With five league titles in his last seven seasons in club management, Antonio Conte‘s CV speaks for itself.
The Tottenham fans who vociferously booed as Nuno Espirito Santo replaced Lucas Moura with Steven Bergwijn during the 3-0 defeat to Manchester United on Saturday will be well aware of his credentials.
Spurs would be fortunate to appoint a manager of Conte’s calibre given the mess they are in, but questions will be asked, rightly or wrongly, over whether he fits Daniel Levy’s supposed ideal for a manager.
In May, Levy remarked that Jose Mourinho’s successor would have to help restore the club’s “DNA” and implement a “free-flowing, attacking and entertaining” brand of football. After 10 games of the 2021-22 season, Spurs are joint-bottom with 20th place Norwich City for shots on goal (103) and have only scored more goals than the doomed Canaries. Conte cannot do any worse than his predecessor on that front.
It is a measure of the size of the job he is inheriting, though, that fixing a dysfunctional attack is far from the only pressing concern on Conte’s to-do list. Tottenham have conceded 16 league goals, just one fewer than Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City combined, are sorely lacking creativity in midfield and are bottom for total distance covered per game. In essence, they don’t score enough, are easy to score against and can’t run. It is a minor miracle they are as high as 8th in the table.
The whole thing needs ripping up and starting again, beginning with the system. While tactically flexible, Conte is renowned for building successful teams on the solid foundations of a three-man defence. At Juventus, he almost exclusively used a 3-5-2 shape from midway through his first season onwards, before doing likewise with Italy at Euro 2016 with the four-man pillar of Gianluigi Buffon in goal and Andrea Barzagli, Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini in defence.
He employed the same system at Inter to great effect too last season, ending Juventus’ monopoly on the Scudetto, that he himself had initiated in 2012. At Chelsea, meanwhile, he befuddled the rest of the Premier League with an innovative 3-4-3 to such an extent that numerous managers, including Mauricio Pochettino and Arsene Wenger, swiftly followed suit. The Blues set two (since surpassed) competition records for total wins (30) and overall points tally (93) in 2016-17.
Considering Tottenham’s various structural issues, Conte could well shift away from Nuno’s failed 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 experiment and implement his own tried-and-tested strategy immediately. A back three, could, in theory, alleviate some of the issues that Tottenham’s central defenders have faced. Davinson Sanchez, for instance, played the best football of his Spurs career as a sweeper in a 3-4-2-1 formation under Pochettino.
Emerson Royal and Sergio Reguilon, who was surprisingly dropped by Nuno on Saturday, are naturally attack-minded full-backs who could thrive from playing higher up the pitch, while Harry Kane and Son Heung-min are tailor-made to playing in tandem as a front two. The duo are the second-most prolific partnership in Premier League history, combining for 35 goals (one short of Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba). Conte’s strikeforce at Inter, Romelu Lukaku and Lautaro Martinez, meanwhile, struck a combined 49 goals in all competitions last season and assisted each other eight times in Serie A.
Arguably the most fascinating piece of the puzzle that Conte has to solve is in central midfield, a position that has been a problem area for Pochettino, Jose Mourinho, Ryan Mason and Nuno. On Saturday’s evidence, the Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg-Oliver Skipp axis must be scrapped, while all three of Tanguy Ndombele, Giovani Lo Celso and Dele Alli are at a crossroads in their Spurs careers, each with significant points to prove. Conte is believed to have been an Ndombele fan while at Inter.
Historically, Conte has made his teams difficult to play against. In each of his four title-winning seasons in Italy, his teams conceded the fewest number of goals in the division. But his sides are equally capable of playing exciting football, often at break-neck speed, in attack. Bayern Munich (with 99 goals) and Atalanta (90) were the only two clubs out of the other 97 in Europe’s “big five” leagues to outscore Conte’s Inter (89) in 2020-21.
It has become increasingly difficult to gauge the true quality of this Tottenham squad from one managerial casualty to the next. Beyond Hugo Lloris, Son, Kane and at a push Cristian Romero, too many have shown fleeting flashes of quality rather than form over a sustained period. With the exception of a select few, every player will be playing for their futures, with Conte expected to be given funds to mould a squad in his image from January onwards.
But for the time being, he will have to make do with what he has, which should make for captivating viewing over the next couple of months.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2Y8CTLS
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