Tottenham forward Lucas Moura admits manager Antonio Conte’s training sessions are ‘very, very hard’

Tottenham forward Lucas Moura has revealed new manager Antonio Conte is working them hard in training.

The Italian manager won the Premier League title in his first season as Chelsea manager and added the FA Cup in his second season before being sacked.

He also led Inter Milan to their first Serie A title in a decade and turned down the chance to manage Spurs in the summer before taking up the job earlier this month.

Aside from winning trophies, the 52-year-old is also famed for improving players, having succeeded in getting the best out of Romelu Lukaku and Victor Moses.

Antonio Conte’s fingerprints are already appearing on his Tottenham side three games into his tenure, with Spurs having to come from a goal behind to win against Leeds in the Premier League.

Before that they also produced a resolute performance to earn a goalless draw at Goodison Park against Everton and beat Vitesse 3-2 in the Europa Conference League.

Brazilian forward Lucas Moura-who has started every game since the Italian manager arrived gave an insight into how training sessions have changed since the new manager arrived.

He said: “The training sessions have been very, very hard but that is Conte’s style and he loves that high intensity.

“It’s not normal for us to have a double session in season, it’s more of a normality during pre-season.

“They are not sessions for us to enjoy, but we know that they are very important for us, especially in the future in order for us to be fit and be able to put in the intensity that he wants.

“For sure it will improve our game. Football is about working and doing your best we can do by putting in 100% into everything we do.

“Also the coach has just arrived and to put his style on the squad, he needs to enjoy and to take advantage of that time during the international break.

“We had some days without a break so we needed to use that time to work hard and get to know him better.

“We can see that he is very very clever, he is teaching us where to be on the pitch, it is not about teaching us how to play, he is teaching us the necessary movement and how to see football like always having more than one option to play.

“He loves having more than one option to play and likes us to always play football forward.

“He wants to work with us and keep up that high intensity as much as possible during a game, to press the opponent high and play quick.

“That’s it. For that though we need to work during the week, he wants us to improve on those points.”

Tottenham’s next five fixtures

Antonio Conte  has been very careful with how far he can go with this team this season, having taken up the role mid-season

But with Spurs just four points adrift of the top four, he’ll be hoping to put together a chain of wins that will get them close to Champions League football next season.

The fixture list is very kind to him with winnable games against Burnley, Brentford and Norwich all sandwiched between Europa Conference games versus Mura and Rennes.