Antonio Conte: Tottenham Hotspur are now ready to have certain targets to achieve
Antonio Conte has expressed that Tottenham Hotspur are finally ready to have certain targets to achieve moving forward. His side have made quite some progress since his appointment back in November when compared to their bleak situation under Nuno Espirito Santo.
Conte has come in and turned things around following the dire end to Santo’s tenure at N17. While Tottenham does not have any trophies to fight for the remainder of this season, it is pretty clear that the Italian coach has uplifted the squad from a steady decline over the years. What’s more, it is even more impressive when one considers how he was able to achieve that with more or less the same set of players.
Speaking in an open interview (h/t Football.London), The Spurs boss has conveyed that he could not set any targets for them to achieve in the early part of his tenure. However, the manager added how he feels that the team is now ready to have certain goals to challenge in the future. He mentioned that a top-four finish is a good objective for them to vie for the remainder of this season.
“Before, it was a bit difficult to talk about the targets. Don’t forget I arrived in November and the situation wasn’t so good. We worked a lot, but you know very well you can work a lot and you have to give a bit of time to start to see your work on the team. I don’t like to lie, I prefer to stay in silence, but now I’m seeing a great improvement of my team. For this reason, to put a target of fourth place is good. Also for the future, because we have to start to live with the pressure to reach a target, to have ambition.”
A crucial couple of months for Spurs
When the former Chelsea man initially arrived at N17, we were in a difficult situation after falling rapidly over the past few years. Our failure to build on the golden generation under Mauricio Pochettino was a big blow, and there were fears of a massive decline in the short term future as well.
Fortunately, the 52-year-old steadied the ship at the North London side initially before gradually improving the team in these months. Setbacks were a part of it, but the business in the January transfer window coupled with the boss’ quality enabled us to improve a lot during this period.
We no longer have any titles to fight for the rest of this term, but we still can challenge for certain targets, as the Tottenham boss mentioned. Qualifying for the Champions League is a good target at this point, even though we will face challenges from our direct rivals.
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We are still fifth in the Premier League at this moment, but there is still more than enough time to break into the CL spots moving forward. Arsenal would be the major challenge that we need to overcome as they have been building a project under Mikel Arteta for years.
Their investment has finally bore fruit this season, but we remain hopeful that Conte can help us better the Gunners and pip them to qualify for the highly prestigious competitions. Only time will tell what lies in store for us and whether we can achieve the top-four target set by the boss.
