Harry Kane must feel like a new man – if anything’s going to turn the striker’s frown upside down it’s the news Antonio Conte is set to replace Nuno Espirito Santo as Tottenham Hotspur manager
Conte, after all, can boast a CV as impressive as anyone else in European football, a man who has lifted a league title in five of his past six seasons in the club game. The Italian also has a proven track record when it comes to turning a drifting, underperforming side into relentless winning machines.
After the ill-fated Nuno experiment and 18 months under the fading force that is Jose Mourinho, Spurs are about to appoint an elite-level tactician at the peak of his powers.
If anyone is capable of getting Kane onside – while ending a trophy drought more than a decade old – it’s him.
Kane is hardly the only Spurs player who’ll be enthused by Conte’s imminent arrival.
And while it’s his remarkable collection of silverware that will have the England captain chomping at the bit, it’s Conte’s tactical blueprint – rather than his history of success in the Premier League and Serie A – that will have Tottenham’s forgotten man Matt Doherty rubbing his hands together with glee.
Antonio Conte could save Matt Doherty’s Tottenham career and cheer up Harry Kane
The Ireland international has played just seven minutes of top-flight football all season, frozen out of the first-team picture by a coach who sold him just 11 months before they were reunited in north London.
Conte, however, is all-but guaranteed to bring with him the trademark 3-5-2 formation that worked wonders at Chelsea, Inter Milan, Juventus and the Italian national team.
Doherty played the best football of his career in a rampaging right wing-back role at Wolves and, with that in mind, it would be foolish to bet against a Victor Moses-style rejuvenation under 52-year-old Conte at Tottenham.
Doherty, it must be said, is arguably the only right-sided full-back perfectly suited to Conte’s 3-5-2. Emerson Royal and Japhet Tanganga, in comparison, are far more comfortable in a flat back-four.
You can be sure Conte will want to spend big at his new club and, according to The Sun, chairman Daniel Levy will bow down to his demands by handing him a £150 million transfer war chest.
But if Conte can improve and revitalise the players already at his disposal, all the better.
Here’s what some Tottenham fans on Twitter had to say about the potential Conte and Doherty match-up:
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