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Manager Thomas Frank

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Are you Frank Out or In?


  • Total voters
    623
Not possible with this squad...
I didn't know, if you say out attacks is bad I would agree, but we have great defenders and midfielders that are more than good enough to progress the ball, but we can't do that. Why? Bad coaching I would say, the squad is as disjointed as under Ange with the ball, the players are too far from each other what makes it easier to press us. And we sit as deep as today it's even worse.
 
Coming back to the incident with Spence and VDV after the Chelsea game is beginning to look more significant.

People insisted it was nothing and Frank down played it, but it clearly was something.

Now I think it was wrong of them to do it that way but it's clearly starting to look like they've a problem with Frank's approach, and that could be the feeling of quite a few of them.
I thought how Spence and VDV behaved that time wasn't how they usually would, It seemed like they were exasperated.

I think they ought not have done it but it was a sign that things ain't sweet behind the scenes .
 
It's an open question whether or not he, under ideal circumstances, could coach anything beyond Wimbledonball. I don't know, and in the context of this post I don't really care. The bigger issue is that he's not even fully utilizing the potential of that kind of an approach right now.

The main idea behind getting it in the mixer is to maximize the amount of second balls you win further up the pitch so that you can get the ball to a highly dangerous area with a few passes in no time. A very simple and effective idea, one that allowed multiple technically limited teams to punch above their weight in the past actually. It seems like we could do with some alteration of this as an emergency measure for the time being.

Highly dynamic players like Bergvall and Sarr would be very conducive to this, and both had at least a few games in their careers where they looked very good in that kind of a disruptor role. Sounds like a plan.

Frank instead has been regularly picking arguably the most unathletic midfield duo in the entire league in Palhinha and Bentancur: One that doesn't even help us defensively since we're among the worst in chances allowed, with goals conceded slowly catching up as well.

He's committed to nothing right now: Not route one, not possession based football,not counter attacking. Nothing.Just a haphazard combination of various pieces.
 
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You can’t just blame bad job choice. He used the squad terribly. The tactics didn’t work - the players have come out and said this. The same issues he had here he had there. And it’s a perfectly good squad to manage.

5th place was decent, European trophy is just spin, watch Forest under Dyche win it this season because .. it’s not that hard, English teams are miles above the mid tier of Europe. We had a piss easy draw to a final - nobody we played would finish top half in the prem. Doing that and finishing 17th on 38 points isn’t overachieving by any metric .

9th is better than 17th. Where we are in the CL is more impressive than the EL. He has no Maddison, Kulu, Solanke from the start so has his own injury issues he hasn’t complained about.

It was both - Ange isn’t fit to manage a top premier league side AND the squad is bad. His record in the premier league over a year and a half with two separate clubs is abysmal. A cup doesn’t wash that away. Ten Haag won United two cups.

Whether Frank is the guy or not, the precious guy definitely wasn’t. I don’t know who is. Frank probably deserves the season but he won’t get it by default because it just doesn’t work like that.

I know you'll never just say "Yes, Phomesy, you were right" and I don't really want you to have to because it would mean things were even more grim than they feel right now...

But

My thesis isn't that Postecoglou is a great manager, or that he's necessarily a better manager than Frank even... My thesis has always simply been that the numbers (and the trophy however much you try to diminish it - itself a ridiculous and desperately sad thing for you or anyone to be doing) SHOW that Postecoglou was tracking at Top 5 when he had his Back 5 available.

My thesis is that this, in itself, is overachievement. Especially when Son fell off a cliff last year.

Put it this way: Postecoglou somehow made Brennan Johnson our Top goal scorer. We have since replaced BJ with Kudus - and we have put .05 and .07 xG in our last two London derbies. I can't even bear to put up the xGA we conceded in those two games.

I warned you to be careful of what you wished for when you and I both knew and recognised the paucity of our squad.

I still have faith Frank can turn things around but the numbers are so so so bad right now. And have been for most of the year. We just don't have any quality and strength forward of Romero and the strategy of playing defensively hasn't sorted out the problems of Postecoglou's naivety - it's just made everything worse (for the time being).

The problem is the squad. It was ever thus.
 
I thought how Spence and VDV behaved that time wasn't how they usually would, It seemed like they were exasperated.

I think they ought not have done it but it was a sign that things ain't sweet behind the scenes .

Exactly the way I saw it. It wasn't typical behaviour at all, but most said it was nothing and storm in a tea cup.

But reading between the lines it clearly was something..
 
But it's possible Iraola or Glasner could turn the ship around better, I guess. It's just hard to see that right now with Solanke and Maddison dead ffs
 
You can't blow 60m on Rich... Follow it up with even more on Solanke.... Only to then do the same yet again with the bar merely being "can't be any worse that Richy".

Scout properly.
Shotgunofmichalebrow Shotgunofmichalebrow is wrong about some things but he's 💯 right that you pay up for guaranteed quality like Osimhen in these circumstances.

Vlahovic would just be another speculative punt with a massive pricetag
 
Management have got a real problem on their hands with some of these stats. To rank among the lowest ever recorded in the prem, in games against Chelsea and Woolwich, is difficult to take. I wouldn't change our European win for anything, but it does mean that a lot of this is met with apathy rather than anger by a significant chunk of the support, because what monkey is left to get off our back? I expect attendance towards the back end of the season reaching tragic levels unless something really improves
 
He brought a huge backroom team in with him. What are they all working on? He's meant to be all data driven and into xG stats. Yet we've twice posted xG numbers below 0.1 which we'd never ever dome in a prem game before this season. So our data driven manager has us performing worse than ever on the best known data attacking metric.

I really don't want to turn on a manager this early but this is Nuno all over again. He's like a rabbit in the headlights
 
Spent the last few hours on socials now I think I’ve been radicalized. Frank has to go (mind you I may be engrossed in some videos of cats falling over and mellow my opinion but now I’m hardline)
 
These are tonight's quotes from Frank
"It was a very bad night for us,” Vicario told Sky Sports. “First of all, we have to apologise to the people that support us every day, that travel and expect to watch a fight, because today we didn’t fight. As a collective, we didn’t fight. That’s not negotiable to compete in a football match, especially at this level. We didn’t do that as a team.

“It’s a tough night, a very bad defeat but we have to stick together because we know what we have to address. We have a big night again on Wednesday. We need to stick together and to believe much more in ourselves because tonight we didn’t show what we are normally capable of.

And these are the quotes from Chelsea match. Three weeks apart but more empty words.

"We were definitely second best. We performed badly. I think we lacked energy and intensity and that freshness, we didn’t have that. Then I think the high pressure they came with, I don’t think we solved it well enough even though we worked on it, so that we need to keep working on."

I am the only one who is starting to get sick of listening to him and starting to avoid him??
Why is a Vicario quote there?
 
He brought a huge backroom team in with him. What are they all working on? He's meant to be all data driven and into xG stats. Yet we've twice posted xG numbers below 0.1 which we'd never ever dome in a prem game before this season. So our data driven manager has us performing worse than ever on the best known data attacking metric.

I really don't want to turn on a manager this early but this is Nuno all over again. He's like a rabbit in the headlights

Everyone (and I mean everyone) was calling for Nuno to be sacked after they put 3 past us at the Emirates and we still managed to show some backbone. This performance is far worse
 
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