Conte injects passion back into Spurs and Targets top four
Leeds United James 44
Att: 58,989
In the 88th minute with the crowd quietened and Tottenham apparently heading towards a win, Antonio Conte turned to the home fans and furiously demanded some noise. A lot of noise. He got it.
At full time Conte was equally animated as he vociferously celebrated the victory with his backroom staff before marching on to the pitch and violently hugging and slapping the Spurs players.
If there was any doubt as to how much this meant to the Italian and the intensity he demands then here it was laid bare and raw. Spurs’ new head coach may have banned the ketchup from the canteen but he has brought plenty of spice to the job as he works the crowd – as well as his team – hard.
“It’s right to celebrate with passion,” he said after his first home Premier League game in charge. “I have a great passion and I want to transfer my passion. You can have good organisation and tactics, but passion, heart you either have or don’t have.” Conte has all of that.
It also means that hunting down a top-four place, and Champions League qualification, starts now for Spurs, who are suddenly up to seventh, only four points behind fourth-placed West Ham United. It feels doable.
“There are four teams and after that there is a gap,” Conte said. “But if there is one team that goes to sleep or makes mistakes then we must be there. Tottenham must fight.”
And so that felt like a warning to their rivals.
Certainly he will be demanding. Sleep, it seems, will be something that can happen at the end of the season as he works his squad hard and takes pride in the fact that they outran Leeds, which is no mean feat.
For Leeds this was a tough defeat. To his credit, Marcelo Bielsa is not in the business of making excuses, but injuries are hitting hard and to lose Raphinha and Rodrigo meant they were further depleted, with 15-yearold midfielder Archie Gray travelling with the match-day squad even if he did not actually make the bench.
“Perhaps if we had drawn the game it would have been a prize for what we constructed in the first half,” the Leeds manager said, not unreasonably. “But as the second half went on they increased the differences compared to us.”
It helped that Conte had far greater reserves to call on while Bielsa desperately tried to juggle his midfield combinations to stem the tide, despite taking the contest to Spurs.
And to think Spurs were booed off at half-time – and, Conte said, justifiably so – after an abject performance when they were fortunate to be only a goal behind against a side who should count themselves unlucky to lose and now sit just two points outside the relegation zone.
By that interval a woeful Spurs had become the first team since Opta started compiling such data in 2003 to go six halves of Premier League football without managing a single shot on target. Extraordinary.
Worse than that, they were losing. Leeds had been dominant, committed, organised and got their reward when Jack Harrison beat Emerson Royal with a nutmeg and arced in a cross from the left that
was met by Daniel James, who sidefooted his first goal since his move from Manchester United.
Bielsa cleverly used Kalvin Phillips as a sweeper at the heart of a three-man defence and, for a while, it worked superbly as he used the role to launch attacks and also to take care of Harry Kane, who he tracked when he dropped deep. But that changed after Conte had clearly got into his players.
Spurs returned scolded. They charged at Leeds and created chance after chance. That elusive shot on target came seconds after the restart – and 272 minutes since the last one – when Kane evaded
Phillips for once only for his low effort to be deflected by goalkeeper Illan Meslier against the foot of a post.
It was as if a switch had been flicked. Spurs went close again when Son Heung-min collected the ball and volleyed across goal, with it ricocheting off Diego Llorente before hitting the crossbar. They drew level when Lucas Moura
reacted quickly to collect Sergio Reguilon’s cross ahead of Meslier with the goalkeeper out of position as the ball was pulled back to Pierreemile Hojbjerg. He did not strike his first-time shot cleanly but it was enough.
It felt inevitable that Spurs would score again and they duly obliged when Liam Cooper tripped Moura on the edge of the penalty area. Eric
Dier’s free-kick struck Pascal Struijk to wrong-foot Meslier with the ball hitting a post. Reguilon followed up to fire home the rebound and claim his first goal for Spurs and complete the turnaround.
“I said to my players this is a point to start the rest of the season,” Conte said. “If we want to build on this the feeling of the crowd depends on us.” He will make sure it does.