Vinai Venkatesham - CEO

[Robspur12]

RDZ inherited a broken squad, a confused squad, a fatigued squad, lots of injuries that only got worse (Xavi, Solanke, Romero). We struggled in the attack because we played with RKM (useless), Tel (Frank failed to develop) and mostly Richi (limited) up front. Every single statistic is wildly better under RDZ, Possession, Winning the ball back, Touches in opposition box, shots on goal, shots conceded, xG. Some of the stats go from us being bottom 3 in league to top 3 or 1st. So did our form.

Can't dis agree with much of that. And let me be clear, the job RDZ did was phenomenal given where we were when he arrived. But the biggest influence he exerted was psychological. Getting into players heads, making them believe they were better than they were. He will be a top coach here imho. Frank could not exert that influence Those games didn't fully showcase the system RDZ wants to play. As I say The Leeds game was very reminiscent of the Sunderland game. Ultimately we will only improve by having better players.

Frank is not a good coach, he fit into a system at Brentford that did a lot of things for him, nothing, nothing he did at Spurs shows that, the one thing we improved on (set pieces) was the work of another coach. Where to start, the brick stats? the losses? how bad Bentancur/Palhinha were under him vs. RDZ, the inability to get basic passing patterns, the inability to hold possession. Literally this guy's entire plan was get ball to Porro, have Porro pass to Kudus, have Kudus try to take on 3 players by himself, if not possible, pass back to Porro and have Porro cross to no runners in the box. And if we had got Robertson in Janaury, we were going to replicate that on left side, literally spam crosses with no runners was the plan. Lets not talk about the absolute fudgery of not closing down people who were going to shoot from the Zone outside box, and our players not being allowed to shoot either.

I genuinely don't believe he will succeed again at PL level, he's the equivalent of a manager who went into a very good team/system under very little pressure and others carried him. The minute it was on him, it all broke.

The fact that in the interview process that wasn't picked up is a huge red flag on the capabilities of people at the top of this club

I'm not going to go over old ground as he has gone. But I do think he's a good coach who has laid the ground work for Brentford going from a promoted team to comfortably mid table. Given how many players he improved and then sold on for a large profit I think it is hard to make the case that he is not a good one.

For sure he failed at Spurs and it is clear he wasn't the right fit for the job. I do wonder why we hadn't hired RDZ after Brighton or Iraola after Ange. Frank was a strange choice and certainly wasn't on my radar. But many better, more feted coaches have failed too. I guess we will have to wait and see how he does elsewhwre.

 

[Bishop]

The Tottenham side he inherited could play better football than just rely on a set piece or hope Kudus comes up with something which was the crux of it under Frank.

De Zerbi showed without any sort of pre season we could play better football (no one is saying that football has been breathtaking), and that was without Romero Kudus and Simons for the most part - he had even less creativity available to him.

Yes we know we need better players in areas, but the players available were better than the football being produced under Frank and that's why he got the criticism he did regardless of what delights he served up at Brentford....

Oh don't get me wrong, Frank wasn't playing the best very best football possible from this squad and indeed De Zerbi improved the quality I just don't think he improved us to the point that we actually are quality.

For me watching Frank I understood why he took the approach he did. He didn't believe in this squad and the players he had available so he tried to maximise the results the way he thought best. I guess it's easy for me to sympathise because I felt fairly similarly, I hated the way we conceded stupid goals game after game with no attempt to mitigate them. I love attacking football, it's my preference but you have to have some balance to that structure. De Zerbi has that balance so I actually feel fairly confident going forward assuming we do what we never do and support him adequately in the window.

 

[Gazza]

Compering those two basket case clubs to Spurs is IMO like compering right and wrong. IMO.

However you see it the trophy cabinet and success don’t lie