The Conte Requirements
The Conte Requirements
Your Sunday sermon today is about The Conte Requirements.
Three days later Mourinho was fired.
Ryan Mason was installed as an interim head coach later that week.
Nuno Espirito Santo was appointed on June 30th and was sacked after just four months, before Antonio Conte was appointed
Spurs have got many plus points, a great stadium to generate future funds, a magnificent training ground but unfortunately not a great team at the moment.
If you look from the outside, Tottenham are set up for success.
The infrastructure is in place, the ability to generate money is in place, a Managing Director of Football is in place who has responsibility for the football side of the club.
There is an opportunity for someone to make a difference.
Mauricio Pochettino did it, Nuno could see the opportunity and now Conte can see the opportunity with the backing the stadium provides.
Antonio Conte usually means trophies.
Since 2011, the Italian has won more titles than all but for Pep Guardiola.
If he can turn around Tottenham and win trophies, he will have just enhanced his reputation and quite frankly, he has an excellent opportunity of doing so with the club in the UEFA Europa Conference League.
That would guarantee the club UEFA Europa League next season, if the club hasn't achieved a top four placing, which isn't out of reach.
For us supporters, he is going to get the club back on the right track and show these players what it takes to be a winner.
When he leaves the club it will be in a better state than when he arrived.
I am not concerned by the 18 month contract, I think a lot of that is not Daniel Levy trying to protect Spurs from future redundancy payments, but Antonio Conte waiting to see if he is going to be backed in the summer.
Conte says he wants this to be an important part of his managerial career, it is arguably his biggest task.
The Conte Requirements
Mr Fixit has arrived to fix Tottenham and he has already started to implement his shadow football.
Players like Ndombele, who hasn't consistently performed for 5 managers since he arrived, Lo Celso who again hasn't consistently produced what he is capable of, will need to up their game, or their Spurs careers could be over.
Højbjerg isn't performing at previous levels, he is more of a destroyer than creator and Skipp is just learning his craft.
Previously in his 3-5-2 system, Conte has had one defensive midfielder sitting who sets the tempo of play by circulating possession and playing short, penetrative passes to progress the ball.
The two midfielders on either side should have the energy to support in both attack and defense, but their primary responsibility is to have the cutting edge in the final third to create chances and to pose as a goal-scoring threat with late runs.
Does Højbjerg provide that?
Does Winks provide that?
Does Dele provide that?
Does Ndombele provide that?
Does Lo Celso provide that?
Is this why we played 3-4-2-1 against Everton, because of this midfield weakness?
Will we see Bryan Gil develop in this role?
The need for a player like Franck Kessié is clear.
Behind them, Dier should be a back up centre-back as should Ben Davies. I'd expect us to be looking for upgrades to partner Romero, given they are the base of the three man system.
Romero looks comfortable with the ball at his feet, but does Dier and Davies fulfill their criteria?
Emerson's header in the first half against Everton was an example of this and he telling Reguilón to hug the touchline when the ball was on the other side of the field, another.
But also, Spurs had scored the third fewest goals in the Premier League, with the second-fewest shot-creating actions and second-fewest shots.
In Antonio Conte, Spurs have hired a coach whose pedigree and sheer weight of personality will immediately rouse the players to get behind his vision and practices.
I have discussed controlling emotions and training the brain under duress, not to revert to default, anxiety etc., but to swap that for a positive outlook which allows greater success and less mistakes.
For us fans it's a question of how long we have to wait to see us as an attacking threat again.
Bergwijn will have to start producing an end product, Moura will have to become more consistent, Dele will have to want it, but there are no initial signs that's going to happen.
Will the international break be a boon for Dele, Harry Winks, Ryan Sessegnon, with an opportunity to understand what the new boss wants.
We are going to find out about our dressing room and who in this group can take on board what a winning mentality actually is. Football is everything, not the off field image, not social media, improving your football every day.
Winners look to continually improve.
Winners look to go to the next level.
When Conte talks about his philosophy, he talks about the word sacrifice and suffering.
He talks about how everything has to be honed towards your football, nothing else matters.
At Inter Milan, he changed Romelu Lukaku's diet to a Mediterranean diet and that changed his body shape, which led to him becoming a better player, a €100m footballer.
Every detail matters, back to the Kaisen effect, keep making tiny improve and they will add up to a big improvement.
Th Spurs players are going to have to learn to run, run and run again, much like when Pochettino first arrived and built a young athletic team.
After every game there is a usual 15/20 minute warm down.
After Conte's first game against Vitesse, the warm down lasted over an hour.
That just illustrates the difference between what a winning mentality does and what you do, let's say what normal mentality people do, what the person who simply tries to win does.
Then after the Everton game he apologised to all the assembled reporters who had to wait an hour for Conte to arrive for the press conference because he was going over video analysis with the players.
He has to get his ideas across, understood, implemented before we see an attacking improvement and a general raising of the standard of the team.
So what exactly is this shadow football that I mentioned earlier?
Conte will conduct a 45 minute training session, at least, on a full size pitch with 11 men playing nobody.
At Juventus, he had his goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon roll the ball out to Stephan Lichtsteiner (right wing-back), who would play it inside to Andrea Pirlo (deep-lying playmaker, a major weakness of Spurs at the moment) and so forth until a cross from a wing-back and an attempt on goal.
Then they would all go back and start again.
Repetition, why?
It happens in cricket to, where a batsman continually plays a set stroke to commit it to muscle memory so when the brain says play this shot his muscles automatically play it how they have been taught.
The same is happening here, the sequence is being committed to memory, it is being committed to muscle memory so it is automatic.
You receive the ball, pass and move, how you have been taught.
Professional football is not like Sunday morning football where you just go out and play and make it up as you go along.
No, professional football is all about pre-planned routines you have learnt on the training field.
If someone deviates from that it can mess things up.
Yes of course there is room for spontaneity but within a set system that everyone is playing within.
Learning the system, learning where to move, when to pass, has to be instilled, that's why a new manager needs a season to get his methods across.
Why wasn't Nuno given a season then?
Well the performances were not anywhere near what Spurs needed.
The telling stat was the one where Spurs were the team who did the least amount of running in the Premier League.
No movement means no opportunity to pass forward and thus no attacking threat.
Hence no shots on target.
That now has to be trained out of them.
It already has the fans, it has for Harry Kane.
There is no lack of ambition in Conte's appointment.
Conte coaches his players in set, repetitive sequences of passing and movement. This is his shadow football, learning these sequences with no opposition.
The advantage of this is that it gives the team greater structure with possession, simplifies their decision-making in the high-stress environment of a match, and increases the speed of their attacks since they're always one step ahead of the opposition, knowing what is going to happen next ahead of the opposition.
Spurs will adopt passing patterns that you'll see game after game, but first Conte needs time to drill them into the players.
This isn't a new tactic, Wimbledon used to use it and they were a small club but a successful one and a club nobody liked playing.
They were physical, but they could play football too, although that was often overlooked.
Having structure is important to the end result, not just defending, but attacking too.
There is more room for the maverick player up front, but behind it is all about the structure and every player being accountable for their role within that and with the set patterns of play.
It is interesting to note that when Antonio Conte was in a studio for an international tournament, he talked about Harry Kane needing to get in the box more.
He suggested he should not be dropping to receive the ball and play the number 10 role effectively.
Conte has already made it clear he wants Kane in the box more and needs others to do the creating.
The Tottenham Schedule returns on 21st November with a game against Leeds United at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium at 4:30pm GMT.
Spurs v Leeds United
The next Spurs Schedule fixture is in the UEFA Europa Conference League Group Stage Matchday 5 of 6 vs NŠ Mura away on Thursday 25th November at 5:45pm GMT at the Fazanerija City Stadium.
NŠ Mura v Spurs
Well that's it for this morning's offering folks.
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2 comments
I now get the feeling that Levy considers himself at a bit of a crossroad. The off field position is healthy but the team is not. He has hired a big manager and he now has to support him, it would be stupid not too. Conte is not a spend thrift but he will expect to see some positive action. To me that means working towards a new team spine (a striker who can play with Kane, a midfield creator and strong centre back). Now that’s a tall order especially in a January window, but let’s keep our fingers crossed that the DoF can identify at least some of those targets very quickly.
I really can’t see Dele or Ndombele meeting the Conte requirements. Winks may have a chance, Højbjerg is good enough but will perhaps have to rotate with Skipp. The player I have most hope in is Lo Celso, who can’t be a mug if he plays for Argentina.
I accept that getting transfers done in the January window is always going to be harder than in the Summer, but always - and I suspect perticularly so now with Paratici as DoF - these are prepared way in advance almost as an ongoing process. Not just for one option either, but for many possibilities even if we only ever want one of each to come to fruition.
Clive has previously posted about what some of those options may be and it's not impossible one or more may be actualised during the next window.
I believe that Paratici, Conté & Levy ALL appreciate that any ins & outs have to be done in a cost-effective way. Fans typically seem to struggle with that understanding but I doubt either of the Italians do. Transfers are always very complicated to set up and get over the line but I don't expect Levy to block any simply due to their cost alone. Value maybe - but then I doubt he would need to get involved as both of the Italians already understand ho…