Conte suggests some Spurs players collapse under pressure

Antonio Conte has suggested some of his Tottenham players are prone to collapsing under pressure. Spurs resume their Champions League campaign with a last-16 first-leg tie at AC Milan on Tuesday against the backdrop of an inconsistent run in the Premier League. Conte, who says he is still not 100 per cent following gallbladder surgery, watched his side beat champions Manchester City and then follow it up by being thrashed 4-1 at Leicester at the weekend, when a spot in the Premier League top four was theirs for the taking.

Spurs have notoriously failed in big moments over the years and Conte has hinted some of his players cannot live with the pressure. "If you want to win or achieve some targets and have a good position in the Champions League or in England in the Premier League you have to be stable," the Italian, who had his gallbladder removed a fortnight ago, said. "And this stability is lacking this year.

I always talk about it with my players. It is very difficult to keep concentration, it is very difficult to stay focused all of the time. "It is not an easy task being so focused.

We are working on that, playing under pressure all of the time is good for some players and bad for others. "Sometimes players feel motivated, other times they feel so much under pressure that they can't perform. "Maybe for a period they have a good performance and then they collapse all of a sudden if they feel too much pressure.

"We are working on this, we want to make our players more resilient." He added: "I think that the pressure is different between Italy and England. In Italy you speak about football from Monday and you finish on Sunday. You speak only football and then you have a lot of TV that speaks football and putting a lot