Antonio Conte sent clear message to Tottenham about relegation that speaks volumes now

Former Tottenham Hotspur boss Antonio Conte discussed the prospect of a relegation battle

Former Tottenham Hotspur boss Antonio Conte previously warned that the club risked sliding towards a relegation battle. The Italian coach was in charge of Spurs for less than 18 months but issued a clear message during his reign.

Tottenham sit just one point above the relegation zone with nine games remaining. Igor Tudor’s side lost 3-1 at home to Crystal Palace on Thursday to extend Spurs’ winless run to 11 league matches, with the team yet to earn a Premier League victory since the turn of the year.

Conte, who succeeded Nuno Espirito Santo in November 2021, arrived with a tremendous pedigree. He won the Premier League as Chelsea boss in 2017 and had clinched the fourth Serie A title of his coaching career just months before joining Spurs.

Following the heights of reaching the 2019 Champions League final, Tottenham had begun to drop down the table before Conte's appointment. While the manager was able to steer the club back into the top four in his first season, the 56-year-old used Everton as an example of a side facing an unlikely relegation battle.

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“The level of this league is so high,” Conte said in March 2022. “You have to pay great attention and it’s my forecast that in the future it will be worse.

“Worse in the sense that it will be very, very difficult and then you’ll have to pay [even] greater attention. Teams that at this moment seem to be in the middle, they could slip. For sure, Everton is a good example.”

The year before, Everton had been expected to compete for a European spot under Carlo Ancelotti. However, subsequent managerial appointments raised fears of dropping to the Championship before finishing 16th.

“You look at the squad of Everton, their players, and you can think it’s impossible that Everton is fighting relegation,” Conte explained. “That they had such an important coach in Rafa Benitez, who won the Champions League and titles, and was sacked. And now they’re fighting for the relegation zone.

“Everton is a good example to understand that this league is very, very difficult and in the future it will become much more difficult.”

Conte’s prediction that midtable clubs would eventually be at greater risk has arguably come to fruition this term, given Wolves and West Ham United sit in the bottom three. Moreover, the Italian coach had already insisted that Tottenham were “in the middle”, increasing the likelihood of a potential relegation scrap.

In January 2022, following a 2-0 defeat to Chelsea, Conte said of Spurs: “If you compare the two teams there is not a comparison. We are talking about a team ready to win - today we have seen the difference between the two teams. We are a team in the middle.

“This game confirmed what I thought about the difference between the teams. In the last years the level of Tottenham has dropped a lot.”

He continued: “There is a lot of work to do, in this moment, it is very difficult to understand which part you take to improve because there is a lot of situations to improve. We need so much time and patience.”