Ex-Manager watch: Antonio Conte

[curlacious]

Do they publish a Conte Cam after a dire performance?

 

[whenstevewentup]

It would be nice to start a game on the front foot and not let opposition teams settle. I think we all have the same concerns with Conte that when his formation isn’t working he doesn’t tend to change it , why we didn’t for example go to a 352 to stop us getting overrun in the middle , too many games this season we’ve conceded the midfield and we’ve been unable to create anything . Liverpool at home and Leicester away we went 352 and created buckets of chances . Such a strange performance from the players and the manager , especially going in to the game with such confidence and the importance of it , I just can’t get my head around it . It’s not the loss , it’s how we lost .

 

[CoopsieDeadpool]

Suddenly seem to be seeing posters that weren't around, or had nothing to say while we were winning those consecutive games & totally turning our negative goal difference into an almost unassailable positive one.

Sorry if I'm wrong here. It just seems people actively wait for a loss so that they can get their gripes off their chests.

I think maybe some need to take into account that this squad, a squad that we've all acknowledged has been stale & in decline for 4+ years has only had Bentancur & Kulusevski added to it.

What Conte has achieved so far, with largely that same underperforming/stale squad is far in excess of the sum of its parts.

Let the real judgement commence when Conte is working with a squad of his design?

 

[glacierSpurs]

Maybe his plan B will be considered/come to fruition when he feels he's got a squad with the required ability to carry out the plan?

Or perhaps his plan A could well work all along if he has the right and good players needed to begin with?! Like **ahem* better wingbacks *cough** and better bench options than **ahem** Lucas and Winks..

 

[dickieven]

Suddenly seem to be seeing posters that weren't around, or had nothing to say while we were winning those consecutive games & totally turning our negative goal difference into an almost unassailable positive one.

Sorry if I'm wrong here. It just seems people actively wait for a loss so that they can get their gripes off their chests.

I think maybe some need to take into account that this squad, a squad that we've all acknowledged has been stale & in decline for 4+ years has only had Bentancur & Kulusevski added to it.

What Conte has achieved so far, with largely that same underperforming/stale squad is far in excess of the sum of its parts.

Let the real judgement commence when Conte is working with a squad of his design?

That is Spurs Community in a nutshell. The match threads are generally much longer after a shit performance. When it is a comfortable win a lot of people have nothing to say!

 

[JCRD]

Or perhaps his plan A could well work all along if he has the right and good players needed to begin with?! Like **ahem* better wingbacks *cough** and better bench options than **ahem** Lucas and Winks..

That is true and thats why I said if I had a finite amount of money id lump it all on two first choice wing backs and somehow fill the back up places with free agents etc.

However, if yu know we dont have the wing back situation then a plan B is even more essential until we get the players for the plan A ... 4231 with Kane dropping deep and Bergwijn could have helped. In all honesty though against Brighton I dont think any formation will have worked - our players just did not look right in terms of energy, sharpness, motivation or movement.

 

[Timberwolf]

I think Conte has done an incredible job and has done about as well as any manager could've with this group of players in such a short time. We're not the finished article yet and have a unbalanced squad so the odd shocker is inevitable and we just need to ride it out. Even peak Man City and Liverpool have the odd disaster every now and then - it's just football and we need to accept it and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Still think it's fair to criticise a bad performance on here, though. We were fucking shit on the weekend and Conte's changes didn't do much to help.

 

[ajspurs]

I think Conte has done an incredible job and has done about as well as any manager could've with this group of players in such a short time. We're not the finished article yet and have a unbalanced squad so the odd shocker is inevitable and we just need to ride it out. Even peak Man City and Liverpool have the odd shocker every now and then - it's just football and we need to accept it and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Still think it's fair to criticise a bad performance on here, though. We were fucking shit on the weekend and Conte's changes didn't do much to help.

Yeah I can easily look past the weekend and mark it down as just a bad day at the office, but if we're presented with the same obstacle from now until the end of the season, even with Conte just working with what he has in mind you'd like to think we may be at least a bit more effective in our attempts to alter the pattern of the game.

Fingers crossed that no one will be as good as Brighton were in executing such a plan but I do still hope we're better prepared for if another team will be.

 

[Japhet]

My biggest concern with Conte is what is plan B? Brighton were the better team and were stronger in midfield. I thought Conte would take off a CB and bring on Winks to add an extra player in midfield but it was just more of the same.

I noticed Kane didn't seem too keen on dropping deeper to become the third player like he sometimes does, which has bailed us out a few times.

Kane was probably jet lagged and a bit knackered after swanning around watching the golf in the USA. Thought he'd have a bit of a stroll on Saturday.
/QUOTE]

 

[mark87]

Do they publish a Conte Cam after a dire performance?

Probably wouldn't be child-friendly enough to show.

 

[chrisd2k]

Talking about plan b but honestly look at the bench. I would have taken Emerson off for Stevie early on and probably told Romero to push into midfield, or even told Deki to move back into midfield with Kane and Son playing as a two up top.

Of course the major problem is that any plan is doomed to fail when Winks has to come on. Sorry, not sorry ?

 

[ajspurs]

Talking about plan b but honestly look at the bench. I would have taken Emerson off for Stevie early on and probably told Romero to push into midfield, or even told Deki to move back into midfield with Kane and Son playing as a two up top.

Of course the major problem is that any plan is doomed to fail when Winks has to come on. Sorry, not sorry ?

I would have either moved Deki into midfield or taken off Davies for Bergwijn to have a flat back 4 and ultimately a 4-2-3-1. Cue the "look at all the Premier League managers in here" comments! I think in cases like Saturday, even an experimental 'plan B' would have been better than sticking with what we were doing as it was just a very strange game in which we never got started at all. Thinking about it though it's actually probably no coincidence that Arsenal fans said they only started playing in the last 5-10 minutes against the same side.

With that in mind, maybe Brighton can just be that good at potentially nullifying their opponents and we shouldn't be overly harsh on ourselves.

 

[WiganSpur]

Suddenly seem to be seeing posters that weren't around, or had nothing to say while we were winning those consecutive games & totally turning our negative goal difference into an almost unassailable positive one.

Sorry if I'm wrong here. It just seems people actively wait for a loss so that they can get their gripes off their chests.

I think maybe some need to take into account that this squad, a squad that we've all acknowledged has been stale & in decline for 4+ years has only had Bentancur & Kulusevski added to it.

What Conte has achieved so far, with largely that same underperforming/stale squad is far in excess of the sum of its parts.

Let the real judgement commence when Conte is working with a squad of his design?

We're clearly an improvement from where we were a few months ago. Wing backs and lack of midfield rotation options still a big problem.

 

[mil1lion]

I thought Moura coming on was his plan B with his more direct pace, then adding Winks who gives different forward passing in midfield.
The game was finely balanced at 0-0 , it wasn't like we were chasing a loss so maybe didn't see the need to change too much. We could have easily nicked a goal and be talking about a 1-0 win on an off day. It was a bad day all round, very flat performance for whatever reason. I'm not sure there was much Conte could do when so many were having an off day. The options on the bench are not likely to turn a game regardless of formation. I'd really like us to sign him a Drogba type of centre forward in the summer and another ball playing midfielder like Eriksen on a free. Those are the type of subs that would change the way we play rather than players who simply replace position for position.

It's hard to figure why we were so off it but I'm sure having training disrupted by Conte having to work form a distance didn't help. Fair play to Potter though, he played a different system to what we would have planned. Not many teams have the quality to pull off a different system as well as they did. There's also few players who do as good a job that Bissouma did to keep Kane quiet. The system has been working well lately for us though and there's no need to change anything but the intensity for the next match.

 

[Beni]

That’s why I would like the backup option for Kane to be really good in the air. Kane is ok, but not great and games where teams sit back and defend or press high up, it gives us a plan B to go more direct and long with a striker that is good in the air with Son/Deki and Kane feeding off of that striker.

 

[chadders]

I think Kane was struggling to get into it because Bissouma was screening him so he didn’t get on the ball enough and when he did he had 2 or 3 on him.
Potter made us play through our weaker options out wide.

I think if Conte moved 3 into midfield, it would have allowed us to get Kane into the game more and would have had focal points for attack.

 

[InOffMeLeftShin]

I get the "plan B" argument but at the same time I understand why Conte persevered with plan A particularly as our players need to try to understand how to use plan A in more challenging situations where there are less spaces to exploit. Conte mentioned in his conference after that it was a difficult game and we need to learn and that we need to figure out how individuals can impact these kind of games.

I personally wished we'd seen Kulusevski slide more centrally to try to help occupy the two guys on Kane just to try to open up some different spaces but I am sure Conte trusted that the changes he made would make a difference to the flow and I'm not going to question it. We still should have had enough to do much better and the team has to figure out why it didn't work.

 

[DiVaio]

Or perhaps his plan A could well work all along if he has the right and good players needed to begin with?! Like **ahem* better wingbacks *cough** and better bench options than **ahem** Lucas and Winks..

**ahem** he decided to bring Lucas and Winks when he has Bergwijn in a much better form and **ahem** he decided to let Dele, Ndombele, Lo Celso and Bryan leave

 

[Cochise]

His Plan B has been to either go 442 or 352. I think that we would see this more next year as he'll work on it more in the summer. I also think there is an element of Conte not thinking we have the players to make those two systems work atm.

 

[slartibartfast]

**ahem** he decided to bring Lucas and Winks when he has Bergwijn in a much better form and **ahem** he decided to let Dele, Ndombele, Lo Celso and Bryan leave

Really? Christ are you seriously saying we shouldn't have shifted them?