Thomas Frank is bringing someone to Tottenham who made a big impact at Brentford despite only spending a season with him before spells at Arsenal and Manchester United.
This week it was announced that among Frank's new Spurs coaches would be the versatile Andreas Georgson as a first team assistant coach. The 43-year-old Swede has racked up experience across top clubs in the game over the past decade, particularly in the past five years.
Georgson's journey began at Malmo in his homeland where he held various jobs within the academy as he worked through his qualifications, including coaching and scouting, before moving up into the first team set-up under former Brentford head coach Uwe Rosler. Then in 2019, after building contacts at Brentford while travelling during his UEFA Pro Licence work, he joined Frank at the Bees in a new role as Head of Set Pieces and Individual Development.
Georgson was only there for less than a year but his work was hailed as a huge success for the Championship club during that time and so much so that Arsenal stepped in and took him across London for a year in a similar role. He would later depart for technical roles at Malmo before the Premier League called again with a brief spell at Southampton as a coach and set-piece coach.
A brief tenure as head coach of Lillestrom preceded another year in the English top flight when Erik ten Hag took him to Manchester United to improve what they were doing with their set-piece work. With the arrival of Ruben Amorim, so Georgson switched focus to more general coaching and eventually left the club at the end of the season.
The Swede has a wide range of coaching abilities and football.london understands that at Tottenham he will have set-pieces and restarts as just two of the areas he will be responsible for under Frank. His versatility and broad background will be used by the new Spurs head coach to fit in around however the Dane forms the rest of his coaching set-up, which is still being finalised. In Georgson, he has someone who can take on further duties beyond set-pieces if required.
The club have had issues though with set-pieces in recent years, even if improvements were made in the numbers when the now departed Nick Montgomery began working on them at both ends of the pitch last season. Georgson will arrive though with expertise in the field and specialism within his wider coaching knowledge. Spurs did this previously with Gianni Vio during Antonio Conte's time and it had a big impact at set plays.
In an interview with Training Ground Guru in 2022, Georgson explained his methods in getting his ideas on set-pieces across to the group and gave a sense of how it will work at Tottenham.
"It’s a lot about selling to them – ‘If we spend time on this it will really help you in the game and it will help the team.’ It’s a lot about being a salesman, because set-pieces are boring to begin with. Try to make it fun, try to do it in context and try to motivate the players," he said.
"It takes patience and it takes motivation from the players, because they would rather take 20 shots after a session. That is so much more passionate for them and more fun. Players didn’t become footballers to understand how to avoid a block, but it is still highly effective to know.
"Detailed work [on set-pieces] is really boring, it doesn’t come from passion, it just really helps if you can improve your role in the team in this specific area. There are not so many specialists out there that I think will be efficient. You need to find the right man or woman to do it and if you’re going to do it there must be full buy-in – including from the manager – so that everyone accepts we are going to spend time and effort on this.
"I’m not sure every team needs to have [a set-piece coach]. I think every team needs to have a strong set-piece process. Whether you build that with your assistant or a specialist is not the key thing. There needs to be a thought-through process of how to improve it over time."
Georgson will also use his experience across north London at Arsenal to improve what he does at Spurs because he admits he made mistakes to begin with under Mikel Arteta.
"If I look back at the first couple of months [there] I got it wrong. That affected our quality on the attacking side [with set-pieces]. I came in with, I think, a too big level of detail in the set-piece process. In the beginning it was impossible for the players to take it all in," he said.
"I came from Brentford. They had worked for many years very deep into set-pieces and made it part of their identity. I think Arsenal at that point was more of a traditional club in terms of what level of focus set-pieces got. I didn’t get it right in terms of how big and flexible to make the set-piece process, so we struggled quite hard to be effective attacking wise, but became really strong defensively.
"The attacking process was too detailed, too flexible and too big, because that was the system I was used to from before. I realised that the players at Brentford were used to that, they had done that for many years, and they were not so stressed by the fact that my plan was quite detailed.
"For Brentford we had a really flexible system, and since the players could handle the amount of information and keeping the timing and execution it was really beneficial, because you become so unpredictable. If you are going to have the flexible system you have to build it over time.
"There is no tradition in football to place that much emphasis and remember that big a playbook, that has to take time to build and gradually build your DNA as a team. The method I came in with [at Arsenal] was really wide, many different routines, many different systems to surprise the opponent, but the problem is if you then surprise yourself it’s not so good! Then you lose the quality of execution and organisation instead.
"Football is a really dynamic game. To build a style of play that the players can understand and follow, without losing the freedom and intuition to play this random game over big spaces, you always have to find a balance of how much information and detail the players should have to deal with to perform at the top of their potential."
Arsenal have become known for their set-piece strength in the years since and many suggest that the defensive improvements began during Georgson's time with them.
"First of all I didn’t solve anything, the players solved it, 100%. On the defensive structure, the level of detail was probably perfect. It was not too flexible, it was quite firm, and we did the same things week after week to improve step by step," he said back in 2022. "Hopefully I gave them some guidance and we did some detailed work that I think is not common in football – that you work details in marking, details in avoiding a block or doing your specific role.
"With the defensive side we really managed to find a process that can go all over the season, so the players get reminded in a good frequency about the small details they should keep doing. I made sure the principle was as clear as possible. Then the key people in the process – some players in our hybrid defence – I actually fed back with them after every game. And on the pitch I took the stance that I do something after every session set piece wise.
"If I hadn’t worked with the markers for a while then I might spend 10 minutes with them on marking techniques and situations, but that could then go a month until I did it the next time. So maybe the next chance I brought some of the zonal players to remind them of the principles, the next time maybe a few of the attacking players to do one of the routines we thought could be happening in the next game. Once we got the attacking process starting and to build gradually, that process also started to become strong."
That Frank has grabbed the opportunity to bring Georgson back into the fold after losing him to Arsenal years ago shows what he believes the Swede can achieve at Tottenham. All eyes will be on next season and the fruits of his labours in selling set-pieces to the Spurs stars.