Here are our Tottenham talking points after another horrendous display in the Premier League with a heavy defeat at lowly Nottingham Forest
Tottenham are approaching a point where they must decide whether to finally stick with a manager to see what lies on the other side of a rough patch or determine whether they have jumped on the wrong train and showing patience would simply take them to the wrong destination.
Thomas Frank, who believes there is no quick fix to the problems at Spurs, may just benefit from the same problems that prolonged Ange Postecoglou's tenure just long enough for him to win a trophy.
On Sunday afternoon, the north London club gave all of their travelling fans free scarves on their seats at the City Ground but they could only muster a single shot on target as another gift against 16th-placed Nottingham Forest during a mistake-riddled display.
The scarves might as well have had 'Sorry' printed on them rather than Spurs for Pedro Porro became the latest candidate wheeled out to apologise to the supporters on the club channels. You have to wonder whether the players draw straws to see who has the dubious honour each time.
The apologies wore thin a long time ago. Under Frank, Tottenham have picked up just 22 points from their opening 16 Premier League games this season, their lowest tally in 17 years.
Impatient Spurs are not exactly known for offering their managers lengthy tenures and the Dane is hoping he will be given time to turn things around after Callum Hudson-Odoi struck twice before a rocket from Ibrahim Sangare condemned the Lilywhites to yet more pain this season.
"I can't see why not. I think it's pretty evident that if no-one gets the time, no-one can turn this around," Frank told football.london. "This is not a quick fix."
The problem is that there remains little evidence that the 52-year-old has even got his spanner, wrench and screwdriver set out yet and if he has, whether that spanner has fallen in the works.
Spurs' Premier League displays were criticised last season, but at least under Postecoglou, the team had goals in them even if they looked defensively brittle in the Premier League. There was entertainment within the chaos. Not that that should be celebrated but it's still better than the snooze-fests that have been repeatedly served up to the fans this season.
At this point Frank's team have scored 11 goals fewer in the league than his predecessor's side and for all the talk of improving the defence being the priority, Spurs have conceded two more at this stage under the Dane and with their first choice centre-backs for most of it.
Tottenham have one point fewer than last season and sit a place lower in the table. While the past three matches looked to be a corner turned, it appears to have been a mirage, for the trip to Nottingham brought more of the turgid, shot-shy, dour displays that have marked this season.
Frank would once call upon the performance against Bournemouth as the sole bad display in a bright start. Those seem now like halcyon days. Now every time Spurs slide to defeat or a miserable draw it's difficult to work out whether each latest calamity is the worst of the bunch.
After the Cherries loss, there was the double whammy of the home draw against Wolves, one of only two points the West Midlands side have managed this season, then the very different display in Bodo compared to last season's Europa League semi-final win. Defeats to Villa and Newcastle followed, not forgetting a draw in Monaco that was as undeserving as you'll care to find. The derby despair against Chelsea felt like the nadir, but then came the surrender against Arsenal and a collapse against PSG after a promising first half.
The pain continued with the home defeat to Fulham before the brief respite for the Spurs fans ended with Sunday's hammering in Nottingham. Even Robin Hood would not have been able to steal a point for this limp, lacklustre Tottenham side.
Spurs have now racked up five errors leading to opposition goals in the Premier League this season, with only Wolves recording more with seven. The Lilywhites lead the league for most errors made leading to opposition shots, handing 20 opportunities to opponents.
If you want the perfect example of how disorganised this group of Spurs players was on Sunday, they couldn't even get their half-time huddle right. In each game the team have been coming together as a unit before walking off the pitch together at the half-time whistle to show their solidarity.
At the City Ground, Mohammed Kudus forgot that new habit and started to head down the tunnel. His team-mates shouted to him, so he came back a few steps before they all started to walk off anyway. Even a group huddle lacked coordination and communication.
It was another game in which Frank's players often looked in disarray, showing their displeasure to one another at times and Djed Spence argued with the decision to substitute him before hurling his jacket to the ground as he took his seat. When he sat down, the England international, who had looked injured in the first half, continued to moan and look at the back of the head coach.
It's not the first time the full-back has shown his irritation in a moment involving Frank. In pre-season he stropped towards his seat after coming off in the rout in Munich, choosing not to go along the bench slapping hands with the other substitutes as Frank watched.
Then Spence and Micky van de Ven went against Frank's wishes for the players to applaud the supporters after the defeat to Chelsea and they walked past him muttering and down the tunnel as he looked after them forlornly.
"You're the third one that said that to me today," Frank said of Spence's latest moment of displeasure. "I didn't see it. Of course I will look back to be aware of it. I think there can be three reasons. He can be disappointed with his own performance, the team's performance, he can be disappointed with being subbed off. I'll ask him about that."
For Postecoglou's tactical faults, his players never appeared to show dissent publicly. There was frustration certainly and private irritation as James Maddison admitted last week about being taken off frequently in games.
Perhaps a group that now contains mostly trophy winners are getting too big for their boots and struggling to see their own part in this malaise.
This was another game in which the Tottenham players were outrun, outmuscled and outfought and they failed to complete the simple task of passing the ball to one of their own.
Frank had been raging with his team but looked unflustered as he analysed a defeat in which he claimed his players gifted Forest the ball 25 times. The former Brentford boss explained that his exterior could not betray what was going on inside.
"I do everything to control my emotions, which is a hurricane inside me because of course it's deeply frustrating that we're not doing better today after three good performances," he said.
"It's extremely important to be calm and measured, and have very, very direct and clear messages at the right time so they're not in doubt of what I think, and very honest about where we are. That's why I was very honest today. It was a very bad performance. No two ways about that."
He added: "But also know that to change this, this will take some time. No one wants to hear that. It's just reality. I think those who have followed the club and the team, it's fair to say there have been a few not-too-consistent performances and that's something we are working very hard on."
The goals Spurs conceded were as messy as anything they've managed so far under the Dane.
The first came from an Archie Gray mistake. The 19-year-old has been a solid presence in recent games but after screaming for a pass from Guglielmo Vicario, the teenager tried to take a touch rather than sweeping it out to the sides and duly lost the ball to Sangare.
Vicario did well to save the Forest man's shot as he ran into the box, but Callum Hudson-Odoi poked home the follow-up.
Gray immediately held his hands up and various team-mates patted him on the back and the youngster will learn from the moment.
"That happens. I've said before, mistakes happen, stuff like that," Frank told football.london. "Of course I'll be irritated about it because you like to avoid it, but he will learn. I think it was a classic thing, you see, week in, week out.
"It's ball-playing to one of the two sitters. Bounce it up, first touch, not take a touch. He will learn from that. I'm pretty sure he'll use one touch next time."
When asked whether Vicario was at fault for passing it to the youngster, Frank shook his head.
"No. I think you see that every week in the Premier League, from every team, all over the world. So there's no problem with that," said the Dane.
You could argue that Vicario could have made it easier for Gray by aiming his pass towards the youngster's right foot but the teenager could still have turned his body to knock it to Romero. He could have shouted that there was a man coming or simply picked someone else out but this was a move Spurs have executed repeatedly in every game.
The fault for the second goal will probably be laid at Vicario's door but he would have had to be a fortune teller to predict that Hudson-Odoi would miss-hit a deep cross so badly and right into the far corner of his net. The Italian was positioned to deal with a cross, not an unintended shot from an unexpected angle.
Vicario's kicking certainly warranted criticism with a couple of aimless balls out into touch or nowhere near the intended targets, but this defeat was not fully on him as others huffed and puffed.
The attack appeared bereft of ideas, aggression or preparation. Having Richarlison up front was like building a yellow brick wall that the ball bounced off repeatedly.
Mohammed Kudus did his best impression of Lucas Moura, constantly running into two or three Forest players rather than passing to team-mates who would have been free. Xavi Simons worked hard at both ends of the pitch but struggled to do much with the ball after recent promising displays.
Randal Kolo Muani was the only one making any impact but that's relative praise for the Frenchman was beating his man repeatedly without much quality afterwards, other than an early cross that Richarlison headed wide.
For all of the tactical praise Frank has received over the years, he had no real idea of how to change his misfiring attack. If at 2-0 down you would have expected the Dane to bring on fresh legs to reshape the front line, you would have been wrong.
Instead he brought on a defensively-minded left-back, a defensively-minded midfielder and Lucas Bergvall, who at least does run towards the opposition box.
It's worth noting as well that it took an age for Ben Davies, Joao Palhinha and the young Swede to come on - they missed their first window when the ball went of out play - because they were being shown a manual's worth of instructions by Frank. If it's not simple enough to get straight into the players' head then it's all probably just white noise.
"We had four offensive players on the pitch. I think that's fair to say," Frank would offer as an explanation for that eventual triple change. "So I felt that, just to go back to the bit before where I said we're disjointed. So if you're disjointed, you can have 11 offensive players on the pitch. It will not help. So we need to be in sync, and then it helps, and hopefully we can find a way back after that."
Spurs did not find a way back. They did not even muster a second shot on target - the first came from Gray in the opening 45 minutes - and rather than grab a foothold in the game, they instead fell 3-0 down to Sangare's excellent effort with the outside of his foot that crashed in off the right-hand post, Vicario again beaten from distance.
It was only then that Frank thought to bring on Mathys Tel and Brennan Johnson. By then the game was already well and truly lost.
Neither Tel nor Johnson could be at Spurs long into 2026 at this rate. Frank signed off on the Frenchman's permanent move from Bayern Munich but has shown very little interest in actually playing him. A loan move could await in the January window with Roma previously linked.
Johnson's situation is perhaps stranger. Frank tried to sign the Wales international at Brentford but the indications seem to be that the 24-year-old is not part of Frank's plans going forward at Tottenham.
In a team that has scored far fewer goals than last season, it seems odd that the previous campaign's top scorer is not getting more minutes to do the same again.
Kudus can beat a man at will and likes to cut inside on to his left foot while Johnson plays better on the right. Perhaps playing the Ghanaian on the left, where he spent a number of games in his exciting 18-goal first season at West Ham, with the Wales international who scored 18 goals last season on his stronger flank, it might start putting square pegs into square holes.
Instead it seems like Spurs will entertain offers for Johnson in the coming window, with Crystal Palace among a string of interested suitors, and look to replace him.
The key for Tottenham now ahead of games against a Liverpool side that has remembered how to win - or a least not lose - and away at a fifth-placed Palace side is just how much they trust Frank in the January transfer window.
They have to either back him fully and let him shape how he wants his Spurs side to look if they feel he can attract the players required, or decide they want to go in another direction. A half-measure of a window, which Postecoglou got last January as doubts surrounded him, helps nobody.
With the promised Lewis family financial backing there's a chance to create a much stronger squad. Spurs have to go full throttle in January to start the chase for they already sit 11 points off third-placed Aston Villa. That they are only six points off fourth-placed Chelsea is a Christmas miracle but that could be no more once the festive season ends.
After the game, Frank swerved a question about his assistant coach Matt Wells' future, with the highly-rated 37-year-old having held talks with MLS side Colorado Rapids about taking on his first managerial role.
Some more cynical reporters than this one might suggest that Wells, grandfather of Spurs legend Cliff Jones, should stick around a little bit longer to see what happens next at his boyhood club.
If Tottenham were to spin their biennial wheel of doom even faster than normal so Frank gets thrown off almost as quickly as Nuno Espirito Santo, then it's difficult to see where they would go next at this exact time.
There may well be a distrust of managers stepping up after overachieving at smaller clubs now, which might count against the likes of Oliver Glasner and Andoni Iraola. Palace, who lost 3-0 at home to Manchester City on Sunday, sit four points above Spurs while Bournemouth lie two points below and travel to Manchester United on Monday night.
There should also be concerns over Fabio Paratici's inclinations when it comes to appointing managers. This after all was the man who pushed for Spurs to appoint Nuno after missing out on Gennaro Gattuso and Julen Lopetegui and getting cold feet with Paulo Fonseca. The odds of Paratici looking towards his native Italy would be overwhelmingly high.
The currently available big names for Tottenham are few and far between, other than the prospect of Xavi managing Xavi, with the Spaniard untested in major leagues outside of Barcelona, a club he knows inside out and back to front. Spurs are not Barcelona.
Jurgen Klopp would not come back to the Premier League to manage someone against Liverpool while Julian Nagelsmann, Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino will not be available until after the World Cup, if at all.
That could work in Frank's favour, much as it did for Postecoglou last season until the summer eventually did come around.
It all feels so depressingly familiar at Tottenham Hotspur right now. There's deja vu at every turn when there shouldn't be. Like many of his predecessors, the Dane has his favourites among the squad who he talks to regularly, while others struggle to get the odd word from him. Yet he will need the group behind him for what lies ahead.
It has been a time of unprecedented change at every level behind the scenes inside the north London club, but on the pitch it feels like precious little has changed and if it has then it's got worse.
Big decisions lie ahead. There's no quick fix as Frank says, but does he have the tools and the power to make the repairs? The jury remains out.
