Antonio Conte: ‘Maybe I make mistakes’ picking other players ahead of Joe Rodon

Antonio Conte admits he might have made a mistake by not trusting Joe Rodon in Tottenham’s leaky defence, but is backing his evaluation of the player.

The Wales centre-half has been notable by his absence in recent weeks, with Conte appearing to favour a number of others ahead of him in his back line.

The Spurs head coach said before Christmas that he saw Rodon as a back-up to Eric Dier in the middle of a three-man defence, but Rodon has not got anywhere near the line-up even with Dier missing seven of the last eight games through injury.

That points to Conte just not fancying Rodon, with the Italian saying he picks the players he thinks are best suited to the team.

“We are talking about a really good guy,” Conte said after Sunday’s 2-0 home defeat to Wolves. “We are talking about a person whose commitment is very high every day.

“But in this moment maybe I make mistakes to pick different players maybe. Maybe. My evaluation is to try to put on the pitch the best players at the moment.

“If I didn’t do this then maybe I did different considerations.”

Wolves won the game thanks to goals in the first 20 minutes from Raul Jimenez and Leander Dendoncker as Spurs gift-wrapped both opportunities with poor defending.

The three points moved them above Spurs in the table, within touching distance of the top four, and Jimenez – who scored his first goal of 2022 – is beginning to dream big.

“It was always the plan to come here and play our game with the ball and make them run,” the Mexico striker said. “We knew we would have opportunities. We needed to capitalise and score the goals.

“We’ve had troubles this season scoring, but (on Sunday) we did what we wanted. We are always confident.

“We know what we can do. We are in a good time and we can keep improving and go higher in the table. We are dreaming big.”