Now the dust has settled on Antonio Conte’s outburst following Wednesday night’s defeat to Burnley, the question is whether the Tottenham boss feels any differently in the light of day and following any talks with Daniel Levy and Fabio Paratici.
We will find out soon enough, with Conte due to preview tomorrow’s match at Leeds this afternoon, when his happiness and future at Spurs will be the only points on the agenda.
Like many elite managers, Conte cannot accept defeat and, since joining Spurs, he has scarcely been able to keep his emotions in check in the aftermath of bad results.
He can be expected to be more measured this afternoon, but it will be his message, and not the way it is delivered, which counts.
Essentially, does Conte still feel the scale of the rebuild at Spurs is beyond him or is he now armed with guarantees from Levy, or at least more accepting of his squad’s current limitations?
It is not clear if Conte has had a chance for the formal discussions with Levy and Paratici that he demanded, but he talks to the managing director, whose office at Hotspur Way is next to his own, every day and has previously said he can easily reach Levy by text when the chairman is not at the training ground.
Already this week, Conte has lurched from warm-hearted — describing his squad as the best he has ever worked with after Saturday’s win over Manchester City — to cheery at his Tuesday press conference to the doom and gloom of Wednesday night.
Chairman Levy was used to brushing off Mauricio Pochettino’s mood swings and public power-plays, but Conte is altogether harder to ignore, particularly as his comments are impacting the state of the squad.
Some players are understood to be surprised and unsettled by the Italian’s latest shift in sentiment, in which he appeared to suggest they were part of the club’s problem. He has told his squad the atmosphere at the club must be different after defeats, and his own fury at Burnley at least offered a compelling, if not entirely helpful, example to follow.
While Conte was speaking at Turf Moor, Marcelo Bielsa was reacting to a 6-0 defeat at Liverpool, which made Leeds the top-flight’s other crisis club.
For both sides, tomorrow’s game now feels like a potentially crucial juncture in their seasons. In October, Tottenham’s match against Manchester United was dubbed ‘El Sackico’ due to the intense pressure on Nuno Espirito Santo and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer beforehand and, sure enough, Nuno was dismissed by Spurs following a 3-0 defeat.
There is a similar feel to tomorrow’s game, a sense that the loser could be faced with a situation which is increasingly beyond their means to fix.
