• The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Manager Antonio Conte

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

Are Betancur and Kulusevski ready to start tomorrow if you need them to and in what role do you see Kulusevski playing for you the most?

The players are fit and for this reason tomorrow they are available for sure. To start the game I think is not right because they need to work with the team for a period.

For sure they can come in because I repeat, these two players can help us a lot.

About Kulusevski, he is a good player, he’s very young. I think he’s a great talent. He can play like a number 10 if you want to play with two players behind the striker.

At the same time, he has the potential to play also as a wing-back on the right. He has good quality. He likes to attack, he’s good in one vs ones, to create chances for his teammates. I think a good signing for us.
 
Bryan Gil was a big signing just six months ago, did you agree to loan him out because you felt he wasn't physically ready for regular Premier League minutes?

You know that I like to tell the truth and for sure we’re talking about a really good player in Gil, because he has good quality and he understands football quickly.

In this moment, for sure this league is very tough. This league is different. If you compare this league with other leagues, you play another sport here.

For this reason when you go to sign a new player, you have to consider many aspects. Not only one aspect, if he shoots well or makes an assist, you have to consider a lot of situations because this league is very difficult.

You can be good with quality. You can be a creative player, but at the same time you have to be strong physically. You have to run a lot, to be resilient.

The impact of this league is not simple. It's not simple. For this reason, the market, before signing a player, you have to check many aspects and not going on emotional things.


This is very important and I hope I transferred my thoughts to my club because I repeat, I have my vision. I'm here to try to help my club to improve.

In my experiences in the past, I have built good structure, good teams that have lasted over time. Also without me, also without me.
It means maybe if I tell something and have a vision, I see the situation. Here we need to build, we need to build a good structure and create a good foundation.

It will be very important to not make mistakes in the future, because in this moment many teams are higher than us and for this reason, to catch up with them, we have to reduce the mistakes. We have to reduce them, have a vision and follow this line.
 
sudoku said:
Were you expecting to lose that many players?

Honestly, before arriving at Tottenham, to read the list of players you have in the squad, I considered all the players are important players, no? Because Ndombele we paid a lot for and it was the same for Lo Celso and Gil.

Then only when you’re in the situation, you understand very well which is the best solution for the club and for the players in this moment.

For sure to lose four players in January, I repeat is not normal. We shared the decision with the club and the players, but I repeat, it means something wrong happened in the past. Usually you buy players to reinforce your team, you don't lose players after one, two or three years.

For this reason, we have to pay more attention in the future when we go in the market about the choice of the players. It becomes of fundamental importance if we want to reinforce the quality of the team. Otherwise, when you go reinforce the quality of your team, you drop the quality of your team.

Do you believe your squad is better now and what's the aim for this team?

For sure, the squad is more complete because before if we had an injury, I was in great difficult, I was in trouble. For sure, the squad is now more complete. We tried to fill the right role with one midfielder in Rodrigo Bentancur and Dejan Kulusevski can play as a number 10 and also he can play as a wing-back.

Now we’re more complete than before. Now it's time to work very hard to try to improve. We know very well there are many teams ahead of us. To catch up with them we need time and patience to work hard. Especially in the transfer market, we have to make not big mistakes. Because now – I repeat – there are many teams who started before us and they stay ahead of us.

If we want to reduce this gap, the mistakes must be minimum in every aspect. On the pitch, outside the pitch. This is my vision, my thoughts.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sounds like he’s happy with the window then thankfully. Glad he’s called out our shit recruitment in the past too.
 
Wow, very critical of our transfer business in the last few years, almost asking those responsible to stand up and admit they got it very wrong. Not just N'Dombele and GLC, he is also very critical there of the Gil signing, pretty much saying that we signed him with our hearts because he looked like an exciting technical footballer, whilst failing with our heads to realise that the physical demands of the EPL require much more than that.

Interesting comments about Kulusevski positionally:
"...he is a good player, he’s very young. I think he’s a great talent. He can play like a number 10 if you want to play with two players behind the striker. At the same time, he has the potential to play also as a wing-back on the right."
Is he seriously going to play him as a right wing-back at times? Ahead of Emerson, Doherty, but also Bergwijn and Moura (who many on here think could do a worthy job there)?

I know this sounds obvious, but you can't help but feel that either he will be a huge influence on our future football-related activities both off as well as on the pitch - or he won't, and therefore won't be here for long. Hopefully it's the former - everything he says always seems to make sense, I trust him (from a footballing perspective obviously).
 
scarletjim said:
Interesting comments about Kulusevski positionally:
"...he is a good player, he’s very young. I think he’s a great talent. He can play like a number 10 if you want to play with two players behind the striker. At the same time, he has the potential to play also as a wing-back on the right."
Is he seriously going to play him as a right wing-back at times? Ahead of Emerson, Doherty, but also Bergwijn and Moura (who many on here think could do a worthy job there)?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He'll definitely not be first choice, but will probably fill in if Conte wants to tweak tactics during a game and he's subbed one of the other guys...Say he brings on Moura for Royal for example.
 
Good presser, imo.

Very clear that Conte, rightfully, thinks little of our previous transfer dealings. Definitely seemed pleased with the signings we did manage to make this window, though.

Now listen to the man, and back him in the summer. No excuses.
 
Thing about Royal is, his defending is actually pretty decent.

it gets overlooked because he's supposed to be an attacking RWB and his crossing has been poor.

His 1 on 1 defending has been mostly pretty good.

There's a useful player in there that needs coaching.

The other thing is I feel like he slows the game down a lot. I don't think I've ever seen him sprint.
 
Herclueless said:
Fuck the expected goals. I'm all about them there surprise goals...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

#OuttaNowhere

m2kFTo9.gif
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top