Ndombele woes highlight fragility of Spurs’ recovery under Conte

A second-string Spurs XI laboured horribly against Morecambe before some key first-team players put things right; it was a game that will have done little to change Antonio Conte’s views on those outside his trusted core group…
“You have to be good to change opinions.”
Tottenham boss Antonio Conte was talking specifically about Tanguy Ndombele, who was heroically bad against League One Morecambe before, in a very on-brand microcosm of his Spurs career to date, taking so long to depart the field after being substituted with his team 1-0 down and time running out that by the time he finally made it to the touchline the dissatisfied low grumble that had become the soundtrack of the afternoon had grown to full-throated boos that encompassed almost the entirety of this vast stadium.
But Conte could have been talking not just about Ndombele’s relationship with Spurs fans but his own with as many as nine of the second-string starting line-up he selected here. They really were making an awful, awful bollocks of things before that drawn-out triple substitution changed the momentum of the game as Spurs scored three late goals to avoid FA Cup humiliation.
This was a game that will have solidified many of Conte’s existing opinions about his squad, an afternoon that once again highlighted the fragility of Tottenham’s position and the fork in the road at which they stand.
They have on their books a handful of truly excellent footballers and a reasonable number of decent ones in support. They also have a lot, and this really is the only suitable term for it now, of sh*t.
Conte has overseen an eight-match unbeaten run in the Premier League where he has largely, as far as possible, stuck to the same core group of 13 or 14 players.
His first Premier League XI, in a 0-0 draw at Everton, was Lloris; Romero, Dier, Davies; Emerson, Skipp, Hojbjerg, Reguilon; Lucas, Son Kane. His most recent Premier League XI was: Lloris; Sanchez, Dier, Davies; Emerson, Skipp, Hojbjerg, Reguilon; Lucas, Son Kane.
And there has been little deviation in between, with the one change between those teams due to Cristian Romero suffering a long-term injury. Hugo Lloris, Eric Dier, Emerson Royal, Heung-min Son and Harry Kane have started every Premier League game under Conte. Ben Davies, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Sergio Reguilon have seven starts apiece, Davinson Sanchez and Oliver Skipp five.
The only significant departure came against Liverpool, when Conte’s usual 3-4-3 became a fully-fledged 5-3-2 with Ndombele and Dele Alli handed rare starts in midfield.
Conte has swiftly – in fact, instantly – identified those players he can trust and just as quickly those he cannot. The end of Ndombele’s Tottenham career has been announced many times, but the prodigiously talented midfielder has surely used the last of his nine lives in this near-sarcastic non-performance against such limited opposition.
It is possible to have sympathy with Ndombele’s situation. Signed in Mauricio Pochettino’s final summer at the club, it’s fair to say he has never once found himself in the environment to which he thought he was signing up. But his apparent view that he can never fail at Spurs, only be failed by Spurs has now reached a point of exasperation where it would surely be best for everyone to cut losses. The cycle of Ndombele drifting out of the side, showing some commitment to working his way back in only to once again conclude he’s too big for this club and get lazy again after a couple of half-decent performances has to end.
But he was far from alone in ignominy here, albeit the only one to draw such conspicuous attention to his dreadfulness. Giovani Lo Celso, Matt Doherty, Joe Rodon, Dele, Pierluigi Gollini, Japhet Tanganga – at fault for another goal here after a disastrous Wednesday evening in the Carabao at Chelsea – Ryan Sessegnon, Bryan Gil: all started today and none could have a single complaint if it is the final time they do so under this manager. Not one gave Conte any kind of reason to reappraise his current thinking, and one other positive from the afternoon is that this should at least mark the end of Facebook dads asking why Rodon isn’t starting ahead of Eric Dier.
That victory was in the end deceptively comfortable at 3-1 should only increase the focus on those who started. Harry Winks – along with Ben Davies the only starter here who can consider himself a member of Conte’s trusted core group – curled in direct from a free-kick out on the left to equalise just a few minutes after an exasperated manager had felt obliged to bring on key men Harry Kane, Lucas Moura and Oliver Skipp.
Lucas, showing the sort of skill but also more damningly desire conspicuous by its absence from the majority of that starting XI, robbed a dithering Ryan McLaughlin on halfway and raced clear to round the keeper Trevor Carson and put Spurs ahead. Kane had already missed a glorious chance before he steered home with precision for the third. Lucas could have added a fourth. The game, it is fair to say, had changed a bit once the grown-ups got involved.
The ease with>which the afternoon was turned around in those closing 15 minutes only adds to the feeling of unease, though. Spurs have an elite yet notoriously volatile head coach who is capable of getting them to where they want to be. They have a first team capable of being carried along by him to those kinds of heights. But there is nothing like the depth required in the squad behind that first-choice team despite significant sums of money being thrown at the problem.
There are several senior, high-earning players who just really need to not be at the club now. If you work on 22 fully first-team ready players as a workable main squad then you are charitably looking at an eight-man turnover required. Conte’s first-choice XI is pretty clear. Sanchez and Winks have also clearly done enough to earn the manager’s trust. Someone – Steven Bergwijn perhaps, if he can complete his recovery from a calf twang – will get yet another final chance thanks to Son picking up an injury at Chelsea.
Everything else is in flux, everyone else at best dispensable and at worst a liability. Again, this is nothing Conte has not said already, describing Spurs as a middling team after a frankly shambolic effort at Chelsea and insisting that returning the club to the top table is going to take a lot of patience and a great deal of time.
Conte, though, is a short-term manager – albeit quite possibly the best short-term manager in the world – and his initial contract is for just 18 months. The option for a year’s extension on that will likely be taken, but it would be a surprise given everything we know about this manager and this club were Conte still at WHL2.0 beyond summer 2024. That’s the fragility; Spurs have an unexpected chance with Conte to halt what appeared an inexorable slide from relevance back to the mid-table morass they hoped to have escaped for good.
But how much of the conspicuously necessary rebuild can Conte realistically complete in that most optimistic possible timeframe? And will he simply become too exasperated with Daniel Levy in the meantime and decide he simply doesn’t need this in his life?