Antonio Conte says it was a difficult January transfer window for Tottenham but understands the club’s priority is to find and develop young players.
After missing out on deals for Adama Traore and Luis Diaz, Spurs only brought in Juventus pair Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur on Deadline Day.
On the same day, Conte saw the club’s two most expensive players – Tanguy Ndombele and Giovani Lo Celso – leave on loan, with Dele Alli joining Everton for £40m and Bryan Gil going to Valencia less than six months after his £25m arrival from Sevilla.
However, the Spurs head coach says he understands the club’s vision is to develop young players rather than buy proven experience.
In an interview with Sky Italy, Conte said: “What happened in January wasn’t straightforward. Four players left the club and they were important ones.
“Two came in, so in numerical terms, instead of strengthening, on paper the squad was weakened.
“Some specific choices were taken for a lot of reasons, but for sure I would have never expected that those four players which I considered important would leave for a myriad of reasons. This testifies the difficulties.”
Conte has been backed with ready-made signings at Juventus, Chelsea and Inter but says he now knows that will not be the case at Spurs.
“Bentancur and Kulusevski are ideal prospects for Tottenham because the club is after young players who can improve and develop, rather than players who are the finished article. That’s the story here,” Conte added.
“That’s the link. That’s the club’s vision and philosophy. It’s inevitable that if you want to improve faster and want to be competitive faster, you need more experienced players because they boost the experience levels among the team.
“As I’ve said, I understood that was the club’s vision here.”
Conte: Lack of confidence behind Spurs’ recent errors
Conte’s Spurs tenure began with a run of just one defeat in 11 matches, but they have since lost five of their last eight, while the recent defeats to Southampton and Wolves came partly as a result of defensive errors by the north Londoners.
The head coach suggested mistakes are being made due to a lack of confidence, and compared the situation with his arrival in 2019 at Inter Milan, who had not won a trophy for nearly a decade at the time.
“Comparisons are always difficult to make, but of course when you take on a job at a team which has not won a trophy for some time it’s inevitable that there is a lack of confidence,” said Conte.
“Many times you give up at the first hurdle and the negativity grows and grows. Sometimes you concede goals which are tough to accept. This is what’s happening to us lately. But it’s part of the process of a team that needs to grow a lot to become competitive.
“Right now we’re one of many teams that are in the middle [of this process]. We need to work a lot and this doesn’t scare me at all.
“It’s inevitable that the situation is very different to other ones I’ve found myself in the past, in terms of ambitions, goals, level of fighting to win. I realised anyway that it’s a completely different situation.”
Is history repeating itself with Conte?
Sky Sports’ Joe Shread
Antonio Conte’s suggestion that Tottenham actually weakened their squad last month through their transfer dealings may come as a surprise, given they landed the exciting Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur from Italian giants Juventus, while the four first-team players who left the club didn’t appear to be in the head coach’s plans.
But when you look at Conte’s history, it becomes clear he is not afraid to speak out against his club on the subject of transfers, and that this is something that has caused friction between him and his paymasters in the past.
At Chelsea, Conte wanted to capitalise on their impressive Premier League title in his first season in charge by signing Romelu Lukaku, Virgil van Dijk and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
But when the players that actually arrived were Alvaro Morata, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Danny Drinkwater and Davide Zappacosta, the Italian chose to make it very clear that he was not the one behind those signings, saying: “From the summer, the club decides every single player that comes here. For sure, I don’t have a big impact on the transfer market.”
Conte’s statement that Spurs need “more experienced players” if they want to “improve faster” will also ring a bell for Chelsea supporters. The head coach’s final transfer window at Stamford Bridge in January 2018 turned into a month-long pursuit of a variety of veteran forwards in a bid to find an old head to provide reliable back-up for Morata.
In no particular order, Conte wanted Fernando Llorente, Edin Dzeko and Alexis Sanchez, before eventually ending up with Olivier Giroud. But despite eventually getting a striker to satisfy their coach’s demands, Chelsea became increasingly frustrated by Conte’s public grumblings and it came as no surprise that he was replaced at the end of the campaign following a season of discontent.
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