Tottenham Hotspur manager Antonio Conte slammed by Clive Allen for having no ‘Plan B’ after Arsenal loss
Tottenham Hotspur legend Clive Allen has slammed Antonio Conte for having no ‘Plan B’ against Arsenal in the north London derby last time out.
Spurs suffered a 3-1 defeat at the Emirates on Saturday. Emerson Royal was sent off in the 62nd minute and then after that, the Lilywhites started playing very defensive football. It was like they just wanted the time to run out.
And now Clive, who played for the north London club between 1984-1988 has slammed Conte for not having another plan. The former striker, while speaking exclusively to talkSPORT, said:
“The style Spurs have adopted, to sit back and break on the counter-attack, they have won games using that system. But I’m not sure there’s a Plan B from Conte in terms of how they can change the course of games.”
“Antonio Conte believes in this defensive system, with the quality of the forward players he has and playing on the counter-attack. We saw glimpses of that, just glimpses…”
Thomas Partey gave the lead to the Gooners from a beautiful strike outside the box. Harry Kane equalised from the spot just after the half-hour mark and Spurs gained good momentum.
But a mistake from Hugo Lloris a few minutes after the start of the second half allowed Gabriel Jesus to give his side the lead. Things went from bad to worse when Royal was sent off and Granit Xhaka scored five minutes later to make it 3-1.
Conte made four immediate substitutions and changed his formation to a back-five. With only Kane up-front alone, Spurs looked like a team that was just playing to not concede any more. It was embarrassing to see and it looked clear that the manager barely had an idea of how to change the course of the game.
The usual plan of sitting deep and hitting the other team on the counter did not work against the Gooners. But, what was more troubling was the manager had no other tactical approach in his book to implement to change the game in his team’s favour.
It is, however, harsh to judge his management style from a couple of games this season. After all, this was our first loss in the league and it could have been a different story had Emerson managed to stay on the pitch instead of getting sent off in the 62nd minute.
Spurs will travel to face Eintracht Frankfurt this Tuesday for their Champions League group-stage game. Conte will hope that his team can bounce back from this defeat and claim all three points.
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It would be nice to see if we play a little more dominating football there instead of the waiting game. We have the players to make that happen.
