‘The level of Tottenham has dropped’ – Conte makes honest assessment of squad quality
Antonio Conte has admitted Tottenham struggled to cope with Chelsea’s quality in the Carabao Cup semi-final first-leg defeat but reiterated that he needs time to improve the squad. Tottenham were beaten 2-0 by the Blues at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday night to give Thomas Tuchel’s side first blood heading into the second leg next week. […]
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Antonio Conte has admitted Tottenham struggled to cope with Chelsea’s quality in the Carabao Cup semi-final first-leg defeat but reiterated that he needs time to improve the squad.
Tottenham were beaten 2-0 by the Blues at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday night to give Thomas Tuchel’s side first blood heading into the second leg next week.
The hosts were keen to press Spurs into making errors early on and their fortunes were rewarded after just five minutes when a loose pass from Japhet Tanganga was pounced on by Marcos Alonso who fed Kai Havertz to slot in.
Spurs struggled to keep up with a heavily rotated Chelsea outfit and eventually found themselves two goals down after 35 minutes.
Tanganga cleared a Hakim Ziyech cross into team-mate Ben Davies, with the ball cannoning past Hugo Lloris into the corner to make for a calamitous own goal.
Although Spurs looked to have steadied themselves heading into the second half, Conte’s men still did not look like troubling the Chelsea back line as they searched for a consolation.
The Blues fashioned a couple more decent opportunities through Ziyech and substitute Timo Werner, but failed to add a third to take into next week’s meeting.
After the defeat, Conte accepted there was a gap in quality between both sides and admitted ‘patience’ will be needed for an improvement to be made at Spurs.
He said (via Football.London): “This type of game can show us the difference. The gap between us and a top club like Chelsea. I think we struggle, we struggled a lot against Chelsea.
“They showed to be stronger, much stronger than us. For sure you have to be disappointed but also understand that there is an important difference.
“We need to have patience. There is a lot of a jobs to do, in many aspects. I think in the last years the level of Tottenham has dropped. You need to have patience and more time.
“The situation is very clear. I understand that it’s not simple to accept, for the fans, but we’re fighting a lot in this league but at the moment we’re in the middle.”
Spurs Web Opinion
Spurs have it all to do next week and it really could have been more if Chelsea were a bit sharper up front. However, it will need to be a much better performance in each part of the pitch for this scoreline to be overturned.
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