Not a happy new year
Tottenham Hotspur do not do things in a straight-forward manner so this January 1 always had a high chance of ushering in an unhappy new year in N17.
The opening day of 2023 brought a flat, miserable hungover home defeat, a bench with not a single attacker on it, chants for the chairman to "get out of our club" and Antonio Conte throwing out lengthy slightly hypocritical statements while making sure everyone knew that he had informed Spurs last summer they were going to be rubbish this season.
On the pitch, this was Tottenham's most miserable display of the season so far despite Conte's misplaced praise.
READ MORE: Tottenham player ratings vs Aston Villa: Lloris howler, Kane and Son poor, Bissouma suspended
"I'm not disappointed because the performance was a good performance. From the start to the end, I have seen the right commitment, the right intensity, the right desire to get three points, to win duels, to press high, to run," he said.
"If you ask me, football is a bit strange because in the first half we dominated the game but despite this we didn’t create chances to score, because we found a team that defended really deep with 11 players. In the second half, we started the same way but then it happened that we conceded another goal. In this period, we are not so lucky for the goals we are conceding.
"I think this goal has changed the situation, changed the feeling of the players, the confidence of the players, because they didn’t deserve to be 1-0 down after a big effort, for the whole first half. Then in other circumstances (other games), we were good to come back. Today, we didn't do this. Then the atmosphere becomes warm because you are 1-0 down and the expectation is to score goals and to win. Then you can pay something emotionally."
Spurs were poor and there's no dressing it up with praise for their running. They had just six shots at goal compared to Villa's 13 and put only two of those efforts on target. The visiting goalkeeper Robin Olsen had possibly the easiest afternoon of his career between the sticks.
Tottenham struggled to create and if you're going to make it 10 games in a row of conceding first then you need to at least be able to put the ball in the net at the other end. Spurs never really looked capable of that and Conte has to take some responsibility for a team that didn't look like it had a plan or knew how to attack a deep defending team.
Conte will have a lot of Tottenham fans behind him, particularly if this January transfer window brings a lack of movement, but the more painful the performances to watch, the more attention will turn to the Italian and whether he's actually improving the players under his watch. It's been a while since those chants of 'Antonio, Antonio' were last heard among the home faithful.
The Italian did not help himself when on Sunday he reverted back to his old tried and tested 'I performed a miracle to get this club into the top four' speech. There's no doubting Conte did a great job in turning around Tottenham's fortunes last season, but he's glossing over the fact that Spurs had finished in the top four in four of the six seasons before his arrival - coming third, second and third again in a row amid those years.
Conte needs help off the pitch with the right players to make his rigid system work and all eyes will be on those above to ensure that happens, but with dull performances like this in front of another sold-out Tottenham Hotspur Stadium he's not coming out of this evaluation process unscathed.
Despite the injuries, his Tottenham side had more than enough quality in their ranks after six days of preparation to beat Villa at home but they didn't even come close to looking like they would and that's just as worrying.
This felt like one of those performances that comes towards the end of a manager's reign, those games have been plentiful at Tottenham, ones in which there seemed to be no plan and differing levels of desire among the players as the vultures circle.
That's when those stories emerge without fail every time of a fractured dressing room and discontent with training sessions or tactics as the people around lesser used and unhappy fringe players have their say. That's a wildfire that can spread and Conte needs to stamp it out before it begins by getting things back on track.
Big guns off key
Tottenham's big stars also need to take their own hefty dollop of responsibility for a third home defeat out of five at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
When a team is in trouble it needs its key players to step up and haul them out of it and none of them did that on Sunday.
If anything it was the youngsters in the shape of Pape Matar Sarr - bright on his Spurs debut - and before him Bryan Gil and late on Oliver Skipp and Djed Spence who showed more desire than most of their senior team-mates combined even if their introductions felt more like a Conte message to the board about having to use youngsters than anything else.
Spare a thought for Cristian Romero who last week was parading the World Cup trophy through Argentina with Lionel Messi & Co. This week he was playing essentially as a striker at times just to get a slow-moving Tottenham team higher up the pitch against a Villa side with a minus six goal difference.
He's having to do that despite being in a team that contains two of the Premier League's best attackers in Harry Kane and Son Heung-min. The service into them was again poor but both are players who can create something out of nothing and instead they created not a single thing other than one Kane header cleared off the line.
Kane, who lost the ball in the build-up to Douglas Luiz's goal that doubled Villa's tally, has at least been contributing plenty of goals this season even if his overall performances have not matched those of previous campaigns as of yet.
For Son, the malaise has spread across his game. He looks devoid of confidence and last season's Premier League Golden Boot winner has so far only scored in one game in the competition this campaign, and in one Champions League match.
Other than that the goals have not come and neither have the assists with just one on the opening day against Southampton on August 8 and another against Brighton in early October. You could always count on Son to contribute a goal or assist even when he was out of form but that's not the case this season.
Normally a smiling assassin, Son seems to have the weight of the world on his shoulders right now.
There was a moment in the defeat to Villa when he lost a ball in the Spurs half but won it back with a run towards his own box. He whipped off his black protective mask and threw it off the pitch.
It felt like it was going to signal Son being unleashed, unmasked and free of his awkward constraint. It did nothing of the sort and instead he continued to lose the ball, dispossessed twice and giving the ball away with four more unsuccessful touches - more than anyone else on the pitch.
With the lack of confidence so his penetrative runs have been muted. What often marked the difference between Lucas Moura and the South Korean was that the latter's runs would send him flying past defenders and into dangerous positions from which he would make the right decision.
Lucas in contrast often has the habit of beating one or two men only to then run head down into another. It's why the Brazilian's goals and assists are so relatively low for a player of his talent.
Unfortunately those runs into dead ends are what Son's doing right now and even Conte admitted on Sunday that he needs to improve, when asked about a bench that had no attackers with Lucas and Richarlison injured and joined by Dejan Kulusevski with a slight muscle injury, forcing Conte to hand a first Premier League start to the eager to please Gil.
"The situation is clear and I think you can see our situation from the start of the season. We have up front Bryan Gil who played a good game but he’s a young player, and you need to give young players time to become stronger physically," said the Spurs boss.
"I'm pleased from what I've seen from him today in the game. Then there is Kane, Son, Richarlison and Kulusevski. When it happened that two of these (are injured), and this season it happened a few times, with Richarlison and Kulusevski, you are in trouble.
"Also Sonny has to continue to improve and it becomes difficult this situation, because if you ask me about the central defenders, they played a good game, the two midfielders played a good game, the wing-backs played a good game. Then we struggled a bit up front because we found a team defending really deep. If you have a solution on the bench to change the game, it’s easier because you change the cards during the game."
Conte had more than enough quality available to create a bigger attacking impact on the day but too many big players looked like shadows of their former selves.
He does need at least one more attacking player to arrive this month in the transfer window and the Spurs boss told the BBC that his side is lacking in a certain area: "We have different characteristics. We don't have many players who are really good to beat the man. We don't have many creative players in our team. For sure today was really difficult to find space in the first half."
Conte might have been happy with their performances in the centre of the park but both Yves Bissouma and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg looked sluggish. The former has a habit of letting opponents drift away from him and it cost him in the second half as he slowly trudged back and launched into a late lunge that brought a fifth yellow card of the season and subsequently a suspension for the Crystal Palace match on Wednesday night.
With Rodrigo Bentancur's return from an adductor muscle tear taking longer than Conte expected so Hojbjerg is likely to have to pair up with a young apprentice, whether that is 22-year-old Skipp or 20-year-old Sarr, who has caught the eye of the head coach in recent weeks. It's going to be a big challenge for either young man against a tough and physical Palace side at a noisy Selhurst Park.
Then there is Hugo Lloris. football.london reported earlier this week that Spurs are currently planning to bring in the Frenchman's long-term successor this summer among their transfer business.
The World Cup winner, who turned 36 on Boxing Day, has saved Tottenham from losing points galore in his decade at the club and Conte gave him a glowing tribute ahead of the match after he returned from another World Cup final performance.
However, Lloris also has a mistake in him. For every long run of consistency, so the experienced stopper can end it in an instant with an eye-catching moment of lost focus, often with his feet, but occasionally with his handling.
Spurs have gifted the opposition five goals in the league this season with individual errors, at least two more than any other side, and Lloris has been responsible for three of those.
Sunday brought one on his return to the starting line-up as he failed to deal with Luiz's bouncing shot from distance. Rather than gather it, the ball hit his chest and ricocheted out to Ollie Watkins, who teed up Emiliano Buendia to fire back past Lloris and into the net.
The confidence drained from those players around him and there was another Lloris moment of poor kicking later on, with a sliced effort that almost led to a Villa chance.
Days like today will only accelerate Spurs' efforts to find their next number one for what they hope will be another decade between the sticks but equally Lloris will be desperate to show that he's still got plenty of mileage left in the tank.
He and Tottenham's other stars need to step up and set the example for the rest of the team otherwise they are going to slip down that Premier League table very quickly with the tough matches in the month ahead.
Daniel Levy's uncomfortable moment
It was the loudest such a chant has rung out at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - the very place the Spurs chairman had counted on being his legacy in north London.
After Villa's second goal the words "Daniel Levy get out of our club" were sung by a large number of people in the big single-tier south stand as the 60-year-old sat uncomfortably in the director's box with his name reverberating around the stadium.
There have been small pockets of protests before, most notably after another defeat to Villa two seasons ago in the final home game of that campaign with a messed up attempt at a players' post-match lap of the pitch leading to calls for the chairman's exit by some vocal remaining members of the crowd.
This was different. It involved far more people and it was louder. It was a chant borne of two decades worth of frustration with just one League Cup to show for it.
Levy delivered a magnificent stadium but you can't fit that in a trophy cabinet and it's of little use if the football played within the ground is as dull as dishwater.
The Tottenham chairman suffers from a lack of humanisation due to wariness of the public arena. There's therefore no softening of his persona, no emotional connection. Instead to those disgruntled Spurs fans he's become something of a caricature, a subject of many an internet meme among them, portrayed as a Bond villain of sorts who holds all of the club's finances under his strict control.
Levy is a publicity-shy man, a workaholic happier getting on with things at his desk than finding himself in social circles and some who know him describe him as awkward in such situations. Mauricio Pochettino once said his boss was "not an easy man" despite his good relationship with him.
The problem is that those around Levy seemingly must only actively encourage his lack of interaction with the fanbase, perhaps with a false sense that they are protecting him. It in fact does the complete opposite, putting him squarely in the firing line.
You can count the in-depth interviews Levy has given in the past decade on one hand and requests are constantly turned down by media hoping to talk to him. There's no chance for him to explain the decisions he makes to give them greater context, or put his hands up to mistakes made during his era as chairman or daresay even apologise for those things that have not gone as planned.
On the whole the fans only know his words from his annual 'chairman's message' in the final home matchday programme of the season and anything he puts in the club's financial statement, the latest of which is due any time now. Both of those Levy 'messages' will be heavily edited and run past various people before appearing on the page.
The most human side to Levy was shown in interviews and behind the scenes footage in the Amazon All or Nothing series last year and even that footage would have been carefully controlled by the club.
Keeping away from the media glare instead creates the impression of a man hidden away in his office or sitting above the general public at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, surveying his domain, when that may not be the case. For instance, he no doubt does plenty of worthy things for charities and people in need through the club's foundation but nobody would ever know.
That lack of connection with the fanbase has only helped the Spurs chairman and owners ENIC become the obvious target for disgruntled supporters when they see Tottenham's low levels of spending compared to the big boys in the Premier League, that complete absence of major trophies and the somewhat bewildering decisions made by the club at times.
For a man who was so certain about the building of the billion pound stadium on Tottenham High Road, often micromanaging each little detail in every single room, Levy has flip-flopped between hugely contrasting ideas when it comes to on-pitch matters as if there is no plan.
He's appointed Glenn Hoddle, Jacques Santini, Martin Jol, Juande Ramos, Harry Redknapp, Andre Villas-Boas, briefly Tim Sherwood in what was barely more than a caretaker role, Pochettino, Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo and now Conte.
That's 11 managers (or head coaches) in just over two decades, on average one every other year with the chairman the only non-variable the fans can understandably latch on to for criticism.
Levy has lurched repeatedly and awkwardly from a Borussia Dortmund-style club model of developing talented young players under a progressive young coach to misguided attempts to become a Poundland version of Chelsea with older, previously trophy-laden ex-Blues coaches at the helm who quickly found the stark difference between the two clubs meant the ability to succeed in the same way was obviously greatly reduced.
The rollercoaster that has been the recent Pochettino, Mourinho, Nuno and Conte era has provided the perfect illustration of a club without a clear idea of what it's doing from one year to the next. In his end of season messages Levy talks of Tottenham's DNA, but there's no real indication that anybody actually knows what that means.
Spurs are a club without trophies in the modern era but also have a state-of-the-art academy that does not seem to have a pathway to the first team any more. Clubs normally achieve at least one of those two things but Tottenham have remarkably managed to avoid both.
That Arsenal are top of the table by a growing margin with a philosophy that is eerily similar to Tottenham's under Pochettino yet boosted by that little bit of extra financial backing the Argentine did not get - remember those two transfer-less transfer windows in a key year - will only intensify the exposure of the mistakes on this side of north London.
The problem for Levy is that he has appointed the loudest and most volatile manager of his tenure as chairman and if the tide threatens to turn against Conte, there's only one direction the Italian's finger is going to be pointing in.
Conte might be right but he's forgetting himself
Antonio Conte is a master of saying everything he wants while pretending he's saying nothing at all. Whenever there's a transfer to be had or questions about his future he will turn up the pressure on his club to his advantage. Most managers do it but few with the regularity of the Italian.
On Sunday, after a defeat that was as much his fault and the players as anyone else's he spent a long time telling every media outlet that it actually wasn't really his fault and he'd warned everyone months ago that this would happen.
His team had received boos at the final whistle and there was a similar reaction to him replacing Matt Doherty with Emerson Royal minutes before that, while his eventual introduction of Spence got the biggest yet ironic cheer of the day from the supporters for what they see as one of his blind spots.
That sparked Conte into full-on PR mode after the game. He spoke to Sky Sports and the BBC for six minutes apiece, longer than normal, then did the rounds of the radio outlets before arriving for his press conference over an hour after the final whistle.
In front of the assembled media he spent more than 12 minutes answering at length what were essentially just four questions before the press conference was drawn to a close with further questions ready to be asked.
There was a common theme in all of his answers. The process needs more time, don't expect anything exciting from his team, last season was a miracle, he needs better and older players rather than young players (he managed to say that indirectly a lot), more money needs to be spent and Tottenham are not like the other clubs he's managed in his recent trophy-laden years.
"The message is always the same. I have never spoken about our team that this season we could be competitive to fight to win," he told Sky. "From the start of the season I said we are trying to build a solid foundation because if you want to become title contenders, if you want to win something, you need to have a solid foundation.
"That means your squad is 13/14 players strong and then every year to put one or two players – but important players – to improve the quality and this means £60/70/80million. In this way you improve the quality.
"At this moment we are creating the foundation because we don't have the foundation. We need to find 13/14 players. We are trying to create this and then add important players – not normal players – in every season. We want players who make the difference. Otherwise you have to go to young players, to develop, to wait.
"I always say the truth in my life. I don’t want to create illusions for people. The club very well knows what I think and the club is 100 per cent think the same. Maybe it is good to send this message outside to the media, maybe, because someone may think we can be title contenders."
He added: "When you want to fight to win something you need experienced, quality players but strong. We didn’t create solid foundations already and we are doing this. This is the first work we have to do.
"When you finish this work and need time, then you start to add important player to add quality and the players with us continue to develop. Then you become a title contender like Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal – who started this process three years ago.
"We have to face the situation in the best possible way and know which is our level. We have to try, like last season, to overcome our level. There is only one way – to push ourselves and everyone has to go in the same direction. Then the club will speak very well to the fans to say which are the targets."
Only the club don't speak to the fans. They all gather behind the manager, whomever he may be, and hope the supporters don't notice them lurking in the background while he has to try to explain everything without upsetting the people who pay his wages.
Even Fabio Paratici, the club's managing director of football who spoke most weeks to the Italian media while at Juventus, has joined the reclusive gang. There was a hope that he would become the face of the Tottenham hierarchy and bridge the huge gap between them and the fans.
Instead the 50-year-old has held just one press conference, a pre-match Europa Conference League one, in the week Conte had been appointed but was not technically allowed to coach yet. Other than that there have been a couple of club interviews after transfer windows. In essence, one of the most easily accessible and public speaking football chiefs in Italy has faded into the background at N17.
It will be Paratici's job to find the transfers that will keep Conte happy and provide those foundations he speaks of.
The Tottenham head coach made an unfortunate firearms comparison when speaking about the difference in the quality of players available to lower spending clubs.
"The club knows very well what I think. I have one thing and I don't know if it's positive or negative but I like to tell the truth. I don't like to tell lies or good lies," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
"For this reason if you remember I said at the start of this season pay attention because this season will be really difficult because we are in a moment that we didn't have good solid foundations. We are continuing to create this foundation.
"Before building a solid foundation I have to wait, we have to wait, and I think we are in this moment because we are trying to build this foundation with the 12/13 players, reliable players, strong players then with young players to develop this situation, to improve.
"And then you are ready every season to sign one or two players, but important players, quality players. To spend money in this way you improve the quality of your team. Otherwise if you sign seven players and you spend £60m it means you are spending maybe £10m on every player. Usually when you spend this money the level of the player is medium no? Or a young player that you have to wait to develop.
"The level now is very, very high and the level improved because Manchester United invested a lot of money and they already had important players and then put other players. Chelsea did the same, Manchester City did the same and Arsenal did the same. You always see one following the others. Also if you invest £50m or £60m then the other arrives with a bazooka and you only have a little gun compared to their bazooka."
What Conte is saying about the spending of other teams is true but he is forgetting that Tottenham did sign Richarlison for him for £60m last summer among their transfer business.
The success of Spurs' north London rivals Arsenal this season with a young squad of players who are still developing is also a thorn in Conte's 'only ready-made teams can succeed' belief, although he would say Mikel Arteta has received the necessary time to build his current squad.
The other issue is that while Conte harps on about people having patience for the process and that 'I" and "we have to wait' and seems utterly bewildered that the fans and media do not share that same thinking, he shows absolutely no indication that he wants to stick around and show that patience he preaches.
At every given opportunity to speak about his long-term Spurs future beyond next summer he swerves away from the topic or simply trots out the same line about "we'll find the best solution for everybody". It makes all of his statements calling for time and patience sound hypocritical.
It creates the air of a man waiting for a better opportunity to arise, a job with a shorter route to success to become vacant. For all of his obvious coaching skills, his talk of signing ready-made players all the time and spending big money sounds like a gamer who can't finish the latest video game without the cheat codes.
At one point in his press conference Conte sounded like he was simply doing Spurs a favour by helping them out.
"I know what is the reality because I am the coach. I live the club every day. I know what is the situation. I know the vision of the club," he said. "The club knows very well what are my thoughts on the situation. The situation was very clear - 'I continue to work and to improve and to help you to improve the club, to create a solid foundation and then to develop'.
"At the start of the season I was very, very clear with the club. I said 'ok we can be competitive to win but try to continue to improve but in the way that we can do it', because also you have to know that there are clubs who can invest £200m or £300m and others with different policies and I repeat you have to respect the policy. The policy has to be very clear with all people otherwise we created a situation that’s not positive for the environment to create expectations that are not realistic, honestly."
He even warned of worse things ahead, saying: "I repeat this from the start of the season. I knew very well. I was expecting this moment. Now we have to start to fight strong, because the situation in this league you can slip quickly. I spoke also with my players. You have to pay attention to fight because to from start to the end the road is not long. You can slip quickly if you are not prepared and not humble to understand the situation very well.
"If you ask me if I'm scared, I'm not scared. I believe in my work, I believe in these players, but don’t ask me for things I cannot promise you. This is only to create an illusion and create dreams a moment that you have to be realistic. If you are realistic, you know the situation and you face the moment in the right way."
The Tottenham and Conte relationship has always been a strange one, a marriage of convenience without either party actually having much in common.
If he and Spurs were to divorce then it's difficult to know in what direction the club would lurch towards next. There is the jilted former flame in Mauricio Pochettino, who seems to be waiting by the phone for that call, or perhaps the opportunity to continue the Poundland Chelsea imitation by appointing yet another of the Blues' cast-offs in Thomas Tuchel.
The German is a top coach but at what point would Tottenham simply be ridiculed for constantly feeding off their more successful London rival's scraps with a fifth former Blues manager appointed during the Levy and ENIC era?
It's about having an identity and it's difficult to know what Tottenham Hotspur's is any more.
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