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Everyone has a different opinion of “he should have scored that” and that’s why xG is useful.
theathletic.com
It really depends on if he gets all the players he wants over the next two windows.
i agree with you. love the blokes passion, i actually like the system, but some of the team selections have been strange. the next 2 windows are massive, he needs to get competent players in for his system otherwise its not going to work and hes going to break players like kane.
Some people think they aren’t sustainable, especially if you get outplayed and don’t generate corners
Then there's the non-penalty goal scoring stats as well...
VAR gave me one of my greatest moments as a fan in the quarterfinals against City. I have never gone from being so dejected to elated that quickly.
i think he scrambled one home at the back end of last year, but its a good point. emersons assist and goal stats are shocking considering the minutes hes had and the positions the system gets him into high up.
Yes, same here, but it seems that more recently, VAR has had more reason for us to feel the opposite.
Antonio Conte’s year at Spurs: How well has he really done and what comes next?
The challenge for Spurs and their manager as they celebrate their first anniversary is to show they are still heading in the right direction
Antonio Conte’s year at Spurs: How well has he really done and what comes next?
Jack Pitt-Brooke
Oct 31, 2022
One year ago yesterday, Tottenham Hotspur suffered a defeat to Manchester United so humiliating that Daniel Levy knew he had to put into motion his well-guarded plan. Nuno Espirito Santo was out as head coach and Antonio Conte was in, just five months after saying thanks but no thanks to taking over at Spurs.
It felt like a transformative moment, landing one of the best coaches in the world — and in many ways, it has been. Conte instantly improved Spurs and gave the club a sense of upward momentum they had not had for years. The players were fitter, hungrier and sharper. The football ideas clearer, the defence better organised, the attacks more co-ordinated. Conte driving Spurs up into fourth place will always be a triumph of coaching.
At the end of last season, there was more optimism at Spurs than there had been since the height of the Mauricio Pochettino era. They had finished the season impeccably, beating Woolwich, Burnley and Norwich City to seal fourth. ENIC had arranged a new £150million ($174.2m) equity injection for the club, the first time it had done anything like that since 2004. And most importantly of all, Conte had ended months of speculation by confirming that he would stay at the club. It felt like Spurs were on the upswing of a thrilling new era.
The question going into the summer window was whether Tottenham would sign the players Conte wanted to help him to take the team to the next level. He wanted experienced players to come straight in and upgrade the team, at left centre-back, both wing-backs, midfield and up front. And he wanted them at the start of the window so he could get them ready for the new season. And he got some of them: Ivan Perisic (on £180,000 per week) and Richarlison (costing £50million plus £10million in add-ons) were departures from normal club policy, arriving early in the window from Inter Milan and Everton respectively. Yves Bissouma had been excellent for a few seasons at Brighton & Hove Albion. Clement Lenglet was not one of Spurs’ top priorities at the start of the window but he was available on loan from Barcelona.
After the finish to last season, and the summer window, expectations were high that Conte would continue to improve Tottenham this season. Not many expected them to challenge Manchester City for the title (and even fewer can see that now given how Erling Haaland has started). But there was a hope that Spurs could be among the best of the other teams, especially with Manchester United appointing a new manager, Chelsea sacking Thomas Tuchel in early September and Liverpool going through a transitional season. Staying in the top four this season felt like the minimum target. When the players returned for pre-season, they were more confident and optimistic than they had been for years.
A quick glance at the Premier League table suggests that Spurs are right on track in third place. Twenty-six points from 13 games is a very good record. Sustain it over the whole season and they will finish with 76 points, their best haul for five years. They are only three points behind Manchester City and five behind Woolwich, having played one game more than both.
In the Champions League, they are top of Group D with one game to play. For their first time back in this competition since 2019-20, it is not a bad place to be. But they have to go and get a result in Marseille on Tuesday to go through. They have been unlucky: if Harry Kane’s winner against Sporting Lisbon had been allowed to stand they would have already won the group and could rest players in France. But they have also dropped points they should have won. Much like their league form, it remains in the balance.
And yet despite the competent start, there has been an air of frustration or restlessness among the fanbase right now. It feels as if Tottenham have not fully kicked into gear this season, as if they still need an electrifying event. Or, more worryingly, that they have settled into their true level — an effective team but one that can be worked out, and cannot raise their level in the biggest games of all. Clearly, they struggle to put a full 90-minute performance together. In their last three games, against Newcastle, Sporting and Bournemouth, they have started very poorly and then had to try to rescue the game in the second half, with mixed results.
Look at the teams they have beaten this season: Southampton, Wolves, Fulham, Marseille, Leicester City, Eintracht Frankfurt and Everton at home, Nottingham Forest, Brighton and Bournemouth away. Not a bad record at all but the hardest one of these was the trip to the Amex, and that against a mid-table side who had just got a new head coach. Whenever they have faced a top-level side, they have been outplayed. As Conte put it, “Every time we play a high-level game we struggle.” Spurs needed a last-minute equaliser to rescue a point at Chelsea, lost 3-1 at Woolwich and 2-0 at Manchester United, their worst performance of the season.
So much of what has frustrated people about this season was evident against United — the inability to create chances when Dejan Kulusevski is not in the team, the willingness to sit back and invite pressure, the refusal to make substitutions even when the team was crying out for them (Conte did not make changes until there were eight minutes left).
The defeat to Erik ten Hag’s side was just the second time this season that Conte has started with the 3-5-2 but he has still faced criticisms of rigidity, predictability, inflexibility — everything that gets thrown at a head coach when his plan A stops working as well as it used to.
But then viewing the whole year through the prism of the worst performance feels like missing the point on purpose. And even if you accept the premise that Spurs are not playing very well right now, there are some huge mitigating factors for why that might be the case. The first is the scandalous schedule in this first half of the season. Spurs played nine games in the first six-week part of the season, and then will play 13 in the second six-week section before the World Cup.
So there has been almost no time to train properly between the games, and none of those empty midweeks Conte used to such effect during the back end of last season. Most weeks the only thing Spurs have time to do is video sessions and light preparation, rather than hard tactical work out on the pitch. It is only natural that performances would suffer.
Managing this workload might be doable with a big squad but that is not what Tottenham have. Conte has been operating with a small group of trusted players too, tending to only rotate a few positions while keeping the spine of the team the same. Conte said last week that teams need to “be lucky” in terms of injuries, and his side has not been. A hamstring injury picked up by Kulusevski on international duty has impeded Spurs’ ability to create chances but has also underlined the poor squad construction that leaves them so dependent on one player, the only one for whom there is no direct replacement.
Then there are issues of individual performance that Conte himself may not be solely responsible for. Son Heung-min, the cutting edge of the team, has only scored in two of his 18 appearances so far this season although he does still have five goals. But Spurs have been so dependent on Son and Kane in the last few years — long before Conte took over — that they can ill afford Son’s finishing slump to go on. Hugo Lloris is probably not the goalkeeper that he was, even though he was excellent in the 2-0 defeat to Manchester United. Perisic has offered less at left wing-back than was hoped.
At the back of everyone’s mind is the forthcoming World Cup in Qatar, starting just three weeks from now. It is impossible to quantify how much of an issue this actually is, and Conte and the players have always denied that it is a factor. But watching Tottenham at the moment, it doesn’t always feel like all of the players are able to give 100 per cent all of the time. Maybe this is natural — a reaction to the busy schedule and the imminent World Cup. Tottenham are especially exposed to this, since almost their entire first-team squad will be going to Doha after the Leeds United game in a couple of weeks. But it feels naive to suggest that it is not a factor.
Whether you think at this point Conte is doing a good job is ultimately down to you. There is a clear positive story here for those that want to see it: Conte turned Spurs around last season, made them better than they had been for years (just look at the underlying numbers below), dragged them into fourth, and is now keeping the team steady, but at a good level, at a difficult time. If they can continue to grind out results, stay in the top four and in the Champions League this autumn, then they can hope to put their foot down in the new year when Kulusevski is back. Trophies and a strong league finish are still within their grasp.
Pessimists and Conte-sceptics will see it differently, and will not have to reach back too far into Spurs’ recent history to find a precedent. Tottenham started the 2020-21 season perfectly well and were top after 12 games. But the tactics left the team too dependent on Son and Kane scoring every chance, the deep defence invited so much pressure, results started to unravel and, well, if you are reading this article you probably know what happened next.
Is that a fair comparison? No, probably not. Conte is a better head coach than Jose Mourinho was during his time at Spurs, clearly closer to his trophy-winning peak. His methods are more modern, especially regarding fitness, preparation and drilled attacking patterns. And he has improved Tottenham more than his recent predecessors did. Spurs were significantly better in the second half of last season than they had been at any point since the Pochettino era. Just because the team is not flying right now, it does not follow that they are necessarily on the wrong track.
Perhaps the real continuity between Mourinho and Conte can be seen by how both men were brought to the club under the guise of being “serial winners”, rather than coaches who wanted to rebuild the club over the long term. Conte is not shy of making it clear that it is only worth his while being at Tottenham if he has a real chance to compete to win. And as the contract he signed in November 2021 ticks towards its ending next summer, the question is whether Tottenham and Conte are sufficiently closely aligned to agree a new one.
Tottenham do have the option to extend Conte’s stay if they want to, but more importantly there is confidence at the club that a new long-term deal will be agreed. Spurs chairman Levy has already opened negotiations over a new deal with Conte’s team, with whom he has a good relationship. A new deal for Conte on improved terms should certainly be within reach, even if Conte himself is in no rush to tie himself to anything soon.
For Levy, having Conte as Tottenham head coach is a triumph. It was Levy rather than Fabio Paratici who convinced Conte to join the club in autumn last year. And after a few difficult years at Spurs, Levy loves having a head coach who is so clearly one of the very best in the world. He often remarks in private that Conte is the best coach he has ever worked with. After building the best training ground and stadium in football, having Conte feels like the next step in that process. Quite naturally, Levy is desperate for Conte to succeed.
It has not always been plain sailing, and at times Conte’s outbursts have not gone down well with the Spurs hierarchy. But Levy also knows that when you appoint Conte, this is what you get. The first time Spurs spoke to Conte, in May 2021, this was Conte’s message to them: that he is who is and he will not change for anyone.
But in this relationship, the leverage still lies with Conte. His standing within the club is such that he has been allowed to do things that other managers were not — not just his comments but his public sidelining of four first-team players at the start of the summer window. Levy has been prepared to go out of his way to keep Conte happy, abandoning his traditional playbook, as shown by his sanctioning the Perisic and Richarlison deals, or arranging the £150million equity injection.
And what of Conte himself? He enjoys working for Tottenham, loves the facilities and relishes the challenge (and the financial power) of the Premier League. On Friday afternoon, he said that he was “enjoying every single moment” of his time at Spurs, whom he described as a “model club”. No one who watches him up close could doubt his commitment to succeeding in this job.
Yes, a small part of Conte may rather be in charge of a team with a bigger shot at winning titles, but those jobs do not come along that often. In Italy last week, he was again linked with a return to Juventus but that is still thought to be unlikely. Some big teams are simply put off by how much hard work Conte can be, as shown by Manchester United deciding against appointing him last year. Conte also knows that Tottenham will never be Manchester City, but is enjoying this job for what it is.
The challenge for Spurs and Conte, as they celebrate their first anniversary, is to show each other that they are still heading in the right direction.
(Additional contributor: Mark Carey)
