Over the summer, Antonio Conte departed Inter Milan following issues with the Italian club’s direction after their Serie A title. This summer, they offloaded players like Romelu Lukaku and Achraf Hakimi, which didn’t sit well with the 52-year-old.
For the summer months, Conte was unemployed, so any club had the chance of scooping him up, including Manchester United. However, The Red Devils stood by former manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær. Nonetheless, for Sky Sports pundit Jamie Redknapp, it was a terrible decision.
‘Why they didn’t get Antonio Conte when they could have done. They need someone like him,” Redknapp said on Sky Sports (via Daily Mail). “If you’re only there until the end of the season, you’re in there naked. The way [Ralf Rangnick] is going now; he won’t get another two years.”
“If he wants to be there long-term, he’s got a lot of decisions to make. There are a lot of players that he’s trying to shoehorn into the team.”
When Tottenham Hotspur decided to sack Nuno Espírito Santo, the north London club swooped in and appointed Conte as their manager. Thus far, the hiring has been paying off despite the Italian tactician not having a transfer window to mold the squad into his vision.
With the January transfer window open, Conte can further improve Tottenham as they sit two points out of the top four with two games in hand on Arsenal, who occupies fourth place in the standings.
Pitiful isn’t it? Never has ‘Strike while the iron is hot’ been ignored to such devastating effects…..for Spurs fans at least!
You summed up our modus operandi. For Spurs to make the top four one or more of the usual suspects must be in decline.
It’s United at the moment but when Poch had Spurs finishing second there was the perfect storm where City, United and Liverpool were all not at their best, only Chelsea and Leicester standing in our way.
That circumstance will likely never recur, what a chance our genius chairman let slip through his fingers to establish Spurs as a long term member of the big four clubs.
It’s a puzzle to me why Utd didn’t go for Conte. If the man can get a tune out of our Levy impacted dysfunctional squad just imagine what he could have done there. He would also have been backed to the hilt.
I expect it to slowly dawn on Conte this month just what he’s let himself in for at Spurs as his wish-list is ignored.
I would suggest that a certain Argentinian will be on his way in the Summer, so a 6 month wait is neither here not there for a club that have been a bit of a joke (albeit, still more successful than us) for a few years. Clubs like Utd can inject £200m every season if they want to so although it is funny to see them underperform gone are the days of Utd getting relegated like the 70s. They will be back, I am just enjoying the mess.
Wouldn’t it have been great to really enjoy it and instead of possibly getting top 4, we would have been nailed on, just with a bit of foresight and sustainable investment in to the football side of things over the last decade instead of our managers being thrown crumbs with the likes of Chiriches, Fazio, Bergwign, Doherty, Emerson. I know some fans rate the latter, but even Watford let the lad have loads of the ball because they knew he wouldn’t do anything with it. I am not an experienced statistician but Emerson had over Two Thousand crosses v Watford and only 2 landed in the box…..granted it was our box, but let’s not split hairs!