He is partially right but what about the players he brought in last 3 transfer windows, why they also suck and have no fire in their eyes. He is also responsible for this mess.
You could say that, but he's not responsible for the entire organization. And new players come to find old players who tend to set the pace.
These players don't care man. I've been around them for years. The type of player that goes to the PL is one who doesn't like pressure, just like Conte described not yesterday but when he first moved to Chelsea. He knows how it is, he shouldn't be pretending that Tottenham can become a serious club overnight just because they recently had a few good runs.
It's all about money, lack of pressure (by fans and media) to perform consistently, relatively plain training sessions that are focused on fitness levels and chilling in London as a relatively rich person in your 20s and early 30s. You don't move to the PL because you're ambitious, you're moving because it's a fast track to settling in a good lifestyle.
Then there's those from the outside who hear about this magical place where most players are happy to be at and still earn a lot of money, where it's acceptable to not only go out on nights you lost, but even take a private fucking jet and have fun in another city on a nights you lost.
It's a good life for players. Until they meet someone like Mourinho, Ferguson, Conte, van Gaal, Guardiola, Tuchel etc and don't like their rules.
You cannot drill these type of players if you don't have the full backing of the team as well. Make them feel expendable. Because they don't feel that. There's always another PL team to snatch them if they leave one.
There's a reason why Manchester City with a strict coach has managed to remain consistent to a large degree.
There's a reason why Chelsea, despite having an owner who was appeared scary to most people due to his background but didn't really care much about the way things worked and left it to the manager and a few other people, rarely had any consistency after the first guard under Mourinho left the club.
There's a reason why Manchester United after Alex Ferguson has become a shithole.
You cannot go to Tottenham and drill the players. They don't understand it, they don't appreciate it, they don't like it and it goes against their fundamental reasons for being there in the first place. It's an easy way to be at a high level without necessarily having to be high level yourself. That's PL in a nutshell.
Conte expressing this is just his way out. He knows these things. Everyone does. There's a reason why few important coaches touch the Arsenal job. Tottenham sounds like a nice project for them because in theory there's potential, but there's a reason why it cannot work out for most.
The mentality in the Premier League is nothing like the rest of Europe. And coaches that want to win something are typically incompatible to that environment.