MANCHESTER, England: The Antonio Conte effect is truly taking hold at Tottenham.
A 2-0 win against Everton on Saturday secured Tottenham’s best start in the English Premier League era after 10 games.
Their 23 points moved Spurs level with second-placed Manchester City and represented their highest tally at this stage since 1963.
Spurs keep looking more like a genuine title contender, supported by their recent good record against City. Their first scheduled league meeting last month was postponed following the death of Queen Elizabeth II and Conte wasn’t disappointed. Spurs are warming up nicely.
Pep Guardiola has led City’s dominance of England and assembled arguably the most powerful squad in Europe, but counterpart Conte is a proven winner himself at Juventus, Chelsea and Inter Milan.
That was always the fascinating aspect of his decision to accept the post at Tottenham, a team that haven’t won the English title since 1961 and counts the 2008 League Cup as their last trophy.
Mauricio Pochettino came close to ending that search for major silverware – reaching the Champions League final in 2018 – but the club’s fortunes have unraveled since then.
Now Conte has provided new energy and new hope. And as long as Harry Kane is fit . . .
Kane opened the scoring for Tottenham about an hour in after being brought down by Jordan Pickford in the box. It was the England international’s 14th goal in his last 11 games against Everton.
Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg sealed the win late.
These are early days in the campaign, but Tottenham’s consistency is already seeing their stand out as one of the teams that look most capable of threatening City, with the Conte factor pivotal.
Elsewhere, Leicester drew with Crystal Palace 0-0 at home and moved off the bottom of the table, Nottingham Forest fell to last after losing to Wolverhampton Wanderers 1-0, and Fulham and Bournemouth drew 2-2.
LEICESTER RISES
Leicester were no longer last in the league but the pressure was still on manager Brendan Rodgers to craft a recovery.
Television cameras focused on Leicester owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, who looked unimpressed after the final while.
Fans inside King Power Stadium called for Rodgers to be fired, with one sign reading: “Time for action.”
Rodgers revealed he held talks with Aiyawatt on Friday.
“They understand the difficulties there is going to be this year, in terms of us not being able to improve but he wants to win,” he said.
“I have had no indication of anything, but I understand football. It will never change — my feeling for him — if he had to make a change. That is the reality.”
WOLVES LICKING LIPS
Wolverhampton was quick to gloat after winning their relegation scrap with Midlands rival Nottingham Forest.
Shortly after fulltime at Molineux, which saw the manager-less home team triumph 1-0 courtesy of Ruben Neves’ second-half penalty, the club’s official Twitter account posted a picture of a tree stump with an axe embedded in it. The caption read, “Playtime’s over.”
Victory lifted Wolves out of the relegation zone after only their second win.
Forest, sitting lost on goal difference, wasted a golden opportunity to share the points when Brennan Johnson’s second-half penalty kick was saved by Jose Sa.
Remarkably, the Wolves goalkeeper has been playing with a broken wrist since the second round.
“Fair play to Jose for playing through that pain and showing courage to do that,” Wolves interim manager Steve Davis said. “They all need to be that big person if we’re going to turn our form around. I thought we took a big step toward that.”
FULHAM FIGHTBACK
Fulham twice came from behind to draw with Bournemouth but manager Marco Silva still bemoaned his team’s failure to win.
Aleksandar Mitrovic’s 52nd-minute penalty helped Fulham equalize for a second time. They pushed for the winner and ended with 19 shots and 69 percent possession.
“It was something that our players definitely deserved with the fight, with the character that they showed, but it is one point,” Silva said.
Tottenham top Everton in best top-flight start since 1963
https://arab.news/4u9g7
Tottenham top Everton in best top-flight start since 1963
- Their 23 points moved Spurs level with second-placed Manchester City
- Conte is a proven winner himself at Juventus, Chelsea and Inter Milan
Russell, Antonelli lead Mercedes in one-two qualifying positions for F1’s Australian GP
- Russell topped all three sessions in F1’s knockout qualifying format, finally casting aside questions of where Mercedes team was in the new-era pecking order
MELBOURNE: Mercedes has revealed its dominant hand during qualifying for Sunday’s Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.
George Russell earned his ninth-career pole position Saturday ahead of his teammate Kimi Antonelli for the team’s 83rd front-row lockout and its first since the 2024 British Grand Prix.
Russell topped all three sessions in F1’s knockout qualifying format, finally casting aside questions of where Mercedes team was in the new-era pecking order. His pole time, at 1 minute, 18.518 seconds, was almost eight-tenths faster than the nearest non-Mercedes challenger, Red Bull rookie Isack Hadjar, who completed the top three.
“It was a great day, we knew there was a lot of potential in the car, but until we get to this first Saturday of the season, you never know,” Russell said. “But it really came alive this afternoon, especially when the track temperatures cooled, we know we tend to favor those conditions.”
Antonelli was relieved to have made it onto the front row alongside his teammate after a crash in final practice at the exit of turn two meant it was a race in the Mercedes garage to get him out for qualifying.
“It’s been a very stressful day. Unfortunately, I went into the wall (in FP3),” he said. “But the guys (in the garage) were the heroes today to put the car back on track.”
Hadjar was impressive by qualifying third on debut for Red Bull, his highest-ever grid position.
“The only thing I can do is take them at the start, but they’re just too fast at the moment,” Hadjar said of Mercedes. “I want to keep my position and a second podium would be cool.”
Ferrari showed it’s neck-and-neck with McLaren on pace, with just one and a half tenths seconds covering the four drivers just beyond the top-three — with Charles Leclerc qualifying fourth, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in fifth and sixth respectively, and Lewis Hamilton in seventh.
Racing Bulls showed they’ve taken a step forward over the winter, with New Zealander Liam Lawson eighth ahead of his highly-rated rookie teammate Arvid Lindblad.
The big surprise of the session came from four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen, who triggered red flags at Melbourne’s Albert Park after he lost control of his Red Bull car in braking for turn one in the first half of Q1 and ended in the barriers.
The Dutchman, who was unhurt from the crash, though upset that his brakes locked up, will now start from the back of the grid.
F1 heads into a new era this year, with unprecedented changes across the chassis (car) and power unit, which now feature an almost 50:50 output split between the turbo 1.6-liter V6 engine and electrical energy harvested from the brakes, one that requires a new, often counterintuitive driving style from the drivers.
