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Thomas Frank - Head Coach

Muttley said:
I won't answer you individually but yes I was obviously being provocative with the Harry thing. It interests me that we hired a manager who had only ever known wheeler dealing at lower clubs. He had never understood the full breadth of football management at a "big" club where you shop in different stores and lay down long term foundations when building. In his entire tenure at the club he never built a "SQUAD" to compete. He just stopckpiled players, took the wage bill up by 35%, when we had one season of CL, and it never came down. He burnt his transfer budget on wasted wages on guys that had absolutely no first team impact. Shame on Levy for letting him. We ended up with several 25-30 year olds out on loan and the write-downs on the balance sheet of players was horrible. However, because he's a cheeky chappy and a good coach, he was never really challenged about his "management" like we do with Frank. That's remembering Harry wasn't working with a DoF because apparently he wouldn't work with one. Then he brought Toxic Tim back to the club after Hoddle had kicked him out in his playing days. Another great call in management by Harry......NOT.

To me, Harry was always junior at things other than the tracksuit stuff. Way more junior than the guy we've currently got in charge. He's a senior leader in football and carries himself really well. We should really respect that and give him the runway he deserves to build this thing out. It is nothing to do with what happened in the sixties or whether he's won a single trophy in his career. It's about looking forward.
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Redknapp's issue was also ageing players. Bringing in Gallas when we already had King and Dawson; freshening up our frontline with Gudjohnson etc. The first thing we had to do when he left was overhaul the entire squad - Verts, Lloris, Dembele and Sigurdsson all arrived in the first few weeks after he'd gone, who were players he would never have dreamed of signing
 
El Dante said:
100% this. The issue initially was no evidence of improved performances and results. No apparent steps in the right direction.

If we revert to a Palhinha and Bentancur midfield, or create less than 1xG then I expect some will sound off. However if we put in a strong performance then, even if we lose, I would expect less noise.
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I’m fine with the midfield changes if the football is still positive. I’m not sure how he would get that working but he may
The key is the performances as you say
 
Gutter Boy said:
Redknapp's issue was also ageing players. Bringing in Gallas when we already had King and Dawson; freshening up our frontline with Gudjohnson etc. The first thing we had to do when he left was overhaul the entire squad - Verts, Lloris, Dembele and Sigurdsson all arrived in the first few weeks after he'd gone, who were players he would never have dreamed of signing
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Vertoghen signing was initiated the previous January whilst Harry was still at the club. The deal was largely done in January but not completed until the summer.
 
Bedfordspurs said:
And I’m sure he would have loved those played mentioned by GB
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Harry was a liker of good players. I don't understand the slander. If there's one thing that can be said about Harry across all his managerial jobs, he had a fudging good eye for a player and he was always ambitious and wanted to buy players above the station of what whatever club he was in at the time.
 
Bishop said:
Harry was a liker of good players. I don't understand the slander. If there's one thing that can be said about Harry across all his managerial jobs, he had a fudging good eye for a player and he was always ambitious and wanted to buy players above the station of what whatever club he was in at the time.
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Yeah I don’t get it
He did say things that I wasn’t keen on
But he played good football everywhere he went and he signed good players
Comparing Frank with other managers is fine but the choice of who to compare him with is key… Redknapp wouldn’t be one though
 
Bishop said:
Vertoghen signing was initiated the previous January whilst Harry was still at the club. The deal was largely done in January but not completed until the summer.
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Imagine if we had signed Vertonghen instead of Ryan Nelson and Suarez instead of Saha. I can’t help but feel that lifetime costing bit us hard there.
 
Gutter Boy said:
Redknapp's issue was also ageing players. Bringing in Gallas when we already had King and Dawson; freshening up our frontline with Gudjohnson etc. The first thing we had to do when he left was overhaul the entire squad - Verts, Lloris, Dembele and Sigurdsson all arrived in the first few weeks after he'd gone, who were players he would never have dreamed of signing
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Would have been interesting to see what Redknapp could do with the current spending power. Apart from buying Chimbonda another three times of course.
 
Gutter Boy said:
In their prime. But not picking them up as green early 20 somethings
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You're talking quite a bit of nonsense. Harry in his career brought through young versions of Lampard, Cole, Carrick, Hartson, Unsworth , Defoe and Ferdinand. He also signed Krancjar (22), Muntari (also 22) and Glenn Johnson (23). At Spurs he signed Walker, Naughton and Bassong all under 23 iirc as well.

Harry wasn't against young players at all, his limitation was that preferred players whose game he knew well over those that he didn't. Add to that Levy's preference at the time for less risky additions and you get the squad that Harry was able to build.
 
Bishop said:
Harry was a liker of good players. I don't understand the slander. If there's one thing that can be said about Harry across all his managerial jobs, he had a fudging good eye for a player and he was always ambitious and wanted to buy players above the station of what whatever club he was in at the time.
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I think slander is the wrong word. Did we start most summers under Harry with 35 eligible players over 21 to be consolidated down to a 25 man squad under the PL rules? Absolutely. Did we have to sell to buy to improve ourselves? Absolutely? So what you might call slander, I call fact. Poch eventually came in and had to lose between 30-35 players across 2 summers. Also fact. Harry was a very good coach though.

What Harry needed is a structure like what we have now. Just allow him to focus on the things he was good at and pick up the slack on the others. He also needed a strong Spurs leader (DoF?) helping him mould a lean but talented squad and rationalising the squad numbers. Free up some budget to improve. Most of all he needed a head of recruitment that could convince him to only go after younger players within his philosophy. That is what big clubs do. The downfall in the end was that Harry and Levy had been all too scattergun. There was no strong foundation.
 
Muttley said:
I think slander is the wrong word. Did we start most summers under Harry with 35 eligible players over 21 to be consolidated down to a 25 man squad under the PL rules? Absolutely. Did we have to sell to buy to improve ourselves? Absolutely? So what you might call slander, I call fact. Poch eventually came in and had to lose between 30-35 players across 2 summers. Also fact. Harry was a very good coach though.

What Harry needed is a structure like what we have now. Just allow him to focus on the things he was good at and pick up the slack on the others. He also needed a strong Spurs leader (DoF?) helping him mould a lean but talented squad and rationalising the squad numbers. Free up some budget to improve. Most of all he needed a head of recruitment that could convince him to only go after younger players within his philosophy. That is what big clubs do. The downfall in the end was that Harry and Levy had been all too scattergun. There was no strong foundation.
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You're talking about something different. My response was to the claim Harry wouldn't have wanted the quality younger players that we acquired after his term, ie the likes of Vertoghen whose signing he actually initiated. In regard to the squad numbers, Harry's squads weren't particularly bigger than those before him or even those after him, Poch just had a specific preference for smaller squads (to his detriment if we are honest). The squad sizes have crept back up since Poch's sacking, as most managers do not have this preference.

What you're confusing is Levy's inability to sell players for reasonable fees and in reasonable time frames with a reluctance from Harry to move players on. This is silly, look at his record anywhere outside of Spurs and the man was quite ruthless in terms of bringing in and moving on players. Harry was never in charge of the minutia of the squad dealing at Spurs, there were plenty of players he just didn't use but the club just didn't move on for whatever reason. This was a pattern pre Harry and a pattern that continued even during Poch's tenure.
 
Gutter Boy said:
Dont you just love that early career optimism and greenness. Thomas, let us introduce you to Tottenham
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I know what you mean for sure. But to counter that I'd say in recent times we have got at least one or two in early on in the window.

Also, for Frank to be so definitive about us being active rather than the more standard 'Will see if there is any good opportunities out there in January' type quotes suggests to me some things are pretty far down the line....
 
Bishop said:
You're talking about something different. My response was to the claim Harry wouldn't have wanted the quality younger players that we acquired after his term, ie the likes of Vertoghen whose signing he actually initiated. In regard to the squad numbers, Harry's squads weren't particularly bigger than those before him or even those after him, Poch just had a specific preference for smaller squads (to his detriment if we are honest). The squad sizes have crept back up since Poch's sacking, as most managers do not have this preference.

What you're confusing is Levy's inability to sell players for reasonable fees and in reasonable time frames with a reluctance from Harry to move players on. This is silly, look at his record anywhere outside of Spurs and the man was quite ruthless in terms of bringing in and moving on players. Harry was never in charge of the minutia of the squad dealing at Spurs, there were plenty of players he just didn't use but the club just didn't move on for whatever reason. This was a pattern pre Harry and a pattern that continued even during Poch's tenure.
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Nah, not for me. Harry needed to be more ruthless even though what you said about Levy is also true. Harry's squads were bigger.

The subtlety in this conversation is that the new PL squad rules including homegrown were introduced in the 10/11 season. Harry managed from from 2008 to 2012 and all clubs were given fair warning of the changes. Whether you blame Levy or Harry, the club mismanaged. They were highly paid leaders who should have navigated us better through the transition. Our squad strategy and planning was simply hopeless at the time. Where that hit us is on the pitch as Harry just couldn't make us stronger because he was expending his budget on quantity, not quality.

When you look at the transfer history data you see huge volumes of ins and outs through those Harry years. For the rest of our recent history you see single or double year spikes of high activity, normally when we need to downsize the squad. Changing managers never helps Every year was like that with Harry and Levy at the time. It was all very late summer stuff as well.

I hope this new Spurs can find an optimum model. I think the squad is proliferating again and Frank will need help churning a few. We will need to be ruthless to improve once the manager has optimised what he currently has.
 
Muttley said:
I hope this new Spurs can find an optimum model. I think the squad is proliferating again and Frank will need help churning a few. We will need to be ruthless to improve once the manager has optimised what he currently has.
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I land here too, we need to shift half a dozen and bring in 3 high quality operators IMO if we want to progress upwardly and meet this new found ambition from Lewis and Co
 
harr1984 said:
I know what you mean for sure. But to counter that I'd say in recent times we have got at least one or two in early on in the window.

Also, for Frank to be so definitive about us being active rather than the more standard 'Will see if there is any good opportunities out there in January' type quotes suggests to me some things are pretty far down the line....
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Yeah, maybe we'll have a LB Kinsky equivalent ready to go on NYD? Then get a bigger name LW towards the end of the month. That would be pretty perfect.

One issue though is our squad limit problems. We also probably need to move on at least some of Biss, Davies, Johnson, Dragusin/Takai (loan) during the window to make room for a new signing or two.
 
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