‘I’m waiting’: Antonio Conte wants £20m Tottenham player to improve

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Tottenham Hotspur boss Antonio Conte has suggested that he’s still waiting for Djed Spence to improve further before being able to start him.

The 22-year-old joined Spurs for £20million in the summer to considerable fanfare. This was in wake of his heroics on loan at Nottingham Forest.

However, Spence has been on the fringes of the Tottenham first-team up to now. He has just three minutes of competitive action to his name.

Nonetheless, the England Under-21 international is on the right track, having come on in Spurs’ last two league games.

Last week, Conte said: “Djed, he’s working and he’s improving and he’s starting to understand which is the demand to stay at Tottenham.”

Ahead of Tottenham’s home game with Newcastle, the Spurs boss talked about his options at right wing-back.

Emerson Royal has returned from suspension and Matt Doherty is back to full fitness.

Conte, speaking to football.london, mentioned them as well as Spence.

However, the Italian indicated that he is still waiting to see improvements from the latter before thinking of starting him.

“This is the last problem for me. If this is the only problem for us, I’m happy,” said Conte.

“This is not a problem. For me to recover [Emerson] is good news. You know very well this role you lose a lot of energy during the game.

“Now Matthew played with the national team and played two games in a row with us and he played the last three Premier League games.

“To have the possibility to have an alternative, to play Emerson or Doherty, or also I’m waiting to improve Spence. For me it’s important.”

Spence is an “unbelievable” talent, and it’s not surprising to hear a player needing a bit of time to adapt to a new manager’s methods.

While it’s nice that some can hit the ground running – like Dejan Kulusevski – they’re usually the exception to the norm.