TOTTENHAM STADIUM — The provenance of Newcastle’s rise will always carry an asterisk. But that’s for the rest of us to bother about. Inside the kingdom there is only light. The players, manager, coaching staff communed in one corner of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with the Newcastle supporters as if they were celebrating victory in the Champions League. Inevitably it will come to that one day.
As deserved a victory as this was, the outcome had more to do with the team they were facing and how Spurs choose to attack the day. While the Toon arc is tracing ever upwards, it appears the Tottenham Hotspur/Antonio Conte continuum is flattening into an all-too predictable shape. The conditions almost a year into this relationship are no longer fertile for Italian counter puncher. The tactical cat is out of the bag, and it is not necessarily the players’ fault.
Harry Kane the supply side super star. Son Heung-min the ready consumer. Two electric interactions early in the piece might have injected momentum into the Spurs economy. Son’s first attempt sand-papered the top of the bar and his second was saved as he tried to dink Nick Pope. Both were beautiful movements along the elevated Kane-Son plane, but also examples of the pinched culture so beloved of Conte, a state of mind that is beginning to hold Spurs back.
The defeat to Manchester United was a comprehensive debunking of a risk-averse policy that fears the consequences of front-foot football. United gorged on the momentum bequeathed by this shrunken vision. Conte likened that performance to the draw at Chelsea and defeat at Arsenal, claiming his players were somehow lacking in the face of higher quality.
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The goals that put Spurs in a headlock here were authored by veterans of the old regime, Callum Wilson, capitalising on a ball from Fabian Schar, and Miguel Almiron. When the bells and whistles finally arrive it might well be at the expense of those very JD Sports relics. Conte was lost in his own mist of insane micro-management, pointing this way and that, bellowing instructions in ears that never listen, when Wilson chest-bumped Hugo Lloris outside the Spurs box. It was a meeting of equal and opposite force. One kept his feet, the other threw himself to the floor, inviting VAR to make its own conclusion when Wilson scooped the ball over the prone Lloris and the prematurely stopped Eric Dier into the empty net.
Lloris was equally culpable for the second, leaving his target defender hopelessly compromised with an attempted to pass. The admirable Almiron still had plenty to do, mind. Propelled by the power of positive thinking and the joy of making a mug of his dismissive critic, Jack Grealish, off Almiron galloped past two tackles to slot Newcastle two to the good. Conte looked fit to combust.
The second half began with a force 10 swirling about Tottenham High Road, the cue perhaps for Conte to take nature’s hint and let Spurs off the leash. Kane was all for it, diving at the far post to give Spurs traction they scarcely deserved. Conte loaded up with Ivan Perisic and Lucas Moura as he tried to salvage not only the game but the narrative of the season. As we witnessed with Gareth Southgate’s England, initiative is not the weapon it could be when it is born only of desperation.
Spurs were a step quicker in the second period when they were chasing the game. The dynamic was also influenced of course by Newcastle folding into a more defensive organisation to protect what they had. The question that must be asked of Conte is why wait to put the opponent under pressure.
Spurs have taken only one point from four fixtures against teams presently in the top six. They hold on to third for now while Newcastle rise into the top four just two points behind. You can guess what the universally available Mauricio Pochettino might make of the resources available at Spurs, a thought that needs little encouragement in this parish and one that will grow in momentum unless Conte somehow learns to reimagine the game.
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