Tottenham boss Antonio Conte says he's proud of his first 12 months in charge.
Conte marked his year this week ahead of Sunday's clash with Liverpool.
He said, "We must be happy because in one year we made a lot of progress in every aspect. To finish last season in the Champions League places, fourth place, and then this season [to qualify] despite a lot of important injuries - because we are not talking about fringe players. Many times people forget that there are teams that can allow to lose two, three, four players and other teams have to pay a lot when you have these big injuries of important players.
"Sometimes people like to speak and they don't understand what it means to face this difficult situation, what it means to play every three days with only 13, 14 players. What we are doing is important and I repeat, we are trying to manage the situation in the best possible way. Then if you ask me why it happens, a first half like Marseille, for sure I'm the first to be disappointed because the first half was really, really poor but the players know that. We didn't prepare to have this type of first half, we wanted to be aggressive.
"But I played football, I was a player, and I understand that sometimes when you have an important target to reach and if you prepare for another situation, mentally you want to defend. And also if you play in an aggressive atmosphere, because we found really an aggressive atmosphere in Marseille, it can happen, this type of situation. I spoke with my players and I think we have to be proud of the achievement because don't forget last season we were not able to overcome the group in the Conference League.
"If you ask me if we can improve, then yes. First of all, we need to recover all the players and then to try to improve in every aspect. But sometimes you have to play a game in a way you are forced to play, in a way you didn't prepare, but you have to face difficulty and I'm proud of my players for their reaction in the second half. They showed me great desire to overcome the difficulty and to take this qualification that for the club, for the fans, for everybody is really important. In my opinion, I wasn't so sure many people would say it."
