Expert Premier League predictions from Mark Langdon: Conte's class will show

The joke in Italy went something like this: recently departed Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte was not even the most powerful Conte in the country when, in 2019, namesake Antonio returned to Serie A.

Conte - Antonio that is - demands respect and he demands the best so it was a surprise to see him rock up at Tottenham earlier this week.

He will be paid handsomely for the decision to head to London but the cash demand is much more about status. Conte will be at Tottenham only because he believes he can win.

Conte always believes he can win and has managed to win over dressing-rooms from the moment he truly established himself when returning to Juventus in 2011.

Juve were not the all-conquering team they would later become. The Old Lady were still trying to recover from the fallout of the enforced relegation for match-fixing and finished the 2010-11 season seventh, 25 points off champions Milan.

Then in Conte's first season they won the league with an unbeaten campaign. As Conte quipped recently on Juve's dominance and subsequent slip: "I started this cycle and I stopped it with Inter."

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In between the Scudetto successes with Juve and Inter there was silverware at Chelsea - the Premier League followed by the FA Cup - and history will probably prove him right to have wanted players like Diego Costa and Willian out of the club.

Inter had gone over a decade without a Serie A title before last season's success and Conte was able to change the culture in pretty much the same way he did in Turin.

One of Conte's moves was to ban the Inter club song because it referred to them as being a team with a DNA of madness. The Nerazzurri would no longer be an outfit who revelled in chaos, even if one of Conte's final digs suggested otherwise.

"In two years we have restored credibility to the club - winning at Inter is not something for everyone," said Conte on the pitch at San Siro after leading them to the title. And on accusations that he had bought the title he added: "Their value is much higher than when I arrived, so the investment on me has borne fruit."

The Tottenham job is Conte's most difficult since he established himself as a manager because of the quality elsewhere in the Premier League and the wage-budget difference between Spurs and England's elite.

However, Spurs could not have appointed a better man for the job and comparisons with Jose Mourinho are as off-target as Harry Kane these days. Mourinho was special once, Conte remains one of the best five or six managers in world football.

Jurgen Klopp is also in that bracket and he can lead Liverpool to another success, this time at West Ham.

The Hammers have made a fantastic start and sit in the top four of both the Premier League table and the expected-points metric.

That has earned them respect in the market, although the lofty positions may have something to do with an easy start. Manchester United are the only opponents they have faced in the Premier League's top eight this term - and the Hammers lost that game 2-1 at home.

Best bet

Liverpool
1pt 8-11 general

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