Mikey10
Rafael Van Der Vaart
Doesn’t fit the narrative, ergo can’t be right.
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Thomas Frank - Head Coach
- Thread starter LutonSpurs
- Start date
Doesn’t fit the narrative, ergo can’t be right.
thfcsteff
Ralph Coates
You’re like one of our glorious hounds with a bone!!!
Legohamster
Dimitar Berbatov
Given Romeros latest post on social
Media, is it possible the players are looking half arsed because of the owners and wanting out rather than the manager?
Would explain why they looked massively tinkled off half the time
Media, is it possible the players are looking half arsed because of the owners and wanting out rather than the manager?
Would explain why they looked massively tinkled off half the time
Mr Gogolak
Luke Young
Do you think Man Utd appointed Amorim knowing they had hardly any players to suit him?
That's just my two pence as a fan, and one who can't even go to the games (unfortunately). I believe a common mistake we all make in our everyday life is thinking a situation is the result of one cause only. It's usually a lot of small things that, added together, produce a particular outcome.
Maybe he said he'd set up differently because he really wanted the job. Maybe his assessment of the squad was completely off. Maybe they chose him because they thought he'd be easy to work with. Maybe I'm wrong (wouldn't be the first time) and we're having a tough time under Frank for another reason.
But I'd say this: either we have a fantastic squad of players who can thrive in any system or the sequence of Pochettino - Mourinho - Conte - Postecoglou - Frank suggests we don't really give too much thought about whether the players and the manager are a good match.
Muttley
Mauricio Taricco
I think I've posted similar themes to this myself recently. Most players transition seamlessly.
I have a feeling it was @Raziel and I chatting about this the other day. If there is a concern, it is that we're not shortlisting managers who fit a criteria that match to our club football philosophy. I think @thfcsteff articulates this one better than me but if you want your club to player progress, front foot passing football on a high press then you create a shortlist of managers that fit that criteria. I wouldn't have had Frank in that bracket even though he clearly ticks other boxes that would be in the required criteria.
I reckon if we can get manager transitions done better then we wouldn't even worry about player transitions.
Our dilemma now is what to do with Frank. It's possible he convinced our board that his prior brand of football was out of necessity based on the parameters he worked in at Brentford. He may have convinced them that his intent was to start the way we've seen and then manage a transition into the Spurs way. Personally, I didn't like the way Ange did it. There was no transitional phases. He just said this is the way we're gonna play and put round pegs in squad holes. It failed and he did an about turn for the EL tactics. Frank is clearly managing this job in phases and we are starting to see his methods start to work in my opinion. Whether he keeps transitioning to the eventual end game of attractive football is up for debate, but I still have an open mind. I'm noticing that some fans theorise that he will always revert to his Brentford style tactics and won't be able to change these habits.
If anyone at United's hierarchy thought their squad suited Amorim's 3atb system, they should be fired. They had general issues with aging back line and midfield.
I suspect we have abandoned Frank, the fans don't want him, he's continuously 1 bad result from everyone screaming for his head, we are languishing in the bottom half of table with 11 injuries to first team and we chose not only do Gallagher and 2 kids, surely we could have found a loan of some kind.
I'm sure the belief was he could step up, as you said, it's been covered before, numerous reasons why that assumption could make sense.
I think Frank has failed and will fail at this level because a core principle of his is "good enough", he walks away from some of our draws and for him its "good enough", sitting back on 1-0 leads and dealing with the risks/occasional loss of points from there is "good enough" for him, at a smaller club those good enoughs add up to an acceptable position at end of season, here it doesn't, risking more for 3 points is required.
I have family that support United, that we had very similar conversations re Amorim, he thought like some people here do re Frank, that Amorim was doing an ok job, that he needed time and a better squad. He called me after Carrick's last game to admit they should have gotten rid of Amorim months ago, it's not just the results (Carrick has matched Amorim's best run of results literally in his first 3 games), the football is completely transformed.
IulianSteaua
Eidur Gudjohnsen
We are 14/15th. That is an easy sack for anyone that has a top 4 objective. Personally would have sacked him quite a few games PL games ago. Didn't work out, move on.
Robspur12
Steffen Iversen
It looks, on the face of it, like it was the correct decision to sack Amorim, only time will tell and that time is not now imho. Utd fans are going in waay too early on Carrick. He's admittedly had some brilliant wins so far. But it's been what 3 games? Come back after he has had to deal with a 2-3 game loss or injuries to key players or the new manager bounce has worn off. He has a week to prepare between games too, which affords a better perspective to managers at top clubs. He had a similar good start to life at Middlesbrough before it tailed off over the next 2 seasons. Let's wait and see.
TF is unpopular I get that and there is a reasonable case to be made as to why. But putting aside that dislike for a second, compared to Carrick, his record is more impressive. Not only did he successfully achieve promotion to the PL with an unfancied, Brentford team, he also established them there, over 3 seasons. If it had come to replacing him before, I would not have been advocating for Carrick to be that replacement.
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Muttley
Mauricio Taricco
It was THFC that created the Spurs fans mentality. It is also their job to reverse that mentality and build trust. That includes sticking by managers and demonstrating to fans that is the right approach. Our contingent of online fans literally turn on a dime. They turn against on a bad result and they turn back on a good result. Our managers are either the messiah or the devil and nothing in between. We do the same with players as well. We watch them go through 2-3 months of injuries and conditioning work to get back and after one or two bad games after being back they turn on them. We watch them patch themselves up when they're in the red zone and call them not good enough because they don't play a blinder.
As for the "good enough" narrative, I don't really relate to that. Frank has said so many powerful things in pressers and they are completely ignored because they don't make news stories. If he makes smaller, irrelevant comments then they are jumped on. What we're actually seeing from Frank is a rock solid consistent communication approach. Unlike Ange, he won't avoid the questions and start telling stories to avoid the subject. He won't get deliberately spiky with the press, again to avoid answering the actual question. Frank is playing a straight bat and once again this is about fan conditioning.
It's a shame about Carrick joining them. Like we spoke about a couple of weeks back, perhaps utd did the right mapping between managers and their club philosophy. Perhaps they eliminated some really experienced, highly paid managers because they didn't fit the criteria. What was left was a guy like Carrick. I wish him well, although it obviously works in our favour if this is just a honeymoon period and they crash and burn.
Muttley
Mauricio Taricco
Yep, it becomes a bandwagon with Frank unfortunately, mostly from a very noisy online minority. I still think most fans are putting objective arguments together for or against him though. I certainly feel that on this forum.
braineclipse
Vic Buckingham
Accepting the description of this as a "bandwagon" I'd say it's an entirely predictable bandwagon. 14th at the start of February, having played rather boring football for significant parts of the season. I think the reactions are predictable.
Imo the only way to change fan perception/mentality is by performances and results. Imo it's on the manager first and foremost to show that he's the right man for the job, to show that he deserves that time and patience.
If results and performances continue more or less as they have done this season you'd keep him come the summer?
For me he has to turn things around, it's to me looking unlikely though somewhat less unlikely than it did a couple of weeks ago.
Lemonade Money
Colin Calderwood
And we've started to entertain.
thfcsteff
Ralph Coates
Debates about his style and suitability will continue on and on, but I think one thing perhaps we can all agree on is that he has been left in an appalling limbo by Lange and VV. For weeks this guy has been 'one game away' from the boot, has not seen any external public support save a very vanilla 'message' from VV which pointedly failed to say anything positive about him, and has now been given very little support in the transfer market; I wonder if even he would've agreed to the Johnson sale had he known no-one else was coming? As I have said several times recently, I feel very sorry for him and think what he's managed to get out of the injury stricken squad in the last 10 days or so has been great in context.
Muttley
Mauricio Taricco
It's all about due diligence at this point. Scenario planning for the different outcomes.
If Frank fails, it's probably proof that we didn't do it that well last time around. That's the big concern. We mismatched the criteria that we needed as a club to what he could bring. That's as much on us as him, and to use your word we "deserve" what we got.
That being said, I'm still optimistic Frank can turn this around. There are green shoots in a period where half the squad has been missing. I think Frank will get us going but I'm don't expect the dissenting fan noise will stop. That's a stylistic issue that may not go away.
The irony here is that I didn't really judge Ange until season 2. I spent season 1 building data points on him, some of which were really ugly and amateurish, especially in our defensive record and especially set piece defending. I did like some of his attacking principles but could easily see how other managers were picking him off. Interestingly, I don't see so much of that with Frank as he tries to adapt his tactics based on available player personnel. It's less predictable for the opposition. I also appreciate Frank's integrity and personality as compared to Ange. I won't go there again.
In summary, if Frank finished mid-table then it's a no brainer for me. He stays. If we're in a relegation dog fight through to the end of season then it's curtains for him. If we get relegated, that's the toughest decision. Strong arguments to keep him I would say.
Muttley
Mauricio Taricco
I do wonder whether the stylistic topic is as prominent with the Spurs leadership team as it is with the fans. My head is currently in a place where I would live without not having the ultimate Spurs football philosophy for a while. I'd happily give it 2 or 3 seasons and see where it takes us. There is a strong argument that Spurs have got absolutely nowhere having these "attractive football" principles for decades. We also witnessed the best teams who played the best football winning the majority of trophies, but not all. That endorsed our argument until recently where football is now totally attritional and it's a Crystal Palace that wins the FA Cup against a Emirates Marketing Project parking the bus. Also the officiating just adds to the reason why City aren't cup holders. Referees impact way too many football results nowadays.
We're probably in a place where we can park the stylistic argument for a while. Hopefully, the PL shifts again and we can get back to craving that attractive football again. That is at least 2 years away.
clownfoot
Neil Sullivan
So you’d sack him if we were in a relegation fight and we stay up, but there’s an argument to keep him if we were in a relegation fight and go down?
I'm firmly in the camp that Frank is doing what he is doing out of necessity at the moment, so I resonate with most of your post above.
If you take the view that footballers come in broadly 4 categories, those being Elite, International, Domestic, and Prospect, the reasons for Frank's pragmatism is that the squad has:
1 Elite Player - Romero
19 International - Vicario, Dragusin, Danso, Palhinha, Simons, Bissouma, Richie, Maddison, Udogie, Solanke, Kudus, Kulusevski, Gallagher, Porro, Spence, Sarr, Bentancur, Micky, Muani.
2 Domestic - Davies and Austin
6 Prospects - Kinsky, Gray, Bergvall, Tel, Odobert, Sousa.
When you then look at the injuries it drops to 1 Elite, 8 International, 1 Domestic and 5 prospects.
So basically Frank has to pick a team from 15 players five of which are kids within the first team squad, and this is going to be the case for the next month at least in all cases bar Spence.
That requires pragmatism. Now is not a time as a fan to be crowing for our beautiful Spurs back. Now is a time to get 13 more points on the board, secure our league position and then have a long hard look at the non playing staff at senior level to understand what they are doing. Our academy, our recruitment, and our player sales are underperforming, and all need review. Lange doesn't feel like the answer to me, though I know nothing of his actual performance day to day, obviously. Vinai is too new to have any real responsibility for the situation bar the outrageous statement of intent that was his open letter to fans, which on reflection now just looks stupid, really.
Finally to the manager - I really do think he can take us to better places - he's really clever, really structured and knows what he wants. Those saying he is out of his depth are doing him a disservice - we are the very definition of a poison chalice right now, and its to his credit that he's not letting things get to him in the media. He's doing what he believes is necessary to get us out of a dog fight, and I for one back him to achieve that. Could be famous last words, but I doubt it. I absolutely don't think there's a caretaker or an out of work manager who mid season could do better.
I'm not invested in a Frank in/out debate anymore, just let the season play out and assess once the season is over. But what I will say is Frank was playing the exact same way before we got all these injuries. Lets not pretend that's the reason he's being pragmatic as if this style has come out of nowhere and purely necessity.....
braineclipse
Vic Buckingham
More on us than on him I would say in that case. I think we essentially agree on that.
Read some rumours that Paratici didn't want Frank. Obviously rumours, but if true wild and an example of what mustn't be repeated.
For me get the DoF situation sorted first, then the DoF(s) decide what kind of football we want to play then decide if Frank is the man for that or who else would be the best man for that. That would be at least a good process (no guarantees, but a good process increases the likelihood). So for me not a no brainer that he stays by finishing mid table.
As long as there are green shoots and we stay clear of a relegation scrap and the players are on board with him he gets the season for me. I have limited belief in a turnaround, but not given up hope. But for it to be a no brainer to keep him we would have to see a rather big turnaround from here on.