Ex-Manager watch: Antonio Conte

[mil1lion]

We looked a lot better when 2 first teamers came on in Skipp and Moura. The more squad players we use the worse we get, simple as that really. Yesterday we had 6 first teamers out of the starting lineup compared to 2 on Wednesday.

 

[Timberwolf]

We were lucky against Liverpool and Man City was under-resourced in the first game of the season (most of their players were drained).

Chelsea won 4 of 4 against us because their style particularly suits playing against us.
They don't play a high-line so we have less chance to counter (which is the only style we excel at currently).
They have really good CMs, which also happens to be our weakest area on the pitch, so they are going to have lots of posession and can play through us. They also happen to mainly play centrally.
Their main weakness is in the full-backs and in center forward.
If we had a good right-back we could exploit Alonso (who lacks the legs to track back, but is technically really good so suits playing forward). This is shown when Bergwin looked threatening in the 1st half, and the way Alonso 'slipped' for our dis-allowed goal. However our RB was Doherty who lacks the quality to consistently attack.
Lukaku is also low in confidence, which is why Sanchez coped well yday.

Overall I disagree that it's anything to do with mentality (that we lose consistently to them). For me it's a combination of personnel and tactics.

Good post.

Chelsea have the lions share of the ball against most teams (except City, Liverpool and maybe Brighton) but the one thing they consistently struggle to do most weeks is put the ball in the back of the net.

Over the past 3 games we've given them 3 freebies due to silly errors, they've scored 1 worldie and one set piece goal. Any chances they actually created for themselves from open play they managed to screw up - it was largely the goals we gifted them that made the difference.

Against a team like Chelsea whose style really suits playing against us, the absolute last thing you can afford to do is give away cheap goals like we did.

...or have a ref disallowing perfectly valid goals.

 

[spursfan77]

Some of you may find this article an interesting read, regarding how Conte tweaked the formation and lineup during his title winning season at Chelsea.

Relatively average but functional players were selected over more creative (and higher paid) players like Fabregas, Oscar and Willian. This is one of the main reasons that the idea of bringing in Traore to play RWB doesn't scare me - assuming all the ITK and runours are true about Conte wanting him. It's also why I'm content with Hojbjerg, Skipp and Winks as our main CM options (all very functional players), with rumours suggesting our more creative CMs are planned to be replaced by less creative but more functional players. Kessie seems like a much better fit for Conte than Dele and Ndombele. Only time will tell whether Sarr (signed under Nuno, then loaned straight back) is a player Conte wants.

If only he fucking hadnt!

 

[ultimateloner]

I agree with most apart from mentality. Too often (not just against Chelsea) I see us score a goal then relax and defend it. Other teams like the Manchester ones keep looking for more goals. This match though came down to lack of depth leaving us unable to play the managers preferred style or switch things up to foil the way Chelsea play.

I think too much stick is given when 'we relax and defend a lead'. 9/10 this is the best route to winning games if you are up. This is especially the case for a team like ours, where we mainly score from transitions and rely on 2 star players. The odds are better if we play to our strength (low block + counter-attack) as opposed to changing it.

Other teams, such as Man City, are way ahead both in quality and squad depth compared to us. It suits them more to look for more goals when they are up, because their entire team is good on the ball and can recycle it until they see an opportunity. The same cannot be said of our team. Who in this squad would you trust with the ball when a press comes along? For me it's only Kane.

Therefore until there is material improvement to the quality of our players, there's no point even trying to playing in another way. Sometimes your best hand isn't good enough and that's the case agasint Chelsea.

 

[ultimateloner]

Whilst I will agree with the personnel and tactics point, I will disagree with it not being anything to do with mentality seeing as though (to me anyway) in each of those 4 games we have seemingly given up the game once they got their first goal. It's easy to say that they have a great bench so what can we do about that, but then that is us having the same mentality of hiding when the going gets tough. Where's the resilience gone from the mid-Poch seasons?

Also, lucky against Liverpool? Behave. They were lucky we decided we couldn't finish in that game.

Mentality comes from confidence which itself comes from quality. It comes from knowing that you have a certain edge and in a given situation you might get the better of the opposition.

Against Chelsea I just can't see that edge. If I was Winks and I'm up against Jorgino and Kovacic, aside from trying to find Harry Kane when the ball comes to me, the best I would hope for is to not lose the ball.
A similar thought process is what I'd expect of most of our team, except Kane and Bergwin because they know they hav the qaulity to do something.

It seems normal to me to think this way. It's common sense. To ask for something more seems over-demanding.

The resilience from mid-Poch season comes from knowing that they have legs to out-run the opposition.

 

[ultimateloner]

Good post.

Chelsea have the lions share of the ball against most teams (except City, Liverpool and maybe Brighton) but the one thing they consistently struggle to do most weeks is put the ball in the back of the net.

Over the past 3 games we've given them 3 freebies due to silly errors, they've scored 1 worldie and one set piece goal. Any chances they actually created for themselves from open play they managed to screw up - it was largely the goals we gifted them that made the difference.

Against a team like Chelsea whose style really suits playing against us, the absolute last thing you can afford to do is give away cheap goals like we did.

...or have a ref disallowing perfectly valid goals.

The Chelsea central midfield is under-rated. It lacks goals/assists, so it doesn't grab attention, but it excels at ball-winning, positional awareness and moving forwards. They hardly lose the ball (Jorgino did recently but its not common), and almost always pushes the countering side to the flanks (a key part of their defensive strategy).

As you say their main problem is failing to score. Lukaku was meant to address that but he has been found out (he doesn't do well against low-blocks).

We gave away goals yes. But that's what you'd expect with a side of our quality; we dont have enough of it to 'get it all correct' over 90 mins.

 

[SandroClegane]

Brighton, Wolves, Everton and West Ham seem to have coped with starting 11’s infinitely inferior to Chelsea. We are better than those teams but again meekly succumb to Chelsea. Nothing wrong with suggesting Conte might not have set team up well and hardly crazy hogwash, Conte has been brilliant for us but today wasn’t his finest.

Chelsea's players also are going to "get up" for a game against Spurs where they probably don't care as much about Brighton, Wolves, Everton, and West Ham.

 

[TOLBINY]

Chelsea's players also are going to "get up" for a game against Spurs where they probably don't care as much about Brighton, Wolves, Everton, and West Ham.

Would like to see our players "get up" for a game against Chelsea.
I was disappointed when I saw the line up yesterday - felt we should have gone 5-3-2 like against Liverpool, could have played Reggie LWB and Sess left midfield with Winks and PEH.

 

[Sputic]

Conte's not the Pope you know. He's a brilliant manager but he can also be fallible and people can call him out if they think he got it wrong.

Personally, I think he spooked himself when he went on about how much better they are than us after the first leg and subsequently went overly negative in the two games since.

The squad needs improving but worse teams than us have troubled Chelsea recently.

He's a great manager but it's fair to think he was culpable yesterday. Insisting he can never be wrong is veering towards Mourinhoista territory and you don't want that

 

[carmeldevil]

Conte's not the Pope you know. He's a brilliant manager but he can also be fallible and people can call him out if they think he got it wrong.

Personally, I think he spooked himself when he went on about how much better they are than us after the first leg and subsequently went overly negative in the two games since.

The squad needs improving but worse teams than us have troubled Chelsea recently.

He's a great manager but it's fair to think he was culpable yesterday. Insisting he can never be wrong is veering towards Mourinhoista territory and you don't want that

Only in your opinion.

He's Your Holiness in my mind.

 

[Matthew]

Levy’s text to Antonio 31st Jan

 

[Johnny J]

Firestarter Conte turns up heat on Levy by demanding Spurs signings | David Hytner

Tottenham manager has been scathing over a lack of quality in the squad and his chairman will not have missed the message

www.theguardian.com

 

[13VanDerBale13]

This is not gonna end well ?

He’s clearly not going to get what he wants & as every day passes it’s becoming more obvious, we’ve ‘run out of time’.

 

[glacierSpurs]

I really can't wait for the window to be over. Even if Conte really does has low expectations of the window and understand the pathetic plight of this club dealing with transfers, he will no doubt be very put off and disappointed in the way we do business. Seems to be losing Vlahovic already and Traore still not done coming into the last week of the window. Yet uninspiring names keep popping up as clearly the cheaper alternatives.

 

[kernowspurscoach1977]

I still think we will get a minimum of 2 in and I think Conte will suck it up this window. His main focus will be in the summer and how we conduct business then. I can’t imagine for one minute we have no money to spend. Stevie Wonder can see the squad needs overhauling and there is no way in this world we would hire conte without the capability to improve the squad.

The media are desperate for Conte to leave spurs, it also seems some of our fans are the same, so they can say told your so and beat Levy/Eric with the “you didn’t back Conte” stick.

 

[spids]

We were lucky against Liverpool and Man City was under-resourced in the first game of the season (most of their players were drained).

Chelsea won 4 of 4 against us because their style particularly suits playing against us.
They don't play a high-line so we have less chance to counter (which is the only style we excel at currently).
They have really good CMs, which also happens to be our weakest area on the pitch, so they are going to have lots of posession and can play through us. They also happen to mainly play centrally.
Their main weakness is in the full-backs and in center forward.
If we had a good right-back we could exploit Alonso (who lacks the legs to track back, but is technically really good so suits playing forward). This is shown when Bergwin looked threatening in the 1st half, and the way Alonso 'slipped' for our dis-allowed goal. However our RB was Doherty who lacks the quality to consistently attack.
Lukaku is also low in confidence, which is why Sanchez coped well yday.

Overall I disagree that it's anything to do with mentality (that we lose consistently to them). For me it's a combination of personnel and tactics.

Great post.

Also, if Abramovich left and they were run properly as a business and a new Spurs owner injected £1.5 Billion for new players and wages over the next decade, I am pretty sure we'd be fairly dominant against them by the end of it.

 

[Gb160]

Conte's not the Pope you know. He's a brilliant manager but he can also be fallible and people can call him out if they think he got it wrong.

It’s the confidence of the posters calling him out that cracks me up.

 

[NEVILLEB]

If the club didn’t spend before Covid and when we had a chance of winning the league then I don’t hold out much hope they’ll spend heavily in the next 5 years. Joe Lewis will just want things ticking over without major risk.

The reality is that glory was within our reach and many of our fans backed the board for not spending. “We don’t want to do a Leeds!”. Ultimately this ultra conservative attitude has put us right back where we were when ENIC took over. To Dare is to Do used to be the motto but we’ve fallen on our faces without really even going for it.

 

[thebenjamin]

interesting tidbit of info from a Sky Sports interview with Antonio last week via a mate who was there -- Antonio spent much of the interview complaining about not having any signings yet and not having any money to spend. THFC then saw the cut of the interview and demanded Sky edit all that stuff out of the broadcast version.

 

[Mark_147]

interesting tidbit of info from a Sky Sports interview with Antonio last week via a mate who was there -- Antonio spent much of the interview complaining about not having any signings yet and not having any money to spend. THFC then saw the cut of the interview and demanded Sky edit all that stuff out of the broadcast version.

So what was your mate doing there?