Antonio Conte opened up yesterday about the January transfer window and he made some very pertinent points, however, if he carries on calling out the club it will all end in tears.
The Italian made it absolutely clear that mistakes had been made in the past with recruitment saying the following, as quoted by Football London,
“For sure it was strange to send out on loan four players & one transfer in January. You have to buy players to reinforce your team but if you send away players you bought in the last two or three years it means you did something wrong in the past.”,
However, he himself has been guilty of some very poor recruitment in the past when he was at Chelsea, the difference then was that he could just go out and replace any duds, he cannot do that at Spurs.
I did an article about Conte’s signings at Chelsea, you can read that here, but in short, he did sanction the signings of the likes of Ross Barkley, Davide Zappacosta and the legendary Danny Drinkwater among others. It really is not easy to get it right every single time.
Daniel Levy will only put up with criticism from his own manager for so long and while Conte is not directing his words specifically at the chairman, Levy will take any jibes about how the club was run previously, personally.
That Conte is right is irrelevant, he is just an employee and like all employees, there is only so much they can get away with, especially when they have actually not won anything at the club, he is not in a position that Sir Alex Ferguson was or Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola is today at their respective clubs.
Conte now needs to do a lot less complaining and start to produce results on the pitch, progressing in the FA Cup and maintaining a top-four push is imperative but reputation alone does not give him the right to constantly attack the club.
Antonio Conte is a world-class manager and he has had his say, now it time to do what he is being paid to do.
