Antonio Conte has claimed that his players needed to be more street-smart and savvy at Old Trafford and admitted that they simply lacked the experience to cope with difficult moments in the game.
Tottenham were comprehensively beaten against Manchester United on Wednesday, with the defeat bringing the Lilywhites crashing down to earth after their impressive start to the season.
The North Londoners seemed to have no answers to United’s incisive attacking play, and in the end, the 2-0 scoreline flatted the away side, with Hugo Lloris pulling off numerous saves.
Conte remarked that his side should have been a little smarter by wasting time on certain occasions in order to give themselves some breathing space.
The Tottenham head coach told Football.London: “Experience is very important in these situations. Sometimes when you are suffering, I was a player and you take the ball and you put it outside the stadium so that you can breathe, or if you have injury you stay (down).
“I see many, many teams in England, they understand the moment when they are suffering. One player stops, wastes time. In this period you breathe. Your mind becomes clear again. This is experience.
“The team that is used to winning, they have everything and experience is also important. You can’t buy experience.
“You can only improve by playing, playing, playing, facing situations and finding solutions. If you are suffering a lot you have to understand that maybe it is not the right moment to continue playing from the back.
“Go up, with a long ball, fight for the second ball. These are the types of situations where we can improve and we are working on these aspects.
“To have experienced players in my opinion is very, very, very important because in these moments they are good at managing these situations.”
Conte also declared that Spurs could have hurt United had they made better use of the ball, insisting that there was nothing wrong with their game plan and that the players simply failed to execute it.
He added: “Honestly when we had the ball, we had the ball 50-50 during the game, we could exploit much better offensive situations. Instead, many times, we made bad decisions and I think we did a lot of mistakes.
“The passes were not [with] great accuracy. We lost a lot of stupid balls because the way that we prepared to attack United, in my opinion, was good.
“We were prepared to hurt them with the ball and then I think that we could do much better to try to exploit much better offensive situations.
“But you know very well in the big games when the level is high, the pressure is high. You know much better than me because you are English – to play at Old Trafford is not simple, not easy. A lot of noise, amazing atmosphere, the fans push a lot.
“The level of your opponent is really high and for sure the pressure is really high. For this reason, the step that we have to do [is] to try to cope also with this pressure.
“Especially I repeat this because I think the way to attack and hurt them was good in the idea but at the same time you know that you have to have more accuracy in every situation, to try to have a good finish. I think we could do much better in this aspect.”
Spurs Web Opinion
Tottenham’s tendency to crumble in big away games certainly predates Conte, and points to a mentality issue. Now that the Italian has witnessed it play out in multiple games, hopefully, he will work towards addressing the problem in the coming months.