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Thomas Frank - Former Head Coach

Raziel said:
100% mate, he infuriated me to the point I stepped off this board, social media and barely could watch Spurs. It was so obvious he need to be gone in November for the latest.

My biggest frustration is the painting of him as "a good coach" who just didn't fit. It was way more than that, his absolute failure to even understand the club he was managing, his failure to give the players basic passing options (triangles), his Porro spam cross directions, how he fudged up Bentancur/Palhinha as a pivot, his failure to improve any of Gray/Bergvall/Udogie/Tel. Said it elsewhere, the only fudging thing that improved in his tenure was set pieces, the thing we had another coach for.

Again, personal experience, I've interviewed people who came from good companies, good projects, passes first glance on CV. When you start to ask "what did you do", "how did you influence strategy", "what impact did you make", you realize they were a passenger, did the part they were told to, but not leaders, not top tier talent, that's how I see Frank.

And like you, I don't think people have fulled grasped what releagtion would have meant for the club's future, at best it would have set us back 5 years or more, the worst-case scenario is levels beyond
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Totally agreed. It is way more than not fitting. It was just so utterly bad, and much of it came down to Frank’s decisions.

Like…it’s easy to think now the stadium is back behind the team and there’s unity and confidence again. But think back to the Fulham home game, the Palace home game, the Saudi Sportswashing Machine home game. The players were visibly scared to play football, and that translated audibly to the fans in a way I’ve never heard before. It was like the entire stadium was waiting for the next mistake, so much that they willed it into happening. The howls at each mistake. It wasn’t anger, it was like the fans were scared too.

And that wasn’t because there was transition at the executive level. That was because the new Head Coach decided to say things like ‘we will lose football matches’, to brief that only one player could play for a top team, and to play the most dreadful, risk averse football we have ever seen.

The destruction of the confidence of a European trophy winning team to the point of almost-relegation all because the Head Coach thought it best to strip the team back to mid table basics before ‘adding layers’…it’s all a stunning lack of judgement. He may be a good coach technically, but in terms of having the EQ to understand what to do with Spurs, he was abominable. I find it difficult to move on from that so long as our CEO doesn’t offer a sufficient account of why he was trusted for so long, and I’ll still find it completely odd that the media on the whole doesn’t grasp that we very nearly were relegated because of the decisions he made in coaching the team.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Totally agreed. It is way more than not fitting. It was just so utterly bad, and much of it came down to Frank’s decisions.

Like…it’s easy to think now the stadium is back behind the team and there’s unity and confidence again. But think back to the Fulham home game, the Palace home game, the Saudi Sportswashing Machine home game. The players were visibly scared to play football, and that translated audibly to the fans in a way I’ve never heard before. It was like the entire stadium was waiting for the next mistake, so much that they willed it into happening. The howls at each mistake. It wasn’t anger, it was like the fans were scared too.

And that wasn’t because there was transition at the executive level. That was because the new Head Coach decided to say things like ‘we will lose football matches’, to brief that only one player could play for a top team, and to play the most dreadful, risk averse football we have ever seen.

The destruction of the confidence of a European trophy winning team to the point of almost-relegation all because the Head Coach thought it best to strip the team back to mid table basics before ‘adding layers’…it’s all a stunning lack of judgement. He may be a good coach technically, but in terms of having the EQ to understand what to do with Spurs, he was abominable. I find it difficult to move on from that so long as our CEO doesn’t offer a sufficient account of why he was trusted for so long, and I’ll still find it completely odd that the media on the whole doesn’t grasp that we very nearly were relegated because of the decisions he made in coaching the team.
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I agree - he deserves way more stick than he'll ever get. I didn't like Postecoglou, but Frank doesn't belong in the same sentence.

I'd add to your (imo, excellent) points that there are question marks over the technical part of his 'work' here. Tudor was said to be appalled at the fitness of the players when he walked in, for instance. If true, it would mean that despite moving most of his coaching team with him, he couldn't even do the basics right.

Of course, the players can't be absolved of any blame for the horrible season we've been through but Frank really is a special case. Venables was manager when I began supporting Spurs. I can't think of a single manager (and we've had George Graham on our bench) who looked so incompetent to the point that you could genuinely wonder if he was trying to sabotage the club.

Some of them have made terrible decisions and/or weren't very good managers in the first place, some of them were poor fits, but I do believe that we would have had an easier time with Ryan Mason on the bench. I've never seen anything like that and I really hope I never will again. I won't wish him well for the future or even check his results casually and he's the only Spurs manager who falls into that category for me.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Totally agreed. It is way more than not fitting. It was just so utterly bad, and much of it came down to Frank’s decisions.

Like…it’s easy to think now the stadium is back behind the team and there’s unity and confidence again. But think back to the Fulham home game, the Palace home game, the Saudi Sportswashing Machine home game. The players were visibly scared to play football, and that translated audibly to the fans in a way I’ve never heard before. It was like the entire stadium was waiting for the next mistake, so much that they willed it into happening. The howls at each mistake. It wasn’t anger, it was like the fans were scared too.

And that wasn’t because there was transition at the executive level. That was because the new Head Coach decided to say things like ‘we will lose football matches’, to brief that only one player could play for a top team, and to play the most dreadful, risk averse football we have ever seen.

The destruction of the confidence of a European trophy winning team to the point of almost-relegation all because the Head Coach thought it best to strip the team back to mid table basics before ‘adding layers’…it’s all a stunning lack of judgement. He may be a good coach technically, but in terms of having the EQ to understand what to do with Spurs, he was abominable. I find it difficult to move on from that so long as our CEO doesn’t offer a sufficient account of why he was trusted for so long, and I’ll still find it completely odd that the media on the whole doesn’t grasp that we very nearly were relegated because of the decisions he made in coaching the team.
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There is a lot in it

- A lot of the media backed Frank, sensible decision, lifted Brentford, usual surface level nonsense that doesn't stand to scrutiny. I actually watched a little of Brentford the year before when early talk about him being a future manager at Spurs popped, I instantly wrote him off as an option, it was clear his football was too basic, too direct, wouldn't scale and would frustrate our fans, and I said so here. The media hates admitting they are wrong.
- His failure to understand top level branding and culture is classic someone deeply out of their depth. Even when we are brick, we have to message "we are Spurs, we belong at the top", not, "we will lose matches guaranteed", why? this club in recent times has gone unbeaten an entire season at home, that should be the ambition, not we will lose no matter what I do.
- The last thing you see played out here, there is this overwhelming need/desire/narrative to paint the entire Levy tenure as a failure, people will arguably say "the full 25 years were a disaster" then when pushed will back down to "post 2019" (completely ignoring an EL win, cup final, 3 CL participations). Same with the spend story, Spurs don't spend, oh, no I meant net spend, oh, no I meant wages, always moving goalposts. It doesn't suit the narrative to see incompetence post Levy, it had to be all him (again see people tripping over themselves on this board to say "Frank was all Levy, Lange, his countryman and the DoF had minimum say in it")

Franks appointment was a terrible call and everyone involved, including Levy needs to eat that.
The decision to stick with Frank is even worse, and the decision to stick with Frank and only give him Gallagher in January is beyond comprehension (the only sympathy I do have for Frank)

Finally what would have actually happened to Spurs if we got relegated, this is where media, fans, most people show their surface level thinking on anything.

- The entire focus of any coverage was either "hahaha, fudge them hate Spurs, hope they go down" or "they will face financial difficulties, most with no real deep dive on what" The comparison to West Ham was particularly telling, imo West Ham is in a deeply worse position to deal with the immediate impact of relegation (first year), they are in far less healthy financial position.
- The damage to Spurs in the long run would have been far worse, far harder to accurately predict, loss of status (PL ever present to club who had been recently relegated), loss of prestige to players (nobody gives a fudge if a big club has a bad season or two, relegation is different), loss of sponsors (something we have worked very hard on), probably even loss of stadium/training ground usage (who goes to train in a championship club facilities) for national teams. Staff would have been fired, impact to area would have been enormous, valuation of projects around (hotel/etc.) would have been different.

And all of that assumes we bounced right back up (and would have to do another rebuild because the majority of our better players would have gone), failure to be back up at first attempt would have been even more of a disaster. Leeds remains the poster child, 18 years in the wilderness, now a yo yo club just happy to be in PL.

It is not hyperbole to say Tottenham Hotspur in top flight European football would no longer have been relevant if we had been relegated, and that would have been mostly on Frank, the decision to hire him, the decision to stick with him and the failure to act in January decisively. And the last part of that statement is what concerns me for future.
 
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