Conte is Spurs’ best hope ...but Levy must trust him
ISENSE a power struggle looming at Tottenham between Antonio Conte and Daniel Levy over transfers and I know whose judgment I would back.
Conte is a proven winner and a good manager. His record proves that. Levy, on the other hand, is a man who has run Tottenham for 21 years and won one League Cup. Tottenham are a really big football club and they have punched below their weight on Levy’s watch. They should be challenging for the biggest honours on a regular basis.
People talk to me about the new stadium and it is the best in the world. But it would not be rocket science for a big London club to build a new stadium in the recent and current financial climate of the Premier League. It is the equivalent of taking a 25-year mortgage on a house. Even allowing for that, they have under-performed on a large scale. And what about the 18 years before they built the stadium?
Do you think Tottenham fans want to go on holiday and meet someone in a bar and say: ‘Have you seen our amazing stadium?’ — of course not. They want to tell people about what a great team they have.
Conte (above) is the best chance they have of making that possible but Levy has got to trust him and try to give him what he wants.
The best managers are never satisfied. They have to be like that. If you are not improving you are going backwards. Every big team is buying players and if you are not then you are losing ground.
When I was manager at Liverpool I stood at the same window Bob Paisley used to stand at watching me and my team-mates run past. I asked Tom Saunders, the sounding board for all the great Liverpool managers, if Bob was ever happy with us bunch of serial winners.
Tom said: ‘Never.’ He explained we could just have won the European Cup but Bob would be looking at the group and saying: ‘Not sure about him any more, not sure about him.’
The best ones are always unhappy about something. I would never put myself near that category as a manager but I was the same.
I had a great relationship with my chief executive at Blackburn, John Williams, but I was still complaining all the time: ‘I want more, I want more.’ And he was fighting it all the time.
We would have words round the lunch table then at 3pm on the way home I would get a call or I would call him and we would be best pals again by 3.15pm. I lost a lot of those battles. You have to accept that. It is not black and white. Some clubs are a lot richer than others. So at Rangers I won most of them, for example. But Conte is demanding and that is to his credit. The priority of a manager is to get the best out of a group of players and largely he has done that. He will be pushing Levy for more and Levy will have known what he was getting when he hired him. What mystifies me is that people employ a manager on an enormous wage and then start to listen to other people when a signing does not work or you have two or three bad results. Where is the logic?
I know the director of football model is what most clubs want now but some are forced into not having that when a manager is successful. I sense Mikel Arteta is gaining power in that direction at Arsenal now.
Clubs want a transfer committee who stay there and see managers come and go. They want stability. But where has it worked?
At Liverpool, but I would imagine the more successful Jurgen Klopp has got, the stronger his hand has become. I would not imagine there is much that happens at Manchester City without the say of Pep Guardiola.
Conte is the same as he was at Chelsea. He wants more of a say in the comings and goings and decisions in general. I have knowledge of Tottenham. I was on their books as a young player. Their fans want to be entertained and be successful and with that in mind they must be disappointed in Levy’s 21 years.
I hear what some people say about Conte’s style of play and I accept that an Italian’s attitude to the game can be pragmatic.
I remember joining Sampdoria when we had a young team. We would play Juventus, who were the best side in Italy, and we would have most of the ball and then get beaten 2-0.
They had a way of playing they would not budge from: let’s stay at 0-0 and see where it takes us.
But I don’t think we are being fair on Conte if we judge him on one year and two transfer windows.
Dear me, give him a chance. And give him some control.