Antonio Conte arrives and gets first view of Tottenham the pantomime | Nick Ames

Despite going 3-0 up Spurs managed to let Vitesse back into the game to show the new manager he has his work cut out

Buongiorno, Antonio. On Tuesday the official Spurs Twitter account had briefly provoked online mirth by greeting their new head coach in Spanish, before hastily correcting the error and acclaiming him in his native language. Two days later the welcome inside Antonio Conte’s new home was unambiguous but Tottenham’s performance was the equivalent of speaking in tongues. Little about this club’s behaviour of the past two years has made much sense and, in a stadium yearning to be pleased, the task in hand was emphatically pronounced.

This was a bizarre night’s football and much in keeping with the state of things. Conte has famously been reluctant to take jobs in mid‑season and it is especially unlikely he had ever envisaged debuting in a competition called the Europa Conference League, an event that was not really built for nights such as this. Much as he might try to shrug off the idea, little about the Italian has ever been low-key so an empty upper tier, with tickets held back due to the lack of enthusiasm this fixture had prompted until Nuno Espírito Santo’s dismissal, was jarring. Conte is box office material and that was the idea behind his appointment: here, at times, he found himself presiding over a pantomime.