How can they shield him and players from criticism though? I haven't seen a board coming in public and defending the manager, makes for unneeded tension as if there's a big problem happening.
Criticism happens. Everyone criticize everything, it's logical to not pay attention to every single thing said about the team.
Somebody else already answered this in part. Also, by publicly backing the job he and his team were doing, by being closer to them to make them feel appreciated and backed...
There are many ways of doing this. Vidal was always a nutjob, yet when he was at juventus stuff(like getting drunk and starting fights in clubs virtually every night) started to come up in the media only at the end when juventus had decided to sell him
So simply another case of people in pro sports / football acting like man-childs, basically kids in adult bodies. OK, cool.
Can someone from Italy tell us how much of these accusations are fair and how much is Conte acting like a spoiled child? With just a few unverified tweets this seems impossible to judge.
Lots of managers who coached at inter complained about this. Spalletti had similar complaints just 2 years ago
In general, it's well known that at juventus, coaches and players just have to focus on doing their job on the training ground and the club takes care of everything else, it's a great place to work. Milan was the same
Inter on the other hand have always been a bit disfunctional, coaches and players felt like they were put into a "blender"(Bergomi's own words)
Case in point. Said the same thing
This is why Inter went after Mourinho and why Mourinho felt like the perfect guy for Inter. In fact, possibly the only manager who could win the CL with them, for this reason, as he was a master of communication and manipulation, able to isolate his team and allow them to work in a good environment even though the club didn't help