Spurs reaping reward after Antonio Conte’s night of high-stakes poker

Antonio Conte can smile about it now but nobody was smiling then. Least of all him. The Tottenham manager is preparing for Sunday’s Premier League game at home to Burnley, when everything will be on the line for him and his players in terms of a Champions League finish. Spurs know that they have to win in order to maintain the pressure on fourth-placed Arsenal, who go to Newcastle on Monday night.

But it is impossible to consider Burnley without remembering Turf Moor and what took place on that miserable night towards the end of February. Hard on the heels of the stunning 3-2 win at Manchester City, Conte and Spurs had travelled with optimism, the feeling pronounced that a corner had been turned. When it all came crashing down in a lacklustre 1-0 defeat, it was the prompt for Conte’s definitive Spurs meltdown.

As he burned with anger, saying that he could not go on this way and questioning whether he would be able to improve the situation, he looked like a man who had passed the point of no return. It was possible to think that he was about to quit, although the Spurs hierarchy were confident he would calm down. They know that the wild mood swings are a part of him, even in victory, when he can go over the top in the other direction.

What of the players, who had been savaged by implication? The January transfer window had closed, the summer was a long way away and Conte surely risked alienating some or all of those he would have to work with for the remainder of the season. Had he gone too far with the helplessness and resignation?

There were several hard-to-answer questions. What was indisputable was that Conte had gathered his chips and shoved them all in. On one level, it was him leveraging his future involvement with