CONTE CRISIS
Second string slip up
AT LEAST we know now how Antonio Conte will raise some of the cash for new signings in January.
Half the players that started here won’t be at Tottenham by the start of next season. And not a single one of them can have any complaints.
This was the kind of humiliating, embarrassing surrender that Spurs fans saw all too often under Nuno Espirito Santo and Jose Mourinho.
Joe Rodon, Matt Doherty, Dele Alli and Bryan Gil should be worried. Davinson Sanchez, a £42m signing from Ajax four years ago, is surely on his last legs too.
Ryan Sessegnon, unlucky to be sent off in the first half of a game in which he’d hoped to impress, might just get another chance.
If the fringe players can’t turn up for a tie like this, what grounds can they have for not getting a game in the Premier League?
Mura didn’t even have to wait that long to draw first blood. Tomi Horvat raced down the right after 11 minutes, cut inside and, with Sanchez slipping, he powered home a leftfooted shot into the top corner.
Sessegnon – back from a lengthy lay-off with the praise of his manager ringing in his ears – was sent off after half an hour for a second bookable offence, lunging in twice.
Without him this Spurs side were lambs to the slaughter. In fact, Mura midfielder Nik Lorbek would have put the Slovenians further ahead had his curling effort not soared wide.
When the words of Conte’s halftime team talk appeared to have made little impression in the second half, he acted, sending on Heung-min Son, Lucas Moura, Ben Davies and Eric Dier.
And when Harry Kane equalised in the 72nd minute, it looked as though Spurs would confirm their superiority. Trouble is, defensively they were not superior.
The second goal was a carbon copy of the first. Substitute Amadej Marosa turned Sanchez inside out and saw his shot deflect home.
Conte, of course, didn’t quite have this competition in mind when he spoke about being successful.
But he knows he can forget about even his most basic of targets without the depth in his squad to cope with assignments like this.
TOTTENHAM (3-4-2-1): Gollini 5; Sanchez 4, Rodon 4 (Dier 54, 6), Tanganga 5, Doherty 4 (Davies 54, 6); Ndombele 6 (Hojbjerg 76), Skipp 6, Sessegnon 4, Gil 5 (Moura 54, 7), Alli 4 (Son 54, 7); KANE 7.