Jamie O’Hara slams Antonio Conte over his bombshell interview about Tottenham

talkSPORT’s Jamie O’Hara slams Antonio Conte over his bombshell interview about Tottenham being weakened, calling it a ‘statement of regret’.

The Italian manager said that he is happy at Spurs, however believes that the club’s transfer philosophy will require patience and potentially delay their bid to compete at the top of the Premier League.

Conte’s intriguing interview with Sky Italia got a lot of people talking, below is the complete transcript.

Is Antonio Conte happy with this Tottenham at the moment?

I am certainly happy with the way we are working. I think we are doing a lot but I am realising being inside the situation that it will take time and patience because there are many young players even at their first experience in the Premier League who need to grow, gain experience and raise their level.

How character is transmitted to a team, she is a master at this. How you do it?

I think the first thing to pass on to the team is knowledge, football knowledge. If you have football knowledge, knowledge makes you strong. It gives you strength and personality: Surely on a character level this is a team we are working on, there is daily, psychological work to try to make each player grow individually.

Is there something similar between your first Inter and this Tottenham?

Should you find something like this, it is always difficult to make comparisons, but surely when you take the job in a team that hasn’t won for a long time it is inevitable that you will lack confidence. The confidence is down and many times at the first obstacle you throw yourself down and many times the negativity increases even more, sometimes you grant goals that you struggle to accept. This has been happening to us in the last period.

This is part of a process of a team that has to grow a lot to try to be competitive. Right now we are one of the many teams that are in the middle, they need to work a lot and this does not scare me at all. It is inevitable that certainly the situation compared to the past for me is very different in terms of perspectives, ambitions, in terms of fighting to win. I realized that it’s a totally different situation anyway.

Did you realise it now or at the beginning?

When you are outside you can never make certain assessments. So from the outside it may seem something different when you take over a situation it is inevitable that taking over in the current year is never easy. I promised myself not to do it because I only did it once and I promised myself not to do it.

Then there is the desire, the desire to always question oneself even in very very difficult situations such as this one of Tottenham, because Tottenham has been in the middle of the table for so many years. But here this did not scare me, I glimpsed situations that could have developed, then when you enter the situation you understand that something, however, what happened in January is not easy.

Four players left in January. Four important players for Tottenham, two have arrived. So even numerically instead of reinforcing yourself in quotes you may have, on paper, weakened. Then precise choices were made for many reasons. But I certainly never expected that in January 4 players who I still considered important would change their shirts for a thousand reasons. This shows the difficulty. Tottenham in the last session of the summer transfer market and in January changed 8 players.

During the conference, you said “There were opportunities in the January market”. But were there any opportunities Tottenham could have seized and missed?

It is inevitable that in January it is very difficult to get two players like Bentancur and Kulusevski to sign who, I repeat, are the ideal prospects for Tottenham. Because Tottenham is looking for young players, players to be developed, not ready players. This is the speech.

And is it possible to grow even with players like that and not with ready players?

You at Inter were asking for ready players to fill the gap you were talking about.

Eh but here was the link. The vision, the philosophy of the club is this. It is inevitable that if you want to grow faster and if you want to be competitive more quickly you need players with a lot of experience because they also lead to an increase in experience in your team. But then again, the vision of the club I realized is this and will continue to be this. For this reason it will take a lot of patience, and I continue to explain it to the whole environment and to the fans.

Does Inter win the Scudetto?

(Laughs) Yes, Yes, Inter wins.

Jamie O’Hara said on talkSPORT

“It’s too honest. I’m not happy about it. He’s covering his own back and digging everyone else out at the club.

“I know he’s speaking facts, but he can’t do that as manager.

“If you’re a player you’re a little bit disappointed in the gaffer there.

“You can see he’s not happy, on the sidelines, he looks like he’s crushed and the weight of the world is on his shoulders and he doesn’t know how to get out.

“He’s always had great players and he’s always had clubs who want to win the league and now he’s at a club that don’t want to win the league.

“But he has to take responsibility for the recent results, which have not been good enough. He’s picking the team. He picked Matt Doherty, he picked Ryan Sessegnon, he picked Davinson Sanchez. I feel like he’s just protecting himself a little bit and digging out everyone else.”

Twitter users reacted while Jamie O’Hara slams Antonio Conte over his bombshell interview about Tottenham…

@willow1886: Comedy gold on Talk Sport; ex Billericay Town manager

@xM20x: You can have your views on Conte. You can have your views on Levy. But fuck me, can we all agree that Jamie O’Hara as the face of Spurs on talksport is fucking terrible.

@TheRealSitts: Conte taking a slight beasting on talksport from j o’hara for giving an honest appraisal of where Spurs are at. Most of it said over the last few years since Poch by moi. Manager criticised for being honest..never thought that would be repeated 😂 If, according to J.O’Hara, Conte is making excuses, they’re all honest observations from the ministry of stating the obvious

@Tgarratt10: Jamie O’hara is a numpty but he’s played at the highest level. A level 99.999% of people only dream of getting too. Does this mean nobody can comment on Conte unless they’ve managed at an elite level? Pretty ignorant way of thinking about an opinion based sport if you ask me 🤷🏻‍♂️

@stevieelliott4: Speaking the truth, what every spurs fan knows.., Levy has had, poch, Jose and now conte… arguably in top 5 mangers in the world (conte is) if he isn’t backed and leaves, then what? Levy out, with 8 of the players. #teamconte

@David36050087: That’s the whole problem with society as well, nobody tells you how it is, Conte has and that in my eyes is what I think is correct, fans should get behind Conte 👍

@chippy_the_guv: Didn’t take long for the Conte/Levy working relationship to fall apart. Who would have thought?

@RyanMacFarland: Some fans are glad he is calling the owners our.. as for the players,they have thrown ever manager under the bus the last 3 years, about time they and levy get called out. #enicout #levyout #backconte

@alexw2289: About time someone called Levy out. People are starting to see what he’s really like

@jackyboy941: Ohara doesn’t speak for spurs fans, don’t know who he thinks he is, iv seen things he’s said in the past and he isn’t a true spurs fan, he says it for the sake of talkSPORT, thank god conte is speaking out against the board