When Thomas Frank was booed off the pitch by thousands of Tottenham fans just after 5pm on Saturday, it felt like the end.
Not many managers survive a moment like that, when the home crowd has so clearly turned against them, explicitly calling for them to go. Not many managers in fact even reach that point when the mutiny against them is that loud, that clear, that unambiguous. No Tottenham manager in recent years has been as unpopular as Frank now is. Not even the endings of Jose Mourinho or Antonio Conte were as toxic as this.
So most people who were at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday would have left expecting never to see Frank in charge of Spurs there again.
Many of them would have remembered Nuno Espirito Santo’s last game in charge, the 3-0 defeat by Manchester United there in October 2021. Nuno was booed at home on that Saturday evening. Daniel Levy decided to sack him that night, putting into motion a plan he had been working on in secret. The club worked on the finer details on the Sunday. The official announcement, which everyone had been expecting, came just before 10am on the Monday morning.
Conte’s appointment — which had been lined up in private long before — was confirmed on the Tuesday. On the Thursday night, Conte took his first game, against Vitesse Arnhem in the Conference League. On the Sunday, Conte took his second, against Everton in the Premier League. Within a week, Nuno had been consigned to the footnotes of history. This was Levy at his most ruthless and most ambitious.
Under different circumstances, Tottenham might have followed the same pattern this week. The situation with Frank now is more grave than it ever was with Nuno in 2021. The atmosphere is worse, the stakes are higher, and there is less time to turn things around.
And perhaps if Tottenham could have found another world-class manager, a multiple title winner in both England and Italy, out of work, sat by the pool, waiting for the call, then maybe they might have considered a similarly swift change.
But instead, there was nothing. Any change would have needed to be very quick, given Spurs’ Champions League game against Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday evening. There was an afternoon of pre-match obligations that Frank had to fulfil. And sure enough, on Tuesday just after 2pm, Frank led out his players for a brief open training session at Hotspur Way. And later that afternoon, he did the press conference.
Frank was as bullish as anyone can be in his situation. He said that he has still been “feeling the trust” from the club hierarchy. He revealed that on Monday, as fans were waiting to hear whether he would stay in charge or not, he had lunch with CEO Vinai Venkatesham, sporting director Johan Lange and Nick Beucher, influential member of the majority-shareholding Lewis family. Frank talked up a “good conversation about life and football, the future of the club” and said that this lunch was an “extremely good sign”. Because it showed that the hierarchy were not “running away” from him.
In a sense, Frank is right. It would have been perfectly easy for Tottenham to deliver ‘Club Announcement: Thomas Departs’ on Monday morning and just draw a line under the last six months. The hierarchy has been nothing if not patient with Frank since his appointment in June, sticking with him through average results, ugly football and a few moments of fan discord even before Saturday’s explosion. The decision to keep him for now is just a continuation of that. The view from the club is that the board still believes that Frank can achieve the right result against Dortmund on Tuesday night.
And were it not for the extreme toxicity of Saturday, it would be easier to agree. All season, the Spurs hierarchy has been focused on patience, rebuilding, sticking with the new plan even through choppy waters. The problem with this approach is that it feels as if no one was expecting things to go as badly as they have. Not just in terms of the results, but in terms of the football and, most importantly, the mood.
It is the souring of that mood, seemingly beyond the point of any return, that poses the biggest challenge to the hierarchy and to their policy of patience. By sticking with Frank for Tuesday’s game against Borussia Dortmund, they will put him back out in front of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium crowd.
Nobody knows at this point how the game will go and how the fans will react. Maybe the soured milk will magically un-curdle. But there is every chance that if things go wrong, the crowd will turn and get on the back of the man that they booed so heavily on Saturday. Frank managed to survive it once. It would be a surprise if he could survive it again.
Frank’s tenability in this job is now hanging by a thread after the events of this month. More scenes like Saturday will surely mark the end for him. And eventually, there will have to be a replacement. All season, people have been wondering whether Frank is the next Nuno and perhaps the biggest difference is the fact that there is no Conte figure waiting in the wings.
One of the strange things about football right now is how few out-of-work managers there are who Spurs might consider calling. Perhaps it is because of the World Cup this summer, meaning managers are more attracted than ever to the international game.
But it is hard to think right now who Spurs could get to finish their season if they did make a change. There is no obvious internal candidate, Matt Wells having just left to take over at Colorado Rapids. John Heitinga, who has effectively replaced Wells and has the experience to do it, only joined last week.
Outside of the club, Michael Carrick has just taken over at Manchester United and while Ryan Mason has just left West Bromwich Albion, it is hard to see him wanting to return to a caretaker role for a third time.
But somebody will have to coach Tottenham through the conclusion of the 2025-26 season, even if it is not clear right now exactly who that person should be. And if it is not Frank after all, then it is a thorny question to solve for the Spurs hierarchy.
The decision to keep Frank for the start of this week, and have him in the dugout against Dortmund, shaking hands with Niko Kovac and all the rest, does at least carve out some more time and space to think through it. Just in case there is another repeat of Saturday’s scenes, whether on Tuesday night, at Burnley on Saturday, or after that.
And suddenly, Tottenham’s power brokers are forced into the decision and the choice that they have been hoping to avoid all season.