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Manager Thomas Frank
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Everything coming out now about him tells you how protected he was in the media.
The only thing nice to hear from this article was at least the players were sick of the scum as well.Matt Law:
Thomas Frank’s bizarre obsession with Arsenal helped seal his fate
archived 11 Feb 2026 11:37:08 UTCarchive.ph
Thomas Frank’s bizarre obsession with Woolwich helped seal his fate
Poor results and a series of rookie errors also eventually led to the Dane’s sacking as Tottenham manager
By his own admission, Thomas Frank made his first rookie error as Tottenham Hotspur head coach before a ball had been kicked this season and the “A-word” proved to be a problematic theme of his eight months in charge.
It was in his first press conference following his appointment that Frank said: “I haven’t seen a team that is not losing any football matches. There is Woolwich, that we can’t mention, in the Premier League. So I made my first rookie mistake there.”
It was not a rookie mistake confined to his media duties, however, as Frank is said to have regularly referenced the strengths of Tottenham’s North London rivals in team meetings – much to the frustration of some players.
The irony of Frank finally being sacked ahead of next Sunday’s game against Woolwich will not have been lost on those who were surprised by his reverence to the Premier League leaders.
One source told Telegraph Sport: “He was constantly going on to the players about Woolwich and they quickly got sick of it. Even before and after the game at the Emirates, he was telling them how good Woolwich were. The feeling among some was very much ‘just shut up about Woolwich’.”
It is hardly surprising, then, that players were just as dismayed as supporters to see pictures of Frank holding an Woolwich coffee cup as he strolled around the Vitality Stadium ahead of Tottenham’s 3-2 defeat to Bournemouth.
The resulting social media pictures poking fun at Frank and portraying him as an obsessive Woolwich fan were not just shared among Spurs fans, but also members of staff and players.
No sooner had Frank been seen with and Woolwich cup than the internet went Frank-Woolwich meme crazy...
...memes that were shared among Tottenham players and staff, so annoyed with the manager constantly talking about the club’s arch-rivals
It undoubtedly made life more difficult for Frank that his and Tottenham’s struggles came at a time when Woolwich were top of the Premier League and Champions League tables. Chief executive Vinai Venkatesham’s previous association with the club has been seized upon by critics, even though Spurs elected not to mention it when his appointment was announced last April.
Venkatesham can also be accused of making rookie errors that did not help Frank or Spurs. The club were gazumped by Woolwich for Eberechi Eze in the summer and the decision to officially reappoint Fabio Paratici as co-sporting director in October blew up in Venkatesham’s face, as it was announced three months later that the Italian would leave at the start of February.
Former Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou once joked the Australian national team federation would replace him with “John the Pragmatist” and those words resonated with Spurs players who worked with Postecoglou’s successor and fans who watched Frank’s team.
Just last week, Frank conceded: “I am pretty sure there are also some players who don’t think I am the best bloke or whatever it is.”
Almost from day one, there was a feeling within the squad that Frank placed too much emphasis on the opposition in training and preparation. A source said: “Most of the work was on what to do out of possession and how to nullify the opposition, rather than working on how they could hurt opponents.”
That was reflected in performances and results with some success in the early weeks of the season, as Tottenham won three of their first four Premier League games, conceding just one goal and beating Manchester City.
Alarm bells first started to ring with the home draw against Wolverhampton Wanderers and the league defeat to Aston Villa, which highlighted that starting with on-loan Joao Palhinha and Rodrigo Bentancur was unnecessarily pragmatic when Spurs needed to take games to their opponents at the club’s £1bn stadium.
Frustration on and off the pitch boiled over in the home defeat to Chelsea at the beginning of November, when supporters booed and defenders Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence dismissed Frank’s suggestion for them to applaud the home crowd.
As exclusively reported by Telegraph Sport, players discussed their relationship with the fans in a team meeting after the defeat. It can now be revealed that players who had arrived in the summer were shocked to hear longer serving players articulate their strong feelings on what they believed was a long-standing disconnect.
That disconnect quickly widened with fans turning on goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario; arguing with Van de Van and Pedro Porro; and loudly singing “you’re getting sacked in the morning” at Frank.
The vehemence of the chanting against Frank in the defeat to West Ham United forced Tottenham’s Lewis family owners and Venkatesham to consider their options. The Dane was given a stay of execution for the Champions League visit of Borussia Dortmund and lunched with Venkatesham, Nick Beucher, who is a member of the Lewis family, and sporting director Johan Lange in the build-up to the game.
It was the Champions League that ultimately stopped Frank being sacked sooner, with Tottenham finishing fourth in the league phase. But his injury-hit team could not transfer their European form to the Premier League and Frank will not get the chance to take charge of Spurs in the last-16.
Frank had tried to remain calm amid the chaos. He likes to read for half-an-hour before going to bed to clear his mind of football and problems, and went for a swim in the Mediterranean Sea on the morning of Tottenham’s Champions League game in Monaco.
But there was no shaking the troubling feeling he had inherited an unbalanced squad that was incapable of competing domestically and in Europe, and that he was badly short of leaders.
Cristian Romero was made club captain under Frank after Heung-Min Son left the club, but there were doubts over his suitability for the role even before the Argentine’s post-transfer window head loss.
A strong character, sure. Somebody who can galvanise the team when he is in the right frame of mind. But a leader to rely upon when the going gets tough? His social media post less than an hour after the transfer window shut, describing Tottenham’s lack of available players as a “disgrace”, and subsequent red card at Manchester United provided a definitive answer.
Some believe Romero is granted privileges not afforded to others at Tottenham’s training ground and is not somebody who sets standards with the way he behaves. That feeling was underlined when the defender, who is the highest-paid player at Spurs, was not punished after publicly calling out the club’s hierarchy following the Bournemouth defeat.
On the same day the club confirmed Romero would not be fined, the defender was handed an extra game ban for refusing to leave the side of the pitch after being sent-off against Liverpool. He scored on his return to the team against West Ham, but also registered his eighth yellow card of the season.
The defender has three games of a four-game suspension left to serve and is only two bookings from another two-game ban. If availability is the best ability, then the 27-year-old has a lot of making up to do.
It is not just Romero’s discipline that has been questionable, as time-keeping was an issue for players, young and old, under Frank. The Dane tried to draw a line in the sand by leaving Yves Bissouma out of his first squad for the Uefa Super Cup following repeated incidents.
Bissouma apologised after being pictured using nitrous oxide, but was then called upon to make his first Spurs appearance of the season as a substitute in the defeat to West Ham. It was just the latest in a list of examples of Frank undermining his own authority.
Frank had arrived at Tottenham with a “no d---heads” policy that he cultivated at Brentford, but implementing that in north London was not as easy as he might have anticipated or liked. The cultural problems he encountered were not confined to his players, with issues existing and presenting themselves in other areas of the club.
They will not be magically cured by another change of head coach and, at Christmas, Frank had candidly warned club chiefs that the second half of the season would remain bumpy with tough moments. But, even after the embarrassing West Ham defeat, the former Brentford manager believed he could start to turn around the Spurs “supertanker”.
There were some encouraging signs in the Champions League victories and comeback draw against Manchester City. But an 11th League defeat of the season against Newcastle United, during which supporters again chanted “you’re getting sacked in the morning” and sang for Mauricio Pochettino, proved to be fatal.
Frank claimed he was “convinced” he retained the backing of the Tottenham board after the Newcastle loss, but that belief proved to be another rookie error to add to the list for the 52 year-old. The message for his successor is clear: Don’t mention the ‘A-word’.
Feels to me like most journalists have been keeping their powder dry, waiting for him to go
Matt Laws a twat, hates us Im sure, yet none of this came out before today did it?
Its not just the club mouthpieces keeping quiet
Bodes well for a new manager bounce!
Best squad?
Is that list meant to disprove it?
Solid defense with experienced centre-backs.
Dynamic attack with Kane and Son forming one of the Premier League’s most feared duos at the time.
Young, energetic midfielders like Winks and Alli, with Eriksen providing creativity.
I still hold the thought that evil pundits and journalists were trying their best to keep him in the job as long as possible knowing he's shit, so we really go down.
With Ange it's the opposite. They knew. Getting a reaction from big Ange was the sole objective all day long to destabilise us, which I think really work, that our own fans turned as well.
You're describing a good first team, not the "best squad on paper".
I wondered WTF he's on about? I had to Google, So it's Game of Thrones. a show that I have never watched.
He's getting 8m a season. I don't feel one bit sorry for him. He will leave now and walk off with 18m pay out. Plus another 6m for his back room staff... what a complete waste of 9 months and approx 40m.. 10m to get him and his team out of Brentford, 12m pay to date and 18m payoff.
Let's all agree one thing though.
Seeing as how the players hated hearing about the scum and how they hated focussing on what to do off the ball, and considering that Frank is now sacked, they can all take personal responsibility and not play like complete cunts in our next home fixture.
Seeing as how the players hated hearing about the scum and how they hated focussing on what to do off the ball, and considering that Frank is now sacked, they can all take personal responsibility and not play like complete cunts in our next home fixture.
I don't know if Spurs going down is a good thing for the media long term, we won't garner as much interest in the Championship for example.
I think what it does tell you is that the media can shape the narrative and set the manipulate the agenda quite easily though.
No, the best squad was the one with Kyle Walker and Moussa Demebele. This squad was the beginning of the slow downward drift.
Best squad?
Oh we've got a fresh one!
He tried to work the margins too much, with a team that had no tactical orientation for two seasons.
Big failing to not gauge that and meet them half way until they could absorb the load better.
Why I repeated need for him to just keep us compact and mid-block and have a more 'general' approach as our core game, instead of tinkering every game.
A select few games this season we hit on good rhythm and flow and it all came about because we were compact and played through the field more as a unit.
When he tried to bypass mf and hit the flanks etc, it all broke down again and he would do this straight after a game where there were signs of us beginning to click.
Ultimately, he relied too much on an a too intricate margin-led approach to games that worked at Brentford, which was saturated with this culture and is a much more stable club irt executive leadership, scouting/procurement, planning etc.
And definitely needed to relax his methodology to accommodate a decimated squad and uber mid players he had to rely on.
So, ultimately, he didn't do himself any favours.
Big shame; hoped it would have worked.
IMVHO it would have been a different story -- league table wise at this point -- if he had Madders, Kulu and Solanke at the beginning of his tenure, as there was zero final third to work with and it's still limited af now tbh.
Either way, we move on.
We're THFC.
Not MANAGER FC.
My overriding concern, tho, is our owners, who are the permanent rot.
Very scary times to have them lead us through this critical period.
It's also a terrible cross reference as Jon Snow was demonstrating tremendous bravery and courage.
Frank was perhaps more indebted to the little rascal in my profile photo.
Thank the fucking lord