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Manager Thomas Frank

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Are you Frank Out or In?


  • Total voters
    623
Hes lightweight but I think Frank needs to start Johnson on right tonight. At least he has goals in him and fast on the break. I'd put kudus on left with Johnson on right with simons as a 10. Gray and Palhinha as two midfielders behind. Muani up top.
 

It’s what I would do if I were him. It would help liven up the attack, get the fans off his back and behind the team. Poch was lucky though he had Kane, Benteleb, Mason and Townsend to call on to help achieve the same kind of feel good swing back then. Frank doesn’t have that available to him but we have worse players now so maybe just one would do it to begin with. We’d all get behind him.
 
The difference is that Ange had a season and a half before it happened. His time here was a relatively progressive decline, taking on a top 5 side and turning it into a 17th place finish. The decline was a symptom of things not improving.

You're writing off a manager who is, essentially, trying to recover from that decline.

If it were Poch here, people would be coming up with all sorts to justify this - "same squad that finished 17th" "time to change the mentality" etc
At least with Poch you’d see signs of what we were trying to do. There’s nothing here.
 
What I can't understand is that no one in the media is actually analysing what's happened so far with any accuracy

We were outperforming our xg when we were picking up points. A lot of us said it wasn't sustainable. I mean you could argue we could be on even less points.

And we're getting worse. Now I think, generally speaking, Frank needs time to show he can sort this and build from there.

However if he can't get a grip on what's happening over the festive period and we're continuing to lose every week he's not going to get the time.
 
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I was right 3 players took turns to take thrown. Absolute pathetic. Harry , Fergie, klopp would have gone bananas.
Thats called overcoaching. Micro managing every little detail where we now have a rule of who takes a throw depending on game state or the position in the pitch they are. Players not playing with their gut but trying to remember little details that have been ingrained in them. "Hang on I'm 10 yards into the opposition half here, that means Danso takes a long throw".

Ange was a polar opposite and lacked any minor details. Under Ange, he expects Kudus to take that throw straight away and not let the opposition breath. Yes, we were poorly coached but it was so much more satisfying to watch when chasing a game. The way I see it, if we are chasing a game I'd much rather Ange's style of just throwing the kitchen sink at them and taking quick frees and throws. If we were closing out a game then I'd much rather have Frank and his cynical game management style. Ideally you'd have a manager who can do both!

I'm actually so pissed off with Frank. He was brought in to make us defensively and tactically better but he's gone all in on that and totally sabotaged everything we did do right under Ange. Its a right mess now, we've no identity at all. His over reliance on set pieces covered over the cracks for the first 2 months until teams figured out we were now very good at them. Our open play football has been one of the worst in the league all season, every metric available points to that! He's really fucked this job up the more i think of it. Apart from improving us at set pieces, he's managed to make us worse at everything else. Yes, we have more bodies back now so concede less big chances but I'm counting that as a negative because having all them bodies back has destroyed our attacking play where we are now going through full halfs of football without creating any open play chances.
 
Johnson
Maddison
Porro
Van de Ven
Kulusevski
Draguis
Solanke
Gray
Bergval
Vicario
Veliz
Phillips
Odobert

Yang Min-hyeok
£344million worth
Schitts Creek Comedy GIF by CBC
 
The difference is that Ange had a season and a half before it happened. His time here was a relatively progressive decline, taking on a top 5 side and turning it into a 17th place finish. The decline was a symptom of things not improving.

You're writing off a manager who is, essentially, trying to recover from that decline.

If it were Poch here, people would be coming up with all sorts to justify this - "same squad that finished 17th" "time to change the mentality" etc
The metrics indicated that Poch had us running and pressing much more and was dropping senior players for younger players. Yes, he'd a slow start but there was always hope. There was always a sense of short term pain for long term gain as he had us pressing teams and was backing young players.

Frank is giving us nothing. Some games we press, some games we don't. He's afraid to drop senior players and not willing to back the younger players. He has prioritised set pieces and a cynical game management approach to try and eek out results rather than identify a set style of play. In fact our style of play is totally non-existent right now. We have no identity under Frank. So even though we are absolutely shite atm, Frank is still prioritising the short term results and has zero long term strategy.

So yes Poch and Frank might have had similar starts results wise. But on every other metric imaginable, Poch was moving us in the right direction and we could all get behind that. Frank is driving us off a cliff.
 
The metrics indicated that Poch had us running and pressing much more and was dropping senior players for younger players. Yes, he'd a slow start but there was always hope. There was always a sense of short term pain for long term gain as he had us pressing teams and was backing young players.

Frank is giving us nothing. Some games we press, some games we don't. He's afraid to drop senior players and not willing to back the younger players. He has prioritised set pieces and a cynical game management approach to try and eek out results rather than identify a set style of play. In fact our style of play is totally non-existent right now. We have no identity under Frank. So even though we are absolutely shite atm, Frank is still prioritising the short term results and has zero long term strategy.

So yes Poch and Frank might have had similar starts results wise. But on every other metric imaginable, Poch was moving us in the right direction and we could all get behind that. Frank is driving us off a cliff.

This is possibly down to perception.
Before Poch, the best we'd had in decades was 1 CL qualification under Redknapp.
Poch himself replaced Dim Sherwood who replaced AVB. Expectations were at an all time low.
Poch then raised standards and expectations. 2 title pushes. CL football 4 years in a row. A CL final. All as we moved out of a small stadium in a big new one.
Since he's left, that's what fans are expecting.
It's a bit like Man United fans still thinking they should be in a title race, if not outright favourites every year because of the Fergie era.
That era came after many years of mediocrity and years of mediocrity have ensued since.

It fees like that's us now. Trying to replicate the lightning in a bottle we caught with Poch and that squad.
Let's be serious too, it wasn't all Poch. Kane, Son, Deli, Dembele, the entire defence. It was all a perfect moment in time.
 
The difference is that Ange had a season and a half before it happened. His time here was a relatively progressive decline, taking on a top 5 side and turning it into a 17th place finish. The decline was a symptom of things not improving.

You're writing off a manager who is, essentially, trying to recover from that decline.

If it were Poch here, people would be coming up with all sorts to justify this - "same squad that finished 17th" "time to change the mentality" etc
I am not even writing off Frank or praising Ange in the quoted post. I am merely illustrating how dire our current situation is, comparing to what was supposedly the worse league season, that we could be going to be worse.

It's precisely why when people couldn't detach themselves off the preference for either man that the bigger picture of how shit, and precarious, we are at the moment couldn't be understood.
 
This is possibly down to perception.
Before Poch, the best we'd had in decades was 1 CL qualification under Redknapp.
Poch himself replaced Dim Sherwood who replaced AVB. Expectations were at an all time low.
Poch then raised standards and expectations. 2 title pushes. CL football 4 years in a row. A CL final. All as we moved out of a small stadium in a big new one.
Since he's left, that's what fans are expecting.
It's a bit like Man United fans still thinking they should be in a title race, if not outright favourites every year because of the Fergie era.
That era came after many years of mediocrity and years of mediocrity have ensued since.

It fees like that's us now. Trying to replicate the lightning in a bottle we caught with Poch and that squad.
Let's be serious too, it wasn't all Poch. Kane, Son, Deli, Dembele, the entire defence. It was all a perfect moment in time.
Yeah but I feel like we did back the manager in the Summer (kudus, Simons and Muani were 3 big signings). We shouldn't be losing at home to Fulham. We shouldn't be getting absolutely hammered by Woolwich. We shouldn't be conceding 5 goals against PSG. These are our last 3 results and its not like we can see Frank needs time and he's implementing his own style. He is implementing nothing. Set pieces and throw ins appear to be his specialty and teams have already figured that out. We are doing nothing in open play and its now December. 4 months and he has implemented nothing.

This is a total underperformance. Maybe expectations are too high and not realistic. Maybe this squad is a bit short of top 4 and not as good as previous spurs squads. But Frank is underperforming and looks like a man with no answers atm
 
Ok but Kane is a generational talent, there's no guarantee Scarlett will work out even a fraction as well.
Yeah that is true however the only way we will ever know these youth are good is the same way we knew with Kane , and that’s by giving them a chance - plus I think the fans would be more forgiving if we were playing more home grown players and giving them a chance to flourish
 
Yeah but I feel like we did back the manager in the Summer (kudus, Simons and Muani were 3 big signings). We shouldn't be losing at home to Fulham. We shouldn't be getting absolutely hammered by Woolwich. We shouldn't be conceding 5 goals against PSG. These are our last 3 results and its not like we can see Frank needs time and he's implementing his own style. He is implementing nothing. Set pieces and throw ins appear to be his specialty and teams have already figured that out. We are doing nothing in open play and its now December. 4 months and he has implemented nothing.

This is a total underperformance. Maybe expectations are too high and not realistic. Maybe this squad is a bit short of top 4 and not as good as previous spurs squads. But Frank is underperforming and looks like a man with no answers atm

I'm not happy about our current predicament. But it feels like a(nother) transitional moment for us.
When Poch took over, he too lost 5 of his first 13 games. Those losses included a 0-3 at home to Liverpool, a 0-1 at home to West Brom, a 1-2 at home to Steve Bruce, pre money, relegation fodder Newcastle, a 1-2 home loss to Stoke.

We can all change history in our minds, but the facts are, we were shit at this stage under Poch. Arguably worse.
 
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