Ajax. Why are we giving that up because a few pundits and managers say it’s impossible to do things our way; the Tottenham Way?

Conte smacks of a man who thinks we are beneath him and that he’s doing us a favour. And when we have dared to question him he’s thrown his toys out the pram. But you know what? We don’t need Antonio Conte. Because we are bigger than him.

We’re Tottenham Hotspur and we are about glory. We are about doing things in style and with a flourish. We go out to beat the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom. That’s our DNA, that’s who we are, Antonio. Danny Blanchflower knew it, we know it.

We know who we are. And I want us to be us again.