This is another one that just makes the players sound like arseholes. Just be professional, do your job, it doesn’t matter who the manager is.
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Manager Thomas Frank
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This is another one that just makes the players sound like arseholes. Just be professional, do your job, it doesn’t matter who the manager is.
Some of it will be coming from Frank, bear in mind
Might get to see him as a forward with service.
Good clubs actually care about team spirit and the personalities of players off the pitch.
If you have a bunch of dickheads, then your recruitment has failed miserably.
Whilst I agree that's not how football works and in general that's not how life works, players never respect a manager they don't rate and has 0 authority and you can extend that to real life situations. The only difference is that players can afford to act up because they are the commodities and cannot be sacked.
Yeah, you’re right. That is how it goes in reality. The players often have more power than the manager.
I think the thesis of the article remains
Bournemouth played "big club" football, not Brentford ball, and Howe called up well to the bigger club
I think early on particularly they were very like his Bournemouth too, and he's since been developing ( mixed results)
Club promised to make him captain then, not Frank
View: https://x.com/TheSpursExpress/status/2021651640785465359
View: https://x.com/TheSpursExpress/status/2021651640785465359
This is club that Levy built.
Article from The Times
THETIMES.COM
Thomas Frank’s sessions bored players — and he only rated Pedro Porro
Tom Allnutt
8 min read
Thomas Frank was brought to Tottenham Hotspur as the master adapter but in the end, the one change the fans wanted was him.
The new hierarchy at Spurs clung on for as long as they could, at first in the belief that the kinks would be ironed out and then out of necessity, due to a lack of compelling alternatives. After another boo-fest of a defeat at home to Newcastle United on Tuesday night, Frank’s time was finally up. Tottenham’s chief executive Vinai Venkatesham left his seat and decided it was time to act.
Venkatesham was in the stands for Frank’s final game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and saw up close the anger of the fans, although that was nothing new. The clincher was the Premier League table and the very real concern that Spurs, having dropped to 16th place, were plummeting towards relegation. For all the mitigating factors, Venkatesham told the owners the case for continuing was no longer there on the pitch.
In June last year, Frank became the last Tottenham manager to be appointed while Daniel Levy was chairman and, just eight months later, he becomes the first in a quarter of a century to be sacked by someone else. The new regime has strived for a “calm and measured” approach but experienced employees at Spurs were still amazed that Frank lasted so long. “Under Daniel, he would have been gone before Christmas,” one said.
Alarm bells were certainly ringing in late September, after a dreary draw at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers, and then again in early November, after the miserable 0.1-XG loss at home to Chelsea. During the November international break, Venkatesham and his two co-sporting directors, Fabio Paratici and Johan Lange, held meetings in the Bahamas with the new Tottenham triumvirate — Vivienne Lewis, Charles Lewis and Nick Beucher — and the message delivered was one of patience. Early bumps in the road were to be expected.
Yet the longer Frank stayed, the more convinced the fans became he just didn’t fit as Tottenham head coach. Performances were stodgy and creativity almost entirely absent. Spurs have averaged 1.05 expected goals per game this season, the fourth worst in the division, and won only two out of 13 Premier League matches at home. After Richarlison, with seven goals in 21 league appearances, their top scorers are their two central defenders, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, with four. Regular scenes of dissent have meant that the most absorbing part of many Tottenham games this season has been the minutes after the full-time whistle.
And the more Frank worked with the players, the more disillusioned they became with his methods. Training sessions were slow and overly tactical, “always focusing on structure”, said a source, in contrast with fast and open sessions under Ange Postecoglou. And while Frank indicated in the early weeks the defensive emphasis would just be the first phase of work, the second, more attacking phase never really came.
In that sense, perhaps the lurch from Postecoglou to Frank was just too extreme, an over-correction, as though Tottenham went from one manager who refused to prepare for the opposition to another, who did nearly nothing but. Some of the best coaches in the world are obsessed by analysis but it rankled how even against teams like Burnley, Frank forensically studied the strengths of the opposition. Ironically, one of the more entertaining drills the players enjoyed involved diving blocks and last-ditch defending.
Frank openly argued, with some justification, that Tottenham knew how to attack under Postecoglou but had forgotten the uglier side of the game. But his messaging too often blurred into an ethos that felt like always preparing for the worst. In his first speech to the players, Frank honed in on the tough times; how spirit and character is revealed during adversity. In his first press conference, fans never forgot how Frank tried to convey the need for resilience by announcing, “One thing is 100 per cent sure — we will lose football matches.”
Tottenham Hotspur players Djed Spence and Micky Van de Ven walk away as their manager Thomas Frank gestures towards them on the field.
Djed Spence and Van de Ven appeared to ignore Frank after the defeat to Chelsea in November
At Tottenham, staff noted how frustrating Frank found the lack of time he could actually spend on the training ground. Part of Frank’s appeal, after the puritanical methods of Postecoglou, was his ability to develop players and adapt his tactics but Tottenham’s Champions League commitments meant Frank found his weeks dominated by recovery, media and travel, leaving little time for his “special operations”. He said the club and players had to get used to balancing Europe with the Premier League, although another view was that it was more he and his staff who had to make that step up. After all, Tottenham have competed in Europe in 18 of the past 20 years.
Nobody can dispute that Frank inherited a team loaded with problems. His ill-fated picking of Romero as captain was not because he saw Romero as a natural leader, but because Frank felt there were simply no other leaders in the squad. The disciplinary issues were constant and some players were surprised how Romero, in particular, was given so much space to do as he pleased. Perhaps Frank needed to be tougher to instil that culture he enjoyed at Brentford. Instead, he was humble enough to quiz staff early on about his own strengths and weaknesses as a coach. He asked for padel courts to be installed at the training ground but barely lasted long enough to enjoy them.
Tottenham Hotspur manager Thomas Frank forces Cristian Romero down the tunnel after Romero received a second yellow card.
Frank consistently stood by his choice of captain but did not hide his frustration when Romero received a second yellow and was sent off against Liverpool before Christmas.
And what is the true quality of this Tottenham squad? Maybe we are about to find out. Spurs won a trophy last season but finished 17th under Postecoglou, only a few places lower than where they might have been without prioritising the Europa League. Despite that triumph, Frank believed only Pedro Porro could play for a really elite European team and there is no doubt recruitment in recent years has been poor. Deals for Morgan Gibbs-White and Eberechi Eze, game-changing creators, were fumbled while injuries wreaked havoc again, especially up front, as Dejan Kulusevski, James Maddison and, until recently, Dominic Solanke were all absent, leaving Frank woefully short of flair in attack.
Last summer, when searching for Postecoglou’s successor, Venkatesham identified ten characteristics of the ideal Spurs head coach and it should be no surprise that Frank, on the back of his stellar work at Brentford, ticked so many of those boxes.
Frank remains an excellent coach and, like many of his predecessors, he will no doubt come again elsewhere. Yet perhaps that was also the club’s first mistake; to look for an all-rounder, a sensible, company man, when in truth, Tottenham is an adrenaline club, where only two characteristics really matter: aim high, play with style. On both counts, Frank failed to deliver.
THETIMES.COM
Thomas Frank’s sessions bored players — and he only rated Pedro Porro
Tom Allnutt
8 min read
Thomas Frank was brought to Tottenham Hotspur as the master adapter but in the end, the one change the fans wanted was him.
The new hierarchy at Spurs clung on for as long as they could, at first in the belief that the kinks would be ironed out and then out of necessity, due to a lack of compelling alternatives. After another boo-fest of a defeat at home to Newcastle United on Tuesday night, Frank’s time was finally up. Tottenham’s chief executive Vinai Venkatesham left his seat and decided it was time to act.
Venkatesham was in the stands for Frank’s final game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and saw up close the anger of the fans, although that was nothing new. The clincher was the Premier League table and the very real concern that Spurs, having dropped to 16th place, were plummeting towards relegation. For all the mitigating factors, Venkatesham told the owners the case for continuing was no longer there on the pitch.
In June last year, Frank became the last Tottenham manager to be appointed while Daniel Levy was chairman and, just eight months later, he becomes the first in a quarter of a century to be sacked by someone else. The new regime has strived for a “calm and measured” approach but experienced employees at Spurs were still amazed that Frank lasted so long. “Under Daniel, he would have been gone before Christmas,” one said.
Alarm bells were certainly ringing in late September, after a dreary draw at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers, and then again in early November, after the miserable 0.1-XG loss at home to Chelsea. During the November international break, Venkatesham and his two co-sporting directors, Fabio Paratici and Johan Lange, held meetings in the Bahamas with the new Tottenham triumvirate — Vivienne Lewis, Charles Lewis and Nick Beucher — and the message delivered was one of patience. Early bumps in the road were to be expected.
Yet the longer Frank stayed, the more convinced the fans became he just didn’t fit as Tottenham head coach. Performances were stodgy and creativity almost entirely absent. Spurs have averaged 1.05 expected goals per game this season, the fourth worst in the division, and won only two out of 13 Premier League matches at home. After Richarlison, with seven goals in 21 league appearances, their top scorers are their two central defenders, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, with four. Regular scenes of dissent have meant that the most absorbing part of many Tottenham games this season has been the minutes after the full-time whistle.
And the more Frank worked with the players, the more disillusioned they became with his methods. Training sessions were slow and overly tactical, “always focusing on structure”, said a source, in contrast with fast and open sessions under Ange Postecoglou. And while Frank indicated in the early weeks the defensive emphasis would just be the first phase of work, the second, more attacking phase never really came.
In that sense, perhaps the lurch from Postecoglou to Frank was just too extreme, an over-correction, as though Tottenham went from one manager who refused to prepare for the opposition to another, who did nearly nothing but. Some of the best coaches in the world are obsessed by analysis but it rankled how even against teams like Burnley, Frank forensically studied the strengths of the opposition. Ironically, one of the more entertaining drills the players enjoyed involved diving blocks and last-ditch defending.
Frank openly argued, with some justification, that Tottenham knew how to attack under Postecoglou but had forgotten the uglier side of the game. But his messaging too often blurred into an ethos that felt like always preparing for the worst. In his first speech to the players, Frank honed in on the tough times; how spirit and character is revealed during adversity. In his first press conference, fans never forgot how Frank tried to convey the need for resilience by announcing, “One thing is 100 per cent sure — we will lose football matches.”
Tottenham Hotspur players Djed Spence and Micky Van de Ven walk away as their manager Thomas Frank gestures towards them on the field.
Djed Spence and Van de Ven appeared to ignore Frank after the defeat to Chelsea in November
At Tottenham, staff noted how frustrating Frank found the lack of time he could actually spend on the training ground. Part of Frank’s appeal, after the puritanical methods of Postecoglou, was his ability to develop players and adapt his tactics but Tottenham’s Champions League commitments meant Frank found his weeks dominated by recovery, media and travel, leaving little time for his “special operations”. He said the club and players had to get used to balancing Europe with the Premier League, although another view was that it was more he and his staff who had to make that step up. After all, Tottenham have competed in Europe in 18 of the past 20 years.
Nobody can dispute that Frank inherited a team loaded with problems. His ill-fated picking of Romero as captain was not because he saw Romero as a natural leader, but because Frank felt there were simply no other leaders in the squad. The disciplinary issues were constant and some players were surprised how Romero, in particular, was given so much space to do as he pleased. Perhaps Frank needed to be tougher to instil that culture he enjoyed at Brentford. Instead, he was humble enough to quiz staff early on about his own strengths and weaknesses as a coach. He asked for padel courts to be installed at the training ground but barely lasted long enough to enjoy them.
Tottenham Hotspur manager Thomas Frank forces Cristian Romero down the tunnel after Romero received a second yellow card.
Frank consistently stood by his choice of captain but did not hide his frustration when Romero received a second yellow and was sent off against Liverpool before Christmas.
And what is the true quality of this Tottenham squad? Maybe we are about to find out. Spurs won a trophy last season but finished 17th under Postecoglou, only a few places lower than where they might have been without prioritising the Europa League. Despite that triumph, Frank believed only Pedro Porro could play for a really elite European team and there is no doubt recruitment in recent years has been poor. Deals for Morgan Gibbs-White and Eberechi Eze, game-changing creators, were fumbled while injuries wreaked havoc again, especially up front, as Dejan Kulusevski, James Maddison and, until recently, Dominic Solanke were all absent, leaving Frank woefully short of flair in attack.
Last summer, when searching for Postecoglou’s successor, Venkatesham identified ten characteristics of the ideal Spurs head coach and it should be no surprise that Frank, on the back of his stellar work at Brentford, ticked so many of those boxes.
Frank remains an excellent coach and, like many of his predecessors, he will no doubt come again elsewhere. Yet perhaps that was also the club’s first mistake; to look for an all-rounder, a sensible, company man, when in truth, Tottenham is an adrenaline club, where only two characteristics really matter: aim high, play with style. On both counts, Frank failed to deliver.
Some players in Tottenham's team think they are bigger players than they really are. They mistakenly wanted a leader with a big name they could look up to. It is the players' attitude that is completely wrong. Frank was an intelligent and human manager that the same players here didn't know how to listen to and respect. Then it will be difficult for Tottenham to succeed with such Primadonna types in the team.
Don’t downplay yourself! You’re better than that.. or has Frank coached this miserable low confidence into youI got a text and stopped the people in the call while I read it.
Then did this
Didn't look half as good, mind.
Nah, I'm just a bloke. She's a bird.
I don't get how these X accounts suddenly have all sorts of information from inside the club, only after Frank was sacked a few hours ago.
When does Ryan Mason arrive?
With poch he created a beautiful harmony across club. And that's why we need him back. Would definitely have redknapp or even Klinsmann in as interim.
Spoiler: They don't; but they'll feed of today's sacking the best way they know how regardless.