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Manager Thomas Frank

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Are you Frank Out or In?

  • Total voters
    623
The attack has been overachieving, while he as a manager has been underachieving. These two notions are perfectly compatible despite appearing to be contrary at the first glance.

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The fact that an attack that's, among other things,:
  • 16th in shots
  • 16th in shots on target
  • 17th in xG
  • 18th in xG per shot
  • 16th in number of touches inside the box
is T-7th in goals scored is clearly an overachievement, but not in the way that flatters a manager. He's basically coaching a relegation level attack that's somehow scoring at a very respectable level. What does the latter have to do with him, instead of let's say statistical noise that will most likely get minimized as the season progresses?

If anything, the fact that this team is heading towards the relegation zone despite being T-7th in goals scored is a damning indictment of the job he has been doing; because he, with this football that gives the impression that he watched too much footage of Getafe under Bordalas, was supposed to sort the defense out.

It's clear he hasn't done that; because otherwise, with the way we've been scoring, we would've been inside the top 10 as the bare minimum.
 
Vinnygur said:
It's a bit strange but I started off liking him but I have a strong dislike for him now. He comes a cross as a bullshit artist in my opinion. A bit of a used car salesman !!
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I don’t dislike him particularly but what I thought he’d bring to the squad he hasn’t and without that I’m not sure I like the rest of it

I’m not keen on a rebuild in the mould of Thomas Frank
 
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Sidford said:
I keep reading comments saying he's a nice man but he's had two pops at fans in last month "true fans" and "loyal fans". Not seeing this nice man bit coming through. He's massively underperforming and all he's done is point in the finger of blame on fans. Take some fucking ownership of how shit you have done in your role.
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Has he ever said a bad result or performance is down to him. All I ever hear is we need to learn from the loss and move on. We never learn though. He comes out with a lot of bollocks like 24 hour rul, his phases, etc.
 
Fattynomates said:
Palace have fuck all depth though, they are starting to struggle now with the mid week European games , I bet Glasner would love to have the kind of depth we have , granted some of our players are trash, however I was sold this vision of Frank being the kind of manager that works with what ever ingredients he has and is such a tactical genius that he can get a tune out of them , now its just "we finished 17th Last season" what can we expect from Frank.

I am trying to look at it objectively and i'm asking myself what players has he improved, what is his system here, how does he want us to play, and I'm struggling to answer any of them, I think players have actually got worse under him, look at Sarr , maybe we could say he has done well with Richie, however this is the first time Richie has stayed injury free for more than a few months!

I'm all for giving managers time, however there needs to be some signs of improvement, some green shoots showing that says he is going to work out and he just needs time, however this is looking like Nuno all over again !!!
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Palace have just played 3 games in as many days and took goons on their own patch to 100 mins avd pens. Can you imagine Frank doing anything like that. Also some of the fan base would be losing like shit about the fixture congestion and give up on the cup game.
 
ChrissyWaddleShares said:
It was an improvement on the last few weeks.

Having said that - the first highlight on MOTD was Xavi being sent off at 35mins + so there’s that.

We looked to have a shape.

Not amazing, but an improvement. Fine is what it was - not good. I guess the bar has moved lower because not losing or looking like conceding is fine now.
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I think the circumstances of the game dictated the shape, the fight and intensity. Before the first sending off we were ok without really offering much. Pool didn’t much either but I think they played it safe by expecting us to be the masters of our down fall.
 
Dixiefish61 said:
But is the fact there is no obvious replacement a reason to keep him? I’m not sure it is. Squad is nowhere near good enough but I don’t think he is either
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I love the squad is not good enough but some on here kept saying all these over priced purchase for below average players was good. Eg tel, Solanke, Wilson etc. some even were happy we davies a one yr extension. You get what you deserve.
 
Re: The magnitude and sustainability of the overachievement on the attacking end

We so far have created an xG of 16.36. We've scored 26 goals on that xG, which means that we're overachieving our xG by 9.64 as things stand. To put this in percentage terms, we're overachieving our xG by;

9.64 / 16.36 = 58.9 percent

Now, how big is this number really? I looked at the xG data going back to 17/18 season, and to summarize;

- Even the best teams in the league on a given season finish the campaign with a percentage of overachievement in the 20-30 range. Great players who make a living out of converting low percentage (read xG) chances to goals will always get their teams to overachieve at some rate, but the range within which those rates fall is relatively narrow.

- I could only find one team that barely crossed the 30 percent threshold, and that are 17/18 West Ham who scored 48 goals on 36.7 xG to overachieve by 30.7 percent. Seems like an instance of predominance of statistical noise though, considering how small both goals scored and xG numbers are.

- 21/22 Leicester who scored 62 on 47.8 xG also came extremely close, but just fell short with a percentage of 29.7.

- The most recent example is last year's Forest, who scored 58 on 45.5 xG with a 27.4 percent overachievement rate.

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If you're a glass-half-full person, you could conclude from all these that we under Frank are going for an absolutely unbreakable record.

If you're the glass-half-empty type instead, you can start mentally preparing yourself for the worst. Think about it: If we're sitting 14th right now despite this kind of a statistical anomaly, what would happen if we came back down to earth eventually?
 
Maureen said:
I love the squad is not good enough but some on here kept saying all these over priced purchase for below average players was good. Eg tel, Solanke, Wilson etc. some even were happy we davies a one yr extension. You get what you deserve.
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Totally agree. So many on here moan when we are shit but are happy with such mediocrity. There will be some that think Richarlison should start against palace just because he done ok for 20 mins against Liverpool but totally forget how shit he is in pretty much every game he starts. I can’t get onboard with that shit.
 
Maureen said:
And Tel even after going f all on loan we decide to pay BM £35M on top of the 10 we paid for the initial loan. Has to go down as one of the worst transfer deals ever. Surely there were better players around. Of course there were as we have seen other teams have much better forwards than we have.
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We aren't privvy to the details though are we. There was obviously some existing deals in place between the two clubs regarding Dier, and finances at that level are often sleight of hand (see the weird HG deals between Chelsea, Everton, and Villa).

At this stage, I wouldn't be so convinced that it is as straightforward as throwing £35m at them for a player
 
frustrated huff GIF


Ffs, it's Christmas.

Have a break and forget about football
 
FranklyTerrible said:
There's a few things to understand from where these issues stem from

1. The club needed a proper rebuild.. After losing Kane and realising that hiring Managers like Conte & Mourinho couldn't deliver with the squad they had, they chose to go for a rebuild and brought in Ange on a 3 year deal to oversee that. But after only 2 years they decided that the squad was rebuilt and suddenly underperforming.

2. Ange Over-Achieved in his first season with the squad he had. The squad that Ange had realistically should've finished 6th-10th. He had older servicable players with Prem League experience in (Hojberg, Dier, Skipp, Royale, Perisic, Lo Celso) and didn't have European football.

3. Fast Forward to Season 2 and all the above older players including (Soloman & Gil) leave the club. Those players are replaced with Two 18 year olds in Gray & Bergvall, a 19 year old Odobert and Dominic Solanke. So already you have lost a lot of experience and replaced it with 3 kids and Solanke, with the added pressure and demands of extra games in European Football.

4. Injuries hit the squad by mid year last year and so there was no ability to rotate the squad. The defence constituted of mainly Gray, Dragusin & Davies with Forster in Goal. Dragusin and Solanke go down and were in dire need of reinforcements, we get a 21 year old Keeper in Kinsky, but not until basically deadline day do we get Kevin Danso and a 19yr old Mathys Tel in, of which neither play until 16th February.

5. By this time, with a depleted squad, European football was prioritised and we know what happened there as well as in the League.

I feel its very important to look at the context and try and understand where the club is really at.

90-95% of players in any sport struggle to perform consistently well between 18-22 years of age and most don’t hit their prime til at least 24-27.
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You make some very good points and point 5 is where our recruitment is at fault imo.
I accept the likes of Bergvall, Gray, maybe Udogie, Tel/Oderbert are potentially great buys and in 3-4 years we may well reap
the benefits, but when we are looking to bring in experience players that we are viewing as instant starters, we either bring in players who have shown they can do it in The PL, once before or who are just bang average and have a winners mentality to match that.

It's been said a thousand times before, our recruitment is pony and that includes managers too. You don't hire proven top class managers (Mourinho,/Conte) and not give them the tools to do their job. This is all down to the people behind the scenes, granted restricted by the purse holders, who have seen a modicum of success bought on a shoestring and continue with this blueprint having no understanding of "evolution" within the game.

Forgive me, but our beloved THFC are nothing but a group of chancers, resulting in us becoming bang average on the pitch!
 
Teach said:
I want to enjoy watching us play again and look forward to it. I’ve always been comfortable with taking a step back, to move forward….

I hate him and hate his football. Sussed out the chancer early doors and sadly been proven right
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Well, we’ve done the first bit enough times. Rarely follow it up with the latter.

I’d jettison but the fact a suitable alternative isn’t there makes me not as keen as I would usually be.
 
Brian Fantana said:
Well, we’ve done the first bit enough times. Rarely follow it up with the latter.

I’d jettison but the fact a suitable alternative isn’t there makes me not as keen as I would usually be.
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I think there’s probably better alternatives on our payroll. I don’t think you could pick a more ill suited, or qualified manager

I hope we get smashed by Palace if it expedites his exit. Sooner the better, don’t wait until there’s nothing to play for.
 
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