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Manager Thomas Frank

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Are you Frank Out or In?


  • Total voters
    623
Where we are now in the table is probably about right for the squad we have (including injuries).

That said that performance yesterday was so bad I can't defend it. We can't have many more of those.

I still think it's far too early to seriously contemplate a change of coach mind.
 
I find it funny that you can lose 22 league games in a season finish just above the relegation zone and some fans want you to stay. You get a new manager and the same fans want him sacked when you're sitting 9th after 12 games. I don't know what people really expected to happen with this squad that is so used to losing week in week out.

He does however need to change his outlook within this squad. I don't think there is enough mobility,drive and creativity with Palinha and bentancur sitting there and we're just getting boxed in and dispossessed as we're technically deficient in deep midfield roles. I'd suggest persevering with Bergvall in that role, and possibly Gray and roll with the mistakes young players will make if at times it allows us to break a press and be able to mount meaningful attacks.

We need more flair and creativity on the pitch not less imo. We need to make the best of what we have now until January and start creating more open play opportunities because it is getting a bit worrying for me. He hasn't got the balance right yet but I think we can be solid while adding a bit more flair in forward positions.

Vicario
Porro Romero Vdv Udogie
Palinha
Bergvall Sarr
Kudus Striker Simons

Vicario
Porro Romero Vdv Udogie
Bergvall Palinha
Johnson kudus Simons
Striker

Vicario
Porro Romero Vdv Udogie
Bergvall Palinha Sarr
Kudus Striker Simons

All of these you could have certain players switched around say Simons 10 Johnson Left wing etc but there's alot more mobility and threat there whilst having a solid defence and a good holding midfielder. We must be a bit braver in our approach especially at home.
 
Very rarely agree with Matt Law but he is spot on here in his Telegraph article.

The result was painful, the performance unacceptable but the biggest embarrassment for Tottenham Hotspur, who lost 4-1 to Woolwich on Sunday, was that they turned up at Emirates Stadium like they were Tamworth.

Spurs fans have seen their side lose to Woolwich more often than they would have wanted, but there cannot have been too many days when the white flag of surrender was waved from the very start.

This was David v Goliath in terms of how Thomas Frank sent his Spurs out to play at the Emirates. Five men at the back, João Palhinha just in front of them and hit it long. Tamworth actually showed more ambition when the non-leaguers entertained Tottenham in the FA Cup last season.

Frank is an intelligent and talented coach and the Tottenham job is not an easy one, given the club finished 17th in the Premier League last season. But while there is understanding the former Brentford manager needs time and there will be ups and downs, he must prove that he can adopt a big-club mentality.

It was not evident on Sunday. Until Richarlison scored with a brilliant lob in the 55th minute, Tottenham had not had a shot on or off target and their expected goals ratio had been zero – to match their ambition. By the full-time whistle the xG (expected goals) had risen to a lofty 0.07 and Frank’s team had touched the ball four times inside the Woolwich penalty area.
At least Frank was brave enough to walk over to the few hundred gluttons for punishment who stayed until the finish in the away end and offer them a round of applause. A few of his players followed suit, but most wanted to get down the tunnel and who could blame them?

Frank is certainly not the first Spurs coach to have felt it necessary to apologise for a performance and result, but this should really have been sorry for misjudging the occasion. Tottenham simply cannot go to their biggest rivals with the approach he adopted.

Cristian Romero, the club captain, plays for Argentina, the world champions, and must have been just as embarrassed as the fans with Tottenham’s small-club mentality at the Emirates. It is not in his DNA to go into a game as self-appointed underdogs with survival as the primary aim.

Nuno Espírito Santo’s team were 3-0 down by half-time at the Emirates in his one and only north London derby as Tottenham head coach. They actually showed more fight in the second period than Frank’s side and eventually lost 3-1, but the Portuguese was sacked a month later.

Frank will surely be afforded more time than Nuno and it should be remembered that he does not have Harry Kane or Son Heung-min to call on as Nuno did. But he has to be braver and recognise that big clubs cannot be sent out with an inferiority complex.

It was a similar story in the home defeat by Chelsea and Frank must embrace the motto of “to dare is to do”. Tottenham fans can accept their team not winning every week and they can get over bad performances. But they cannot accept watching a team that is clearly scared of the opposition.

PSG daunting, but Fulham may be career-defining​

It should be remembered that Frank took Tottenham to Manchester City and won with a counter-attacking performance in the second week of the campaign. But that already feels like a long time ago with the coach and his players seemingly gripped by fear. It is now one point from games against Woolwich, Chelsea, Manchester United and Aston Villa.

Tottenham may not have the quality and depth of their rivals, Woolwich and Chelsea, and that is not Frank’s fault. But they had lost before a ball was kicked at the Emirates and that is on the likeable Dane in this instance.

A midweek trip to Paris St-Germain in the Champions League could hardly have come at a worse time. But it is next weekend’s home game against Fulham that already feels important for Frank, at least in terms of retaining the faith of supporters. Tottenham will have to go out on the front foot and impose themselves on their opponents. Nothing else will be tolerated.

Some supporters might have already turned after the surrender at the Emirates and there is no longer former chairman Daniel Levy to share the blame. That will fall squarely on Frank if he does not summon the required courage and quickly.
 
If we fail to beat Fulham and get beaten by Newcastle (,might as well award them the 3 points now) and its more of the same performance wise the majority of fans will be out of patience.

You can feel it building. Frank must recognise this and show some balls now.

This afraid to lose is making our fragile mentality even weaker imo.

And that's a massive problem in itself.
 
That’s a complete myth. We were better when everyone was fit of course but we still had plenty of dreadful displays. That Palace away game last season for example was just as pathetic as what we saw yesterday.

In that Crystal Palace 1-0 loss we had an xG of 1.02 to Palace .98 🤷‍♂️

But given we had our Back 5 fit and playing in that game it was definitely one of the worse performances for a Postecoglou side that had that Back 5 playing.

It just wasn't nearly as bad as you've made yourself remember and is nothing at all like the catastrophes we've seen against Chavs and Goons in the last month.
 
Yesterday was horrible, our squad is horrible and Franks football is horrible.

However, I do t want to change manager unless we can guarantee something better, which we absolutely cannot at the moment - the summer might be different.

The £100m injection into the club is great - but again announced after the transfer window shut down - the cynic in me smells a rat.

It will take 3 or 4 windows to sort this mess out, there are half a dozen players of the required quality missing and more than that need binning off
 
In that Crystal Palace 1-0 loss we had an xG of 1.02 to Palace .98 🤷‍♂️

But given we had our Back 5 fit and playing in that game it was definitely one of the worse performances for a Postecoglou side that had that Back 5 playing.

It just wasn't nearly as bad as you've made yourself remember and is nothing at all like the catastrophes we've seen against Chavs and Goons in the last month.
The Leicester, Ipswich, Everton, Forest, Palace and Brighton games were a disgrace though
 
Where we are now in the table is probably about right for the squad we have (including injuries).

That said that performance yesterday was so bad I can't defend it. We can't have many more of those.

I still think it's far too early to seriously contemplate a change of coach mind.

Agree entirely, and we really don't want to enter the latter 5 of December with uncertainty, or we have an obvious impact on our winter-window transfer plans.

It is way too early to be pressing panic, but equally we can't suffer losses lke that, and not be seeing us at least do the same to lesser teams.

Right now I think our reasonably good, all-around start has all but evaporated..
 
Tactically Frank is getting it wrong, very wrong.

There are many flaws within this squad but I think the biggest one is the limited ball players we have in MF. Because of that we:-

- Cannot play through a press
- Cannot dominate a game in MF
- Therefore, should not be setting the team up to play SOOO deep when we know, due to the limitations of our players, that we cannot get out
- Palhinha and Sarr can press very effectively, Bentancur can press, Kudus can press, Richy is poor but works hard - why are we not doing it?
- We were pragmatic against both PSG and City but still pressed with real aggression and made it tough for them. We showed none of that ambition against Chelsea or Woolwich?
- If you look at the Woolwich side yesterday, the keeper is great with his feet and I quite like timber as a player, but I wouldn’t say their back 4 are incredible ball players. Why didn’t we try to make it hard for them?
- And if we did press high, they didn’t have a lot of threat in behind did they? Saka is quick but Merino, Trossard and Eze aren’t exactly electric compared to our back 4.

I was hoping he’d have learned something from Chelsea but there was no evidence of that yesterday.

I like Frank as a bloke and really want him to succeed, but as a fan we’re not asking a new manager to have all the answers, just to have a plan and a vision we can see evidence of on the pitch. That’s completely missing right now.

You play this way and don’t get good results, you only get one outcome.

Must do better, and quickly.
 
We don't have any underlying chance creation patterns, repeatable methods of entering the final third or possession structure even when execution of it is bad.

Poch, Klopp and Arteta had all of these things even when early results were poor.

Red flags for Frank and imo there's no green shoots to suggest it will turn around. His football won't scale with bigger clubs and better players.
He came in and instantly raised our floor by addressing our glaring defensive issues and making us very competent at set pieces. These big improvements were very welcome back in August and we won our first 2 league games with clean sheets.

However, its now the end of November and 3 months of football has occurred since then and we've seen no other improvements and now its clear as day that our attacking football has completely suffered since his appointment. Frank has also had the luxury of new attacking signings like Simons and Muani but hasn't got any of it to work.

I'm only seeing red flags. Nothing seems to be improving. He doesn't know his best team and we seem to have no idea how to create chances from open play.
 
It was worse lol. That palace side was horrendous at that time and we made them look good. At least the goons and Chelsea are #1 and #2 currently.
People already forgetting we churned out this kind of shit last season too and against the likes of Woolwich and chelsea too. How many times in a row did we concede in the opening 2 minutes of a game? There's a reason we lost 22 league games last year and it wasn't because of our easy on the eye free flowing total football.
 
Ive said it before. Where is this much vaunted coaching team?? We dont look like a team thats spent 10 min on the pitch together. Its fucking shocking.
Frank lumped on our biggest players for a set piece battle forgetting about the other 95% of football. Dont know what we were trying to do
 
He came in and instantly raised our floor by addressing our glaring defensive issues and making us very competent at set pieces. These big improvements were very welcome back in August and we won our first 2 league games with clean sheets.

However, its now the end of November and 3 months of football has occurred since then and we've seen no other improvements and now its clear as day that our attacking football has completely suffered since his appointment. Frank has also had the luxury of new attacking signings like Simons and Muani but hasn't got any of it to work.

I'm only seeing red flags. Nothing seems to be improving. He doesn't know his best team and we seem to have no idea how to create chances from open play.
And our defensive play has also been shocking lately
 
It was worse lol. That palace side was horrendous at that time and we made them look good. At least the goons and Chelsea are #1 and #2 currently.

You're just being silly now. There isn't any world in which that 1-0 away to Palace last season was "worse" than the performances against Chavs (0.15 Vs 3.34) or Scum (0.03 Vs 2.28) in the last month.

Those numbers are objectively the worst we've put up in living memory.

You must stop making deranged statements or you won't beat the "Deranger" charge.
 
You're just being silly now. There isn't any world in which that 1-0 away to Palace last season was "worse" than the performances against Chavs (0.15 Vs 3.34) or Scum (0.03 Vs 2.28) in the last month.

Those numbers are objectively the worst we've put up in living memory.

You must stop making deranged statements or you won't beat the "Deranger" charge.

Because we were up against infinitely better teams.

Palace were I think bottom or minimum relegation zone when we got outplayed and beaten by them. The numbers are irrelevant.

The Ipswich performance was equally as bad if not worse. And it won’t come under your silly ‘when back 5 were available’ (no coach should be judged on this) because ONE player was missing. We lost to them .. at home.

We didn’t win a single game against Woolwich or Chelsea under Ange. Even when playing the latter when they sucked.
 
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