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Manager Thomas Frank

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Are you Frank Out or In?


  • Total voters
    623
These are the attackers he is working with:

Richarlison
Johnson
Kudus
Xavi
Odobert
Tel

What are people expecting from such a group after 1.5 months? At least when Ange started he could pick Son, Maddison, Kulusevski, Perisic, etc. Due to injuries Frank is often having to use Sarr and Bergvall as number 10s even though they were defensive midfielders last season.
He should have put his foot down and said he didn’t want Tel. Could have said let me see what we have abd leave options open. Yes it may have been agreed already but I’m frank would have been consulted. However I guess it comes down to the awful recruitment over last couple of years. Whoever is responsible should be sacked whether it be Lange or Fab. Shocking amount of money wasted on those forwards highlighted by the fact we still need to improve in that area even after spending over £200M.
 
No matter how hard of a hand you think he's been dealt, things won't get much better before the next summer at the earliest when Maddison returns -in what shape we don't know- and -hopefully- some serious quality gets added to the frontline.

Can he afford to carry on struggling against the likes of Wolves and Bodo in the meantime? If not, where is the improvement going to come from? Are we pinning our hopes on RKM and Solanke like some wishfully did with Romero and VdV for most of last season?

You can genuinely wonder these without necessarily calling for his head.
 
It's clear that reason will have no triumph here.

I tried tho.
You didn't give reasons at all. Just scenarios that might happen.
Even if we don't win tomorrow, but there's little green shoots of recovery with our play with the ball, and also, not give them half an hour to do what they want, then I could very easily be persuaded that things might turn around. But I'm not confident of it. I'm expecting another bore fest, which is a struggle for the majority of the game. I desperately hope I'm wrong, but I'm not optimistic.
 
He should have put his foot down and said he didn’t want Tel. Could have said let me see what we have abd leave options open. Yes it may have been agreed already but I’m frank would have been consulted. However I guess it comes down to the awful recruitment over last couple of years. Whoever is responsible should be sacked whether it be Lange or Fab. Shocking amount of money wasted on those forwards highlighted by the fact we still need to improve in that area even after spending over £200M.

Why would you assume he doesn't want Tel? He's a 20 year old that was, not long ago, bought by Bayern for £50m.

Frank has turned far less into far more. I'm sure he knows what he's doing and it's not necessarily a quick process
 
We are still crying out for creativity. Simons can bring that in a run of games in the 10 role.
Bergval can sit deeper and therefore bring the ball from deep to find Simons.
Paliniha sitting and protecting. I believe we don't need a double pivot in most games as our back 4/3 are proficient enough to deal with the majority of sides.
Currently we all know that of the 3 areas that exist it's the wide areas and not having a dominant number 9 that concerns most of us?

Personally I'd try and overcome this by playing a 3-4-1-2. Let Porro, Udogie or Spence provide the width, along with Kudus, cutting in to cause uncertainty and damage in and around the box and and have Richy as the central focus (I know but..)

Right here and now my preferred starting 11 against most sides would be...

Kinsky.
Romero. Danso. Vdv. (3)
Porro. Paliniha. Bergval. Udogie or Spence. (4)
Xavi. (1)
Kudus. Richy. (2). Even Kudus. Johnson playing a poachers role until we are able to attract a proper number 9, unless RKM blows us all away when given his chance?
 
Come back to me on November and December and tell me what a shit narrative it is. There are lots of teams with worse players than we have, and yet, they can still generate something. Lots of teams don't play with a 10 but can create chances. All teams have to do against us is drop to a back 3 and it completely nullifies us, as Wolves demonstrated. I thought Frank was a shrewd tactician? Right now, we have one attacking trick.

You never mentioned the trend that we're now easier to create chances against, is that because we're missing Maddison and Decky too? And as I mentioned, we replaced those players with players you said were class, I'm not sure they are, but you reckon they are.

We created better chances under feckin Nuno as well, we had higher xg then. If things don't improve on the .month of October, and we go into playing Villa, Newcastle, Liverpool, United, Chelsea, Woolwich and Palace. I don't see where points come from.

You're just in denial because you clearly love him and are blinded by it. It's been less than convincing. I want him to succeed and get us playing, but this is poor and the results, against the run of play, won't last.

Pretty sure the narrative up til a couple of weeks ago was how Frank is some sort of wizard at improving attacking players too. Seems to have gone the complete opposite way so far.

It's 4 months in now. He's had a preseason, he got in the players he wanted. It's far too long for him to be in charge and we still don't look like we know what we're doing. I don't watch us now thinking we're going. To play well, it's almost watching just to get through it now. That's not good.

Edit because I forgot to back to it. My gripe is indeed with the INTENT of our attacking play. We spend most of the games now chasing shadows, not being able to string two passes together. Then we do go forward, it's so utterly predictable. Our top goal scorer, own goal, isn't going to bag us 20 a season and keep bailing us out. If you think things are going well, that's fine, but to say that I'm being tedious, for saying things which are true, which are happening, and not some "oh, but if X happens we'll be fine", no that is tedious.
it's eight fucking game!!! EIGHT. FUCKING. GAMES! We are 4th in the league, unbeaten in the CL, with a much improved defense. Please shut up and be patient. Come november you can return here with you shit narrative.
 
No matter how hard of a hand you think he's been dealt, things won't get much better before the next summer at the earliest when Maddison returns -in what shape we don't know- and -hopefully- some serious quality gets added to the frontline.

Can he afford to carry on struggling against the likes of Wolves and Bodo in the meantime? If not, where is the improvement going to come from? Are we pinning our hopes on RKM and Solanke like some wishfully did with Romero and VdV for most of last season?

You can genuinely wonder these without necessarily calling for his head.
I won't count on Maddison tbh. At least Kulusevski may return this year.
 
You didn't give reasons at all. Just scenarios that might happen.
Even if we don't win tomorrow, but there's little green shoots of recovery with our play with the ball, and also, not give them half an hour to do what they want, then I could very easily be persuaded that things might turn around. But I'm not confident of it. I'm expecting another bore fest, which is a struggle for the majority of the game. I desperately hope I'm wrong, but I'm not optimistic.
You're mis-contextualising Xg .and viewing it in a vacuum and not appreciating contributing factors and, also, limitations to Xg stat.

Hence, you're position is unreasonable.

The worst thing about current stat climate is it makes people think they know what they're talking about by just presenting them.


Those who are intent to make the environment wholly toxic around this manager will get on with it, regardless.

#CookedFanbase
 
If I'd seen even a semblance of good football or attacking intent, I'd be happy enough. But we look utterly lost, like strangers on the pitch going forward. There's teams with much, much less quality than us who can still attack. Doncaster created good chances against us ffs, there's no excuses there.

Then on the flip side, we've given up more chances than we have created, so we're not as great at the back as is being banded about. We've been lucky teams are wasting opportunities.

That's why I'm concerned. We can't keep coming back late on over a season, it's not sustainable, we need to figure it out quick or come November, we're going to find out. I'm by no means Frank out, but there's cracks being papered over, and I'm baffled that most of our fans just have this nonchalant, he's new attitude. We're only 2 points ahead of where Nuno was at this stage of his season, with harder fixtures to boot. I think there's definitely right to worry, but hopefully this weekend we can finally kick on.
Yes agree to some extent. I’d just like Frank to adopt an iriola or glassner system. Both their teams look solid and attack with intent. May be don’t have the players especially in forward positions but then that is where you try play a more passing game with lots of movement but like Brighton. Mind again half our forwards couldn’t trap a bag of cement. Thats why I have advocated keeping some of academy players learn under franks coaching team and integrate them into the style of football. Let’s see where we go but franks has defo got to settle on a preferred style of football which cannot be low block bollocks. We can’t be going back to those days again.
 
We have to be (very) patient - Frank is dealing with a forward line of limited quality and a mid-field which is presently lacking in depth (Maddison and Kulu will help there, but they are not world-beaters). The backline is OK (most of the time) and the two main keepers are adequate if a little flaky occasionally (eg Vicario's left foot howler against Bodo led to their second goal).

There is not one player in our forwards or mid-field that would make a Liverpool or Woolwich side.

We have some very promising younger players (Bergvall, Gray etc) but they will take a year or two to develop to the level we need.

Frank's problem is that the inadequacies of our forwards mean that he cannot (easily) have an attacking strategy. So I sense that he is playing things safe.

Despite the fact that we have spent huge sums on players and on our stadium we have to live with the fact that, as I said on another forum, 10th might be our lot this season given the squad we have and the additional demands of CL and English cup football.
 
You didn't give reasons at all. Just scenarios that might happen.
Even if we don't win tomorrow, but there's little green shoots of recovery with our play with the ball, and also, not give them half an hour to do what they want, then I could very easily be persuaded that things might turn around. But I'm not confident of it. I'm expecting another bore fest, which is a struggle for the majority of the game. I desperately hope I'm wrong, but I'm not optimistic.

So your premise is that because you havent seen enough so far that there is no way were turning it around?
 
You're mis-contextualising Xg .and viewing it in a vacuum and not appreciating contributing factors and, also, limitations to Xg stat.

Hence, you're position is unreasonable.

The worst thing about current stat climate is it makes people think they know what they're talking about by just presenting them.


Those who are intent to make the environment wholly toxic around this manager will get on with it, regardless.

#CookedFanbase
I'm absolutely not. I have a pair of eyes. We create Nada, we have zero imagination in our build up and are so easy to play against. We're completely devoid attacking wise, not just okay, not just bad, it's brutal.

Calling something out like how awful we're set up isn't creating a toxic environment. Where you so gracious with Conte, Nuno, Ange et al? I'd wager not. Apparently when we're being served shit on a plate, we're supposed to be thankful for it.
I'm concerned because our schedule so far has been very advantageous. We made Doncaster look good, we made Bodo and Wolves look sensational. We have better attacking players than all of those clubs, yet they created chances. I'd have sold Richy two years ago, but to say he's useless , when he's been a good pl player for the better part 8 or so years is ridiculous. He's not elite, but you give him chances and he'll score.
This notion of not being allowed to be concerned is just stupid gate keeping.

I don't know what I'm talking about? Okay. I've explained it every which way. To what benefit is parking the bus football beneficial while facing very weak sides? Why play two DM's one of which is a very limited footballer most games? Why do we go through periods of 20-30 minutes when we just forget how to kick a ball? Crappy selections, crappy subs, crappy tactics so far and performances are getting worse, not better. Again, you're entitled to your opinion, but your snide remarks, whilst saying nothing but what ifs isn't a good look.

I'll again reiterate, if this isn't sorted out very quickly and we go into the league playing like this after the international break, with the level of opposition were facing, it's going to be bad. We can't be both a sieve at the back and a non-factor up top and pretend like everything is dandy.
 
So your premise is that because you havent seen enough so far that there is no way were turning it around?
I'm hoping it turns around, but we look worse as we go on if anything. He's had a preseason, we're 4 months in now.

I'm not asking for us to be blowing everyone away, far from it. If we were trying things differently going forward, of there was some fluidity to our play, some nice little patterns and signs of encouragement, that'd do me. But we're seeing nothing but getting it wide and crossing.
 
it's eight fucking game!!! EIGHT. FUCKING. GAMES! We are 4th in the league, unbeaten in the CL, with a much improved defense. Please shut up and be patient. Come november you can return here with you shit narrative.
Another one I've bookmarked for December. And I'll come back and say I was concerned over nothing, or, we're fucked. Go have a look at our fixtures and show me the winnable games. I've got Forest, and that's about it in the league until the new year, maybe Brentford, but they're starting to figure it out, despite losing their best attacking players, captain and anchor, and hiring an inexperienced coach, most of those factors are our excuses for underwhelming thus far.
 
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