Antonio Conte has described the Covid situation in the Premier League as “a big mess” but says clubs are trying their best to deal with the fallout from positive cases. Tottenham face Southampton on Tuesday with the Italian hopeful that his club are over the worst when it comes to infections within the squad, but has explained how just one positive result can disrupt everything before a game.
Spurs will travel to the south coast without knowing the results of the PCR tests taken on Monday but Conte believes it is the only way to do it.
“This is a big mess, because you can prepare with a player that the next day you can’t [play in the game]. Also the players that are positive can infect the other players. But I think now we’re doing very well because before the training session there is a rapid test and then the other test you have the result the day after. I think this is a good solution. [A rapid test] is not 100% but there’s a good percentage of reality in this test.
“But we did have these problems two weeks ago. We were having training sessions, I was preparing for the game and then at the end of the training session you can have a positive player in your team.”
On the pitch Conte has seen much improvement since he arrived at Spurs, the team going on a six-match league unbeaten run, winning four of the games to close the gap to the top four. Spurs have scored an average of two goals a game in the league under Conte but while he has been impressed with the forwards from an attacking point of view he also praised them for their work in defence.
Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and Lucas Moura have all been on the scoresheet in recent weeks and Steven Bergwijn is “improving day by day”, according to Conte. “We know very well that in front we are very good and for this reason we need to exploit the situation, where you have important players,” he said.
“I’m happy that these three, four players that we have in front, they are totally involved offensively but above all defensively, and this is good because we are a team. The rest of the team I think has a great appreciation of the efforts of the strikers without the ball. That’s why when we have the ball we have to create situations to exploit them.”
The former Chelsea and Internazionale coach also had encouraging words for some of the younger players of the squad, including Oliver Skipp and Japhet Tanganga. “Japhet is a player who has a great sense of belonging,” Conte said. “It’s the same for Oliver. For Skipp, he’s playing with me regularly. In every game he’s playing and he’s good. He’s making big improvements and I think that he could become one, a very strong midfielder, a really good midfielder.
“He has to continue to work. We are talking about a humble boy, a humble player. Oliver feels a lot of sense of belonging to play for Tottenham. For Japhet, for Oliver, it’s a dream. During the game you can see this.”
