Thomas Frank comes across as a sensible man. With his well-coiffured hair and walking holiday puffer jacket, he is the kind of man who surely owns a filing cabinet.
It is understandable why men like Frank get managerial roles. They appear trustworthy. Reliable. A safe pair of hands but in a progressive way.
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Occasionally, sensible managers sensible their way into bigger jobs at bigger clubs. This is what has happened to Frank with Tottenham and after the agonies of Ange, who can blame them? A decision to swap the dogmatist for a pragmatist. Lurching from a man who needed to be the star of the show to one more comfortable with letting the set-piece routines do the talking.
In an interminably boring display against Chelsea, Tottenham looked a little too sensible. It was perhaps not necessary for Rodrigo Bentancur and Xavi Simons to play a fourth pass between themselves on the edge of the Chelsea penalty area. Or to stay so rigidly in defensive shape as to let Moisés Caicedo rush in and harass two defenders before setting up João Pedroâs opener. One shot on target in the first half? Too sensible.
They were booed off at half-time by their own fans, who have not seen their side win back-to-back matches since the middle of September. Somehow they started the game third in the league. Somehow they also finished the game third in the league.
The referee was forced to halt proceedings at one point to hand a couple of miniature bottles of Jack Danielâs that had been thrown on to the pitch to a steward. It may well have been sensible for Tottenham players to consume them, anything to enliven the team.
At the start of the second half Pedro Porro beseeched the Tottenham crowd in the time-old manner of waving his arms in the air to make some more noise. He would probably have been better off turning around to do it to his team-mates.
They did at least engage in the requisite derby aggression. Bentancur was lucky to stay on the pitch after an agricultural challenge on Reece James earned him only a yellow card.
There was plenty of pushing and shoving between the two teams but only Chelsea really ever looked like turning that feeling into football. They have now won on five of their last six visits to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Chelsea had not created more expected goals than an opponent in the Premier League since their 2-0 win over Fulham on 30 August. That was incidentally the last time João Pedro had managed even a shot on target. Chelsea should have scored two or three more goals. At least the scoreline also remained sensible.
Perhaps after the madcap antics of Postecoglou, Frank needs more time to imbue the benefits of sensibility on this team.
But as Guglielmo Vicario and Djed Spence played out a free-kick routine on the halfway line in the 92nd minute that involved passing it to each other before kicking the ball into the waiting arms of Robert Sánchez, and the boos rang out, it was easy to be wistful for at least some of what had come before.