Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence apologised to Thomas Frank for walking straight down the tunnel after Tottenham Hotspur’s 1-0 defeat to Chelsea on Saturday, the head coach has revealed.
Van de Ven and Spence headed towards the dressing room at the full-time whistle but Frank appeared to try to stop the defenders. The pair ignored him and continued to walk away, leaving Frank staring in their direction for several seconds. They also brushed off set-piece coach Andreas Georgson before heading down the tunnel.
Van de Ven, who was Tottenham’s captain against Chelsea because Cristian Romero was on the bench, and Spence spoke to Frank individually on Sunday about what had happened.
“Micky and Djed came into my office yesterday unprompted and said, ‘We want to say sorry for the situation,'” Frank said at a press conference before Spurs’ game against FC Copenhagen in the Champions League on Tuesday.
“They didn’t want it to look bad or disrespectful or all kinds of perceptions you can get in this strange media world. That was not their intention at all towards me or the club. They were just frustrated with the performance, the loss and the booing during the game.”
Frank was asked what he would have done if they had not approached him.
“If they didn’t come in, I would have asked them about the situation,” the 52-year-old said. “What they were feeling. Why they were doing it. We all have a perception. We are very good to have that (theory) of ‘that’s because their mum wasn’t well, or they didn’t like the head coach, or they were irritated with the performance or they lost or whatever.’
“We are very good at that but none of us know. That would have been my first question to them. How were they and why?
“Of course I’m happy, because I knew the question would come today, that they are coming in. That means they care. That means they care about the team, the club, in this case me. Happy with that. So that was very good.
“Then we just had a good talk about a lot of things. Like with everything, we keep it internally. Like I said to the players, it will be very, very, very unusual if I ever throw a player under the bus. We are all humans, but I will always protect them. Always.”
Frank’s side were booed off after managing a solitary shot on target against Chelsea and registering an expected goals metric of just 0.05 – their lowest total since such records began.
Tottenham goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, who joined Frank at Monday’s press conference, suggested Spurs would have benefitted from “more help” from supporters.
“Probably when we are chasing (the game), we need to be a little more cool heads and if we have a little bit more help from some situations coming from the stands it could be, of course, better,” he said. “But we cannot control it.
“At the end, of course, everyone was disappointed. We had already lost a London derby so everyone was really frustrated. And we get the reaction of the fans at the end of the game … they can express their pain and we were of course in a big pain situation so that’s across every stadium in the world, in Europe, in the UK. So we get the point. We were just disappointed for the result.”
Frank also called for more help from home supporters.
“I think the fans were fantastic the first 30 and after the game if we perform badly and on top of that we lost the game, more than fair enough they boo us,” he said.
“But during the game, we need a little bit of help. And especially when it’s not going the right way. They can be the turning point. We are down 1-0 last 15, imagine they carry us over the line. We got a little of an unfair 1-1, what a feeling. That point can be the difference in a long season.”
Spence, Mohammed Kudus and Lucas Bergvall were absent from Tottenham’s training session on Monday afternoon. Frank confirmed Bergvall suffered a concussion against Chelsea and will be unavailable until after the November international break.
Frank said Spence and Kudus both have knocks but “could and should be available” to face Copenhagen.