“a team that hasn’t won for a long time..”- Antonio Conte says Tottenham players lack belief

“a team that hasn’t won for a long time..”- Antonio Conte says Tottenham players lack belief

Antonio Conte’s Tottenham tenure started with a pretty positive run of just one defeat in 11 matches, but it was only time before the cracks would start to show up. Since that stint of games, Tottenham has lost five of their last eight, while the recent defeats to Southampton and Wolves came partly as a result of defensive errors by the north Londoners.

Talking to Sky Italia, the head coach reflects back on those mistakes and said that they are the result of a lack of confidence, and compared the situation with his arrival in 2019 at Inter Milan, who had not won a trophy for nearly a decade at the time.

“It is always difficult to make comparisons, but surely when you take the job in a team that hasn’t won for a long time it is inevitable that you will lack confidence,” said Antonio Conte.

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“The confidence is down and many times, at the first obstacle, you throw yourself down and many times the negativity increases even more. Sometimes you grant goals that you struggle to accept.

“This has been happening to us in the last period. This is part of a process of a team that has to grow a lot to try to be competitive.

“Right now we are one of the many teams that are in the middle. They need to work a lot and this does not scare me at all.

“It is inevitable that certainly, the situation compared to the past for me is very different in terms of perspectives, ambitions, in terms of fighting to win. I realised that it’s a totally different situation anyway.”

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Antonio Conte feels the Tottenham players are too emotional

Tottenham

Last week, following the defeat to Southampton, the Tottenham manager further mentioned that the team is improving but players are “too emotional”.

“For sure, I think we are now improving in many aspects but we are still too emotional.

“Against Leicester, we won 3-2 and we were losing 2-1. Today, we were winning 2-1 and we lost 3-2.“

Nevertheless, Tottenham are in contention in the race to secure a spot in the Premier League top 4 and there are some very important games coming up for the North London team. Tottenham face the Premier League champions and league leaders Manchester City who are unbeaten in their last 10 games.

Also read: Tottenham manager thinks his squad has weakened after the transfer window