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The Current State of Spurs (and some sympathy for Thomas Frank)

kb 1984 said:
Well unlike others I consider winning the UEFA cup an achievement & I didn't want Ange sacked. He should have been given this season. That's a whole different thread

It's odd that we wanted trophies finally win one then say it's the UEFA cup & it doesn't mean anything. I wouldn't mind winning the FA cup which he also achieved in a short period of time. Was that nothing

I find it strange people don't see them as achievements
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It's a trophy I'm proud we won, I find it odd that it's an achievement for palace but not for us.
In a similar vein with the Tel narrative, not good enough, he's French and comes from a weak German league.
France, double WC winners, PSG currently CL holders, Harry kane is a GHod because he's smashing it up in the BL, thought it was a weak league.
It's never as binary as it is made out.
 
Undoubtedly tough for a dry technocrat to follow a charismatic leader like Ange who had just ended a trophy drought (however flawed his football was). Injuries don't help, squad building has not provided ideal conditions.

But I can't escape the feeling that he is too small time and too conservative for this club.

Barring a complete crisis I would give him the rest of the season, but he's currently underperforming my expectations which were already pretty low.

That being said, if we can score this many goals with no discernible attacking method, then imagine how many we could score if/when his plan (whatever that may be) actually starts working.

Fingers crossed and merry Christmas to all. COYS.
 
MartyFunkhouser said:
Lewis is still the owner, their involvement is just a legality loop hole.

Point is, Levy wasn't doing anything without his say so, the idea he was working as a lone wolf is BS
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I don't expect anything to change unless ENIC have decided to actually change. As much as I disliked Levy's leadership, he did it under the auspices of Lewis. Whatever decisions he made, they were with Lewis' tacit understanding.
 
glasgowspur said:
It's a trophy I'm proud we won, I find it odd that it's an achievement for palace but not for us.
In a similar vein with the Tel narrative, not good enough, he's French and comes from a weak German league.
France, double WC winners, PSG currently CL holders, Harry kane is a GHod because he's smashing it up in the BL, thought it was a weak league.
It's never as binary as it is made out.
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No one is criticising Tel because he's French or because he's come from the Bundesliga! At least I've never seen any criticisms along those lines. Moreso I've seen people and I include myself in this critiquing his abilities. Where he's come from is irrelevant.
 
thfcsteff said:
Even before I saw @Mrs Vert 's comment about the chaos, I've been pondering the current state of the club and reflecting on just how hugely tough it has to be for Thomas Frank to deal with (in many ways hugely unfair).

We changed managers after winning a trophy which always needs a degree of 'buy-in' from the fans and the squad.
The chairman who hired him then 'leaves' in what was essentially a 'hostile take-over' of sorts.
His entire support team bar one are also out of the picture.
We lose two key players before the season starts. Players are certainly purchased to fill the voids with a higher degree of pedigree and experience, so that's OK.
We fail to address the glaring need for this club of a LB/LCB, and for the manager specifically, a left-winger who can mirror Kudus in effect.
As we approach the Xmas break we lose one of our main coaches.
Having trumpeted the return of Paratici as a DoF in tandem with Lange, we suddenly see rumours swirling that Paratici is being chased by Fiorentina (this is confirmed by two reliable beat reporters who say that whilst no official contact has been made, 'talks' have happened, thus instability or possible Paratici power-playing?)
We then see the news reported that our main attacking target for January has 'politely turned us down' in shades of Rivaldo or even Eze stuff.
We are no clearer whether the Lewis family are 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss' or not, as their cards are close to their chests.

I think when you look at the above line by line, and measure it against several years of poor management off and around the pitch to boot, we are in an enormous transition. Some might say mess. I don't know. It doesn't feel great.

In that regard, it is really easy to feel a large degree of sympathy for Thomas Frank.
He will never have dealt with anything like this before. His previous clubs had structures and systems in place. Brentford? He helped create some of those, albeit the ownership was brilliant with regards to maximising everything they could summon from the club and it's potential. You get time within that stable environment.

We can never know what he was 'sold' about the club when he was interviewed, what he was promised. Maybe he was told he could have the time. Maybe he laid out a clear strategy for footballing matters and style of play and was told no problem, we support you. Maybe he learnt quickly that you simply don't get the time at a club like this, and maybe he is trying to serve two masters in terms of results and style, leading to a net result of anxiety and confusion.

There is something in him which makes me want to believe that if he got two years, we'd end up with a side that played like prime Poch or similar. He's obviously a good technical coach, and he's obviously got a high ceiling in terms of growth. Currently I don't believe the above, and only because I have seen no evidence of it.
It doesn't stop me hoping the shoots will be seen soon, and it doesn't stop me hoping he can find firm footing to succeed.

Right now, I think the board and those around him have to work very very hard to give him stable support, and honestly, I am not sure how that happens if one of your DoF's is flirting/being chased and you've just lost a key member of your coaching staff.
What Frank gets in this window will tell us everything.
But again, given exactly where we are as a football club right now, it is easy to feel sympathy for him because THIS was not on the tin...

(again @billyiddo if you think this can be parked back in the Frank thread, all good, I think it has as much ENIC-type chat as managerial thus the sep thread)
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It’s rare that I read a post that so closely aligns with my own opinion. But what is even more striking is the care and thought that has gone into creating something that is, at the risk of hyperbole, very impressive. (Steff, any chance of you lending me a tenner till payday?)
 
Daisuk said:
It’s funny, but we need a pariah figure. Just hire a guy «director of on-pitch performance» that isn’t Frank.

There’s a really good Danish move by Lars von Trier called The Boss of it All - where the boss of a company keeps making unpopular decisions, but blames them all on an imaginary «boss of it all» above him, and gets so much slack and sympathy from his employees because of it - it’s not his fault afterall. He then hires an actor to play this boss of it all to seem more credible and chaos ensues.

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I worked for a very big company that brought in a new COO who made a set of changes. Literally every mid-level manager underneath whenever explaining a new policy or unpopular decision blamed it on the COO, that period of time is literally referred to as the "his initials" era in the company.
 
parj said:
In that case, look at the games we lost and how we had next to no shots, and just look lost. No point in being good in a handful of games
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Ok thats fine, but I addressed your original point.

I agree with this point, but to that note, I think I can accept being a work in progress under a new manager, if you and others can't thats absolutely fine.
 
Legohamster said:
I tried to put it in the Frank thread, possibly explained it badly

When Frank took over we had won 2 home games in 2025, one of them was against Southampton, Fans were already annoyed at losing almost everything home game and paying £60 plus for the privilege of doing it

Adding to the losing it seemed like it was deemed OK to be losing these games, it seemed like the players/managers were just turning up like a pub team on a Sunday with zero prep or care and the manager was calling out fans publically for daring to criticise it.

We were awful

Frank takes over and the fans are already on edge about the home form and a couple of defeats and they are on his back already, that's not to say he's completely blameless, but he seems to be getting the flack for our home form for the entire year.

Losing every week becomes habit and it's a hard one to break, whoever took over would be facing the same sort of issues.
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Yup, who’d have thought that when your home form is actually relegation zone level for over 12 months then fans would become critical and we’d end up in a negative spiral… hopefully the painful rebuild shall finally take a turn for the better next month after half a decade of shoddy wheeler-dealing which has left us with a Curate’s Egg of a squad.

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