‘It’s simple’: Tottenham and Conte feel mood change after win at Man City

For Antonio Conte, defeat has always felt like a mortal insult, a scar on the soul, and it is not difficult to imagine how low he was after Tottenham’s shambolic home loss to Wolves on the Sunday before last. It came hard on the heels of the defeat against Southampton – also at home, also deserved – and nobody was particularly optimistic about their chances when they went to the Premier League leaders, Manchester City, on Saturday.

Cue the Harry Kane-inspired 3-2 win, one of the shock results of the season and, certainly, the statement performance of Conte’s near four-month tenure. Kane scored two, including a 95th-minute winner, and might have had four but he helped to set the tone with his work rate, always “linking with the team defensively”, to borrow Conte’s words.

Conte’s players ran their socks off, they put their bodies on the line, they followed his tactical instructions to the letter. There was even a bit of nastiness, at times. And, for Conte, it added up to evidence that his messages about mentality were getting through.

It is doubtful that anyone at Spurs will ever torture themselves quite so much as the manager after a bad result. But Conte suggested that those against Wolves and Southampton had stirred something in his players; something he wants to see again and again, picking up at Burnley on Wednesday night.

“It’s very simple,” Conte said before Wednesday night’s trip to Burnley:.:“We lost two games against Wolverhampton and Southampton and then we won against City. The first step to change your mentality is, after a loss, you have to understand that you lost a game and, for sure, the atmosphere has to be different. When you lose a game and you come back to the training ground and, OK, it’s the same