Antonio Conte and the full Spurs experience

The Fiver, wise beyond its beers, realised a long time ago that nothing good could come from us reaching for unattainably high standards, which is to say high standards. Pep Guardiola is not like that, and that’s his problem. The Catalan comes across as one of those perfectionists to whom the slightest flaw in his work triggers agonising reflections, leaving him Edvard Munching into the bathroom mirror, screaming like a pained circus oddity. So just imagine how Guardiola suffers from reminders that Manchester City’s bogey team are Tottenham Honking Hotspur, for goodness sake.

On Wednesday Guardiola had to watch Liverpool demolish both Leeds United and the small goal difference advantage that City had enjoyed over their closest rivals as Jürgen Klopp’s team pulled to within three points at the top of the table. But the most galling result for Guardiola came at Turf Moor, where the Ben Mee Team fought for a precious victory that underlined the absurdity of Spurs’ win at City last weekend. As the scoreline flashed up on the screen, you could easily picture Guardiola turning to his £100m gardener, Jack Grealish, and pleading with him to make it all make sense.

Of course, Guardiola was not the only manager driven to distraction after Spurs’ latest Spursiness. The London troupe’s own ringmaster, Antonio Conte, was so bewildered that he found himself questioning everything he thought he knew about himself, football and stereotypes about temperamental sorts. “No one deserves this type of situation,” whimpered Conte to English media a week after complaining that interviews translated from Italian media often tended to make him seem like a fickle galoot. “I came in to try to improve the situation in Tottenham but maybe in this