Thomas Frank is in serious danger of Tottenham Hotspur fans eventually turning on him and demanding an exit unless he starts acting like he is managing a Champions League club and not a Premier League minnow.
The league’s best away record was blown to shreds by, of all teams, Spurs’ bitter north London rivals Arsenal on Sunday, as the Gunners continued what appears to be a relentless drive towards their title win in more than 20 years.
It’s one thing going to Emirates Stadium and sitting in with Brentford, with all due respect, as he did last season to earn a 1-1 draw. In fact, in his four games in charge of the Bees in the red half of north London, Brentford lost by a single goal twice and also had another draw during the 2022/23 season.
But he appears to be completely caught between two stools at the moment, in terms of what sort of style of football he wants to play at Tottenham – and that was ruthlessly exposed against Arsenal, as Spurs continue their slide down the table.
Switching to a back three was probably more about having three big central defenders on the pitch to defend The Gunners’ set-piece threat than anything else, even though they were without chief goalscoring weapon Gabriel due to injury.
It would also have been a short week of prep for Frank due to the international break, and that showed in the complete lack of cohesion in the first half, before he abandoned the back three at half-time with his side already two goals down.
The majority of sensible Tottenham fans knew it was time for Ange Postecoglou to go, despite the Europa League success, but the change from ‘Ange-ball’ to ‘Frank-ball’ has been so stark. Yes, there have been some good results, almost exclusively away from home, but when the transition in change of style goes horribly wrong, as it did on Sunday, Tottenham look like a bottom-half team at best.
Indeed, Frank needs to realise quickly that he is at a club where the demands are so much higher, along with the expectation of playing front-foot football and not just sitting back against your biggest rivals and waiting for the inevitable to happen.
Speaking of inevitable, I’m guessing that every Tottenham fan on the planet expected Eberechi Eze to score in the game and celebrate like he never agreed a move to Spurs over the summer before doing a complete U-turn. As for a hat-trick, that just sums up the gulf in class between the clubs, both on and off the field at the moment.
If Tottenham had triggered Eze’s clause and got the deal done before Kai Havertz’s injury that forced Arsenal back into the race, then everything could have been very different. But that’s all ifs and buts, and Eze couldn’t care less about Spurs’ struggles as he drives Arsenal towards title glory – and frankly, why should he. That’s modern-day football for you.
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Frank apology too little, too late
Speaking after the rout, Frank was in an apologetic mood to the Tottenham fans, claiming it was never the intention to be as pragmatic as they were.
However, the excuses are wearing a little thin and it has echoes of the home defeat to Chelsea, where there was no ambition from the start of the game – and that has to come from the top, no matter what Frank says.
Anyway, he told Sky Sports, for what it’s worth: “I think it is extremely painful. I won’t talk away from that. It was a bad performance. It was completely the opposite of what the intention was when we came here.
“We can only apologise to the fans for the performance. I think no matter if both teams wanted to play short, they got more out of that and we couldn’t get out. When the team went long, we didn’t win enough duels. That is exemplified by the 2-0 goal and the 3-0 goal, where a player went through two or three players. Bad performance and we lost.
“I have seen a lot of character and fight in this team but we didn’t win enough duels. We can call that whatever we want but we didn’t win enough.
“I tried to play a 5-4-1. I will always take responsibility as my choice in the end to take the system then and we changed it at half-time. My view on it is that no matter what formation we play today, we don’t have enough duels or intensity in the decisive moments, and it is very difficult to win a football match.
“The goals I want to see more in detail. The whole game I need to watch tonight and it will be a difficult watch. We were not aggressive and stepped forward when we could and they played it round us.”
On lack of creativity: “That has been an ongoing theme that we are working hard to improve. It doesn’t look good today or against Chelsea. We need to keep working on it.
“There were a lot of things in this game we need to do better. We are four months into it and they are further in their journey as a team and that was very obvious today.
“Of course there will be noise. We played against our biggest rivals and we lost badly. But we keep noise out and we focus. I know this team is competitive and we showed that against Man City and PSG.
“Of course it looks bad today and it was not good enough.”
And only the small matter of PSG in the Champions League next!
Latest Tottenham news: Winger hijack; Semenyo chase update
First up, Tottenham are reportedly plotting the stunning hijack of a Chelsea and Liverpool winger target after matching the €70million offer on the table from their London rivals, although TEAMtalk can reveal why a proposed January move has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Elsewhere, Manchester United could get help from a coach as they look to beat Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester City to the sensational signing of Bournemouth ace Antoine Semenyo.
And finally, Spurs have moved quickly to dampen speculation that the club is urgently hunting for a new first-choice goalkeeper, and TEAMtalk understands Thomas Frank has a different top priority for January.
