Antonio Conte has admitted that winning mentality cannot be bought and says he needs time to build such a culture at Tottenham, while also comparing the side now to the one that made the Champions League Final in 2019.
Conte has experienced one of his most challenging weeks as Tottenham head coach, having overseen two consecutive home Premier League defeats in the space of a few days.
Spurs failed to respond to Wednesday’s tepid 3-2 defeat to Southampton by losing 2-0 to Wolves after a first-half riddled with individual mistakes.
Captain Hugo Lloris was culpable for the visitors’ opener by failing to deal with a seemingly harmless attempt on goal, before Spurs played their way into trouble for Wolves’ second.
Although the performance somewhat improved in the latter stages of the encounter, the damage had already been dealt with Spurs slowly falling away from the race for the Champions League places.
Following another disappointing display, Conte was pressed on whether he was concerned that his squad may not possess winning qualities similar to sides he has managed in the past.
The Italian claimed he is in the process of building a strong mentality at Spurs ‘day by day’ and admitted it has to be manufactured rather than bought through transfers.
Conte said (via Football.London): “The problem is that you cannot buy the winning mentality.
“You transfer it day by day and it is not sure that day by day, because there are players that are more open and they understand the process quickly, other players need more time to understand this.
“Winning mentality in my opinion means when you play I am ready to kill you and to live. This is the difference in every duel, every second ball, every set-piece.
“When you show better desire than your opponent, when you understand the defeats have to hurt you a lot, not a little.
“This is not simple. When I say that we are working a lot to try and improve in many aspects, you know after when we lost against Mura then I said we had to work a lot and maybe we had to try and improve because there are a lot of situations to improve.
“In my opinion, compare the past and compare the season when this team reached the final of the Champions League, a lot of things have changed.”
Spurs Web Opinion
This is one of the things that Tottenham have lacked in recent seasons and partly the reason why silverware has been lacking. The players need to have the belief that they are going to win games and trophies, and at the moment it just doesn’t seem to be the case.