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Manager Thomas Frank

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Are you Frank Out or In?


  • Total voters
    623
Man, there is absolutely nothing to suggest we won't be down there. Metrics say that's where we should be. Overperforming XG and XGA by 6/7 goals, in both catagories after 10 games is a massive swing. That's nowhere near sustainable and we've been finding that out recently, bar Everton, which was never a 3-0 performance. There is nothing to cling to. Our inflated league position will likely more reflect where we are at the weekend, and of results don't go our way, bottom half, where we stay for the rest of the season.

The atmosphere at the stadium, the VdV and Spence thing, looks like the players are fed up. It's a perfect storm, and I don't see this lasting until January.

I don't get the excuses that he can't play any sort of attacking football. We've played 4 through balls all season, a premier league low. Brentford lost all of their goals, their captain, and hired a rookie coach. They're playing good stuff, they look a threat. Palace lost their talisman, they're looking fantastic and still creating lots of chances. We're 6 months in, £200m and you can't identify anything that we're trying to do. It's really, really bad. It's been pointing this way for weeks, and with our schedule, it's not getting easier.

We're in trouble.
Are you glass half-full all the time??? :D
 
You are a moron. Jesus Christ :roflmao:

Villa had zero chances apart from the two worldies they thumped in from outside the box. It was our best defenisve display by a considerable distance.

Coulda scored 6? Are you fucking high? Or just a WUM
I'm the moron, but you can't even manage one grown-up convo on here without resorting to insults. We don't agree with your takes, bam straightaway you call people names. You sound like an angry, frustrated (man)child.

Villa don't score their two goals if we're switched on and competing. But we weren't and didn't, so if that's what you call a great defensive display, then I got a bridge to sell you as they say.

Anyway, you know where the ignore button is.
 


5th highest in the league last season.

Scored more than us.

Doubt this will stop the agenda tho.
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Anyway, carry on everyone, don't let this get in the way of the myth-creation.
 
Somebody in this thread mentioned Potter/Brighton, where a club and a manager that looked quite good together split and it turned out that it was the club doing the heavy lifting in that mutualistic relationship. There are examples to the contrary as well, such as Moyes/Everton and Nuno/Wolves off the top of my head, where the manager was the primary driver of success. In the case of Frank/Brentford we don't have years' length of data to look at, but early signs are not very good.

The thing with Peter Principle is that there is little way of knowing whether or not the person in question has already hit their ceiling without going through the process of promotion-->failure-->demotion first. And even though it is still early for me, Brentford might very well turn out to be Frank's ceiling.

That's why I don't act all incredulous seeing him struggle out there. Him being out of his depth is a more parsimonious explanation of what we're seeing than him making a grand plan behind the scenes to revolutionize our game once certain preconditions are met.
 
I just think under Frank from back build up is too slow then eventually ends up with one of the full backs hoofing it forward.

That's because we have no one who can pass in midfield and no one who can hold the ball up forward (except Kudus - and even then he usually just gives it away again).

Frank is having exactly the same issues we had in late/Jan/February/March last season when Solanke got injured (and then Madders and Kulu for the EL run in) - and he's doing exactly what the previous manager did to try and compensate.

Avoid midfield. Minimise the impact of inevitable final third turnover. Grind out games.


I swear to god, it's like this forum doesn't actually watch our football games or learn anything from the very recent past. The moment Maddison went down and wasn't replaced with a seasoned, talented passer with skill and vision we were fucked.

Frank's doing what he can with what he has. It's horrible to watch but there's context for those who care about such things.
 
I'm the moron, but you can't even manage one grown-up convo on here without resorting to insults. We don't agree with your takes, bam straightaway you call people names. You sound like an angry, frustrated (man)child.

Villa don't score their two goals if we're switched on and competing. But we weren't and didn't, so if that's what you call a great defensive display, then I got a bridge to sell you as they say.

Anyway, you know where the ignore button is.

Villa had .37 xG. 2 shots on target. Vicario didn't have to make a save (apart from the two worldies he couldn't ever have got near).

But they could have put 6 past us according to you.

You either either very dim or a WUM. Which is it?
 
I just find it strange under Ange we were good on the ball and now completely useless on the ball. Weve gone from one end of scale to another. Like turning a volume button from full blast to nothing . Need a balance. Ange was useless and so far Frank seems brilliantly crap.
 
I just find it strange under Ange we were good on the ball and now completely useless on the ball. Weve gone from one end of scale to another. Like turning a volume button from full blast to nothing . Need a balance. Ange was useless and so far Frank seems brilliantly crap.

We were "good on the ball" because we had press-resistant 6 in Bissouma; a genuinely high level passer in Maddison and we were inverting Porro.

The cost of this was defensive frailty.

Now we have Palinha, no Madders, and Porro spends all his time punting the ball up the line to Kudus.

This is what people demanded, no?
 
We were "good on the ball" because we had press-resistant 6 in Bissouma; a genuinely high level passer in Maddison and we were inverting Porro.

The cost of this was defensive frailty.

Now we have Palinha, no Madders, and Porro spends all his time punting the ball up the line to Kudus.

This is what people demanded, no?
We need a balance in tactics imo. Ange was fuck it full throttle whereas Frank is passive. Like conte, mourinho and nuno. And we know what happened to them.
 
I just find it strange under Ange we were good on the ball and now completely useless on the ball. Weve gone from one end of scale to another. Like turning a volume button from full blast to nothing . Need a balance. Ange was useless and so far Frank seems brilliantly crap.
Exactly. We have players that can pass a ball forward. This myth that we can't is just absurd quite frankly.
We spent £55m on a replacement for Maddison, one, I'm sure the coach wanted. We've seen Bentancur progress the ball, tail end of last season he was doing it regularly. Problem is that he wants to play wide to maximise set peice chances. We are playing for set pieces as our main threat and abandoning everything else.

I have no doubt, when he's inevitably sacked in a few weeks, that in the new coaches first game, we play better attacking football than we have all season. We've played 4 through balls so far in the league. Bottom of the league by miles. We should not, with that team be statistically sitting in 19th. This we're 3rd nonsense is very frustrating. We're 2 points ahead of 11th, a loss at the weekend, we're near there, then by January, I don't see us any higher than 14th.

 
I just find it strange under Ange we were good on the ball and now completely useless on the ball. Weve gone from one end of scale to another. Like turning a volume button from full blast to nothing . Need a balance. Ange was useless and so far Frank seems brilliantly crap.
Outside of the outstanding start in 23/24 where we played some amazing stuff, I don’t really believe we have been good on the ball.

Our squad has been technically insufficient for years now, it’s the biggest problem at the club imv. We have hardly anyone in the team that has adequate skill for the level we should be aspiring to be at.

Kudus and Romero are really the only two I can point to that have even above average technically ability.
 
Outside of the outstanding start in 23/24 where we played some amazing stuff, I don’t really believe we have played amazing stuff.

Our squad has been technically insufficient for years now, it’s the biggest problem at the club imv. We have hardly anyone in the team that has adequate skill for the level we should be aspiring to be at.

Kudus and Romero are really the only two I can point to that have even above average technically ability.
Way I see it they have a whole pre-season, and week after week in training to be coached on technical training. Read poch book a while back. Double sessions players had. Its scandalous if players arent being worked on their technical ability. Way I'm thinkng at moment in CL is we get to last 16 or scrape to QF, we will get completely spanked by someone like bayern. Like we did in pre season. That was a red flag game for me tbh.
 
Outside of the outstanding start in 23/24 where we played some amazing stuff, I don’t really believe we have been good on the ball.

Our squad has been technically insufficient for years now, it’s the biggest problem at the club imv. We have hardly anyone in the team that has adequate skill for the level we should be aspiring to be at.

Kudus and Romero are really the only two I can point to that have even above average technically ability.
I don't remember at any point this season with some nice, quick, snappy exchanges that allow to break lines and set up quick attacks. Everything is laboured, plodding nonsense. There's one thought, hoof it up and hoof it wide. Last season, as fucking truly awful as it was, with largely the same team, we could still create chances centrally, even with 11 out.

I'm not saying I liked the last coach, I didn't at all, but there was a plan, that you could see, despite how flawed it was. This, this is nothing football.
 
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Outside of the outstanding start in 23/24 where we played some amazing stuff, I don’t really believe we have been good on the ball.

Our squad has been technically insufficient for years now, it’s the biggest problem at the club imv. We have hardly anyone in the team that has adequate skill for the level we should be aspiring to be at.

Kudus and Romero are really the only two I can point to that have even above average technically ability.

Kudus? Really? The next good pass he makes will be the first won't it?

His strength is dribbling I would have thought. Not technical ability
 
This sort of blatant violation of the principle of parsimony was occuring 12 months ago too, with some people trying to explain away our one dimensional football by claiming that it was the manager's way of establishing strong foundations, teaching players useful habits in terms of being willing and able to attack at all times etc. So apparently he was perfectly capable of sorting the defense out, but was choosing not to for long term gain.

Meanwhile parsimony simply had it that he was getting us to play the way we were doing simply because he was incapable of doing things any other way on a sustainable level long term. There was no grand plan going on behind the scenes, just someone who lacked answers. I think we all got our answer eventually as to which explanation was correct.

Parsimony =/= accuracy. Frank may indeed turn out to be fully capable of transforming our play in a non-distant future.That's what I'm hoping still, despite my critical tone. But he needs to give us more to work with than this.
 
Way I see it they have a whole pre-season, and week after week in training to be coached on technical training. Read poch book a while back. Double sessions players had. Its scandalous if players arent being worked on their technical ability. Way I'm thinkng at moment in CL is we get to last 16 or scrape to QF, we will get completely spanked by someone like bayern. Like we did in pre season. That was a red flag game for me tbh.
You don't need to wait until then to see the spankings. The next 8 weeks will give you your fill. We beat a City team who, we just seem to beat for whatever reason, and who barely had a preseason. We've lost against every good side we've faced since. We're going to be on the receiving end very soon, were the opposition actually score their chances, this blind luck not conceding many goals VS opposition chances won't last.
 
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