And a decent manager would realize that any team than puts 2 or 3 players on Kudus will create space for us to exploit elsewhere. Space is something at this level that any PL level player (generous or not) can take advantage (as we learned repeatedly last year with Ange's high line and this year with Frank's over deep defending that allows players to pot shot from outside the box).
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Thomas Frank - Head Coach
- Thread starter LutonSpurs
- Start date
And a decent manager would realize that any team than puts 2 or 3 players on Kudus will create space for us to exploit elsewhere. Space is something at this level that any PL level player (generous or not) can take advantage (as we learned repeatedly last year with Ange's high line and this year with Frank's over deep defending that allows players to pot shot from outside the box).
I put myself in that crowd and I don't care about the comparison to Ange, who btw was fired because he took a team he got to 5th, added Solanke, Gray, Bergvall, Odobert, Danso, Tel, Kinsky and got worse.
Nobody wants this team to produce 2016/17 results, it's actually the Frank supporters who keep harping back to that team with the "how many of the current team would get into the best team Spurs has produced in 40 years" argument
Nobody is asking Frank for top 4 football results (although it would be possible this season with the brick everyone is playing), what people are asking for is
- Some coherent system of play that allows us to get the best of our players
- Play to win, especially against "lesser sides" at our home.
- Speak like we are the club we have been for 22+ years, with respect, we should expect to beat Wolves, Brentford, Fulham, Bournemouth, West Ham, etc home and away.
Finney Is Back
Barry Daines
Was that the season where Poch got us to the CL final with zero new signings in the summer or January and more than half of his team going to the last game at the World Cup before the season started.A journo on a pod today, posited that maybe Thomas Frank saw us ship 3 goals at Forest and thought 'enough is enough' so he fully reverted to sorting out the defence first, and can then layer on his many layers of layers that he needs to layer on.
Since Forest, Pool got 2 (one of which was a foul when Ekitike pushed Romero in the back with 2 hands) and then Palace and Brentford couldn't score against us.
Regarding El Pochettino, I try to stay away from that interminable debate, but I remember being hugely frustrated with his teams on many occasions.
Even after a couple of years there were loads of boring insipid turgid displays where we couldn't break the skin on a rice pudding.
Eventually Eriksen or Kane or Son would save us, but by GHod it was dull sometimes.
To refresh my memory I clicked on season 2018/19 in TransferMarkt to see what was going on in that exciting end to the season where we pipped the Arse to 4th place.
Tottenham Hotspur - Schedule 18/19
This page contains an complete overview of all already played and fixtured season games and the season tally of the club Tottenham in the season 18/19.www.transfermarkt.co.uk
The final 12 results are really bad (see below). Poch did lots of good for us, but also lots of bad. A dialectic, if you will.
BUR A L
CHE A L
ARS H D
SOU A L
PAL H W
LIV A L
BRI H W
HUD H W
MNC A L
WHU H L
BOU A L
EVE H D
4th and a CL final when dealt that hand…. What a genius he was!
Finney Is Back
Barry Daines
I don’t think anyone actually does put more than one player on Kudus…. They don’t actually need to do so, When Kudus gets the ball there is ample time for a second player to go and help his full back out as Kudus will always slow the game down and never move the ball on quickly.
You mean like Odobert "took advantage" when a 35 year old Jordan Henderson caught up with him?? How exactly did we "exploit" that situation?
Indeed we have been so successful over the past 40 years, winning the massive trophy haul of two league cups and a UEFA cup (in other words 7.5% of a cup per season!!) that Frank stands out for being a complete loser. Does he not understand that for these 40 years we have been beating "Wolves, Brentford, Fulham, Bournemouth, West Ham etc home and away" year in year out!! Now he comes along, gives us the best away record this season, keeps us on track for a CL playoff place as a minimum, only has us 4 points off a CL place and - above all - doesn't beat all of "Wolves, Brentford, Fulham, Bournemouth, West Ham"! And not home and away to boot!!!
I think there is a body of evidence since he left the club to suggest that Poch is far from a genius. What he was though was someone who understood the very fabric of the club, and who if backed could have gone on to win something with us. Alex Ferguson used to evolve his teams every 5-6 years and unfortunately the new stadium meant that the money wasn't there to do that for Poch, who is one of the few managers in my lifetime who has been at the club long enough to be in a position to evolve the side.
If you can find an era where we had better players than Dembele, Walker, Toby, Jan, Eriksen, Kane, Dele, Son and Lloris at the same time, I will salute your better knowledge.
SissokoWasGood (BoL)
Steve Carr
I don’t think there’s evidence since he left us that proves anything either way. What I think is interesting about him is that he’s tried his hand at different challenges. He evolved from the mid table guy, to the guy who built a culture with us, to a guy managing superstars with PSG. Then signing up to another project with Chelsea and trying to build a culture with the USA.
But maybe his genius was in doing exactly what we needed him to do. Maybe he shouldn’t be managing the biggest egos. His approach isn’t Ancelotti or Zidane, but it’s interesting that he tried to adapt it to work at PSG. And maybe he’ll continue to develop in that regard. But at this level everyone is naturally good at something, and I think he is naturally good at what we needed him to be, and probably would need again. It’s culture building, it’s improving players, it’s systems to make us outperform our financial station, and actually playing the tactical chess versus the bigger sides so that we competed well with them too.
Makes me laugh seeing something like our results from his last full season read out without context as if it proves anything. All it shows to me is that context is extremely important. No signings for three windows. A run to the CL final. Holding on to a bunch of players he wanted to sell before their decline, being unable to play the aggressive style of football that made us as good as we were because those players couldn’t and wouldn’t run as hard anymore. And yet,,,still 4th and the CL final! It is insane what he achieved. And it baffles me that anyone can look at the state of the club since he left and think there is any way we can talk down his achievements, especially with the constraints he was dealt.
Yes he was a good - possibly excellent - coach who made full use of a once-in-a-generation crop of outstanding (many of them world class) players that he was lucky enough to stumble across. Yet the fact is, he was unable to fashion them into a winning team over that time and, in his best season, managed to come third in a two-horse premiership race. As for the rebuild... when the money became available, he insisted on burning his budget on the likes of Lo Celso and Ndombele.... so the jury is out whether he would have been able to evolve the team further.
Just to be clear... I treasure the Poch years which were among the best of my 50 years of supporting Spurs. But to say he was a "genius" is stretching it to groupie levels... and, as you say, his achievements (or the lack of them) since leaving us clearly show this.
SissokoWasGood (BoL)
Steve Carr
You can keep saying he inherited an outstanding crop of world class players over and over again but it won’t make it true.
His best season also wasn’t coming third. It was finishing second to Conte’s Chelsea, who had no European football, while we got 86 points.
It wasn’t his best season.
As for the “third in a two-horse race” trope, are you sure you’re in the right place?
Which of Dembele, Walker, Rose, Toby, Jan, Eriksen, Kane, Dele, Son and Lloris did he bring in?
When we were realistically never in the title race...
Again - I am not trying to belittle Poch or his achievements... it's the deification that I have issues with...
I think you may have slightly misunderstood what I meant re Genius - for me there's been three genius managers in England in my lifetime, Ferguson, Clough and Guardiola. They achieved their status in my eyes (and its only me saying this I don't force this view on anyone else) by either achieving sustained success or genuinely changed the way we approach the game in a way that became the norm.
Poch did amazingly well at a time when it was not possible for the club, in their eyes, to back him financially. He made a lot of noise about this and became increasingly disenfranchised with the situation - I remember hearing him saying he would consider leaving if he won the CL final with absolute dread - I've not forgotten this - but to say that a man that lead us to 3rd in a 2 horse race, and set us up to lose by playing a half fit Kane in the final is a genius is pushing it. By far the best manager we've had since I've followed the team (1991 I became aware of football).
I'd have him back in a heartbeat if it meant I could watch a game and know we were going to show up (win, lose or draw) over the current confused dross, but I also know that rose tinted glasses are at their best looking back in time. My ex is a lot less of a b*tch now than I thought she was when we split 10 years ago - she still ran off with her boss, that hasn't changed, just my view of it.
Why? Is it incorrect? Or is criticism only ok for Frank in your book?
SissokoWasGood (BoL)
Steve Carr
I think there’s this interesting dichotomy around whether our squad is good / bad and which manager is good / bad.
As far as I can see, it feels like almost everyone who is Frank-positive would also say that our squad currently isn’t that good. And would probably also say that Poch just inherited amazing world class players.
To me it feels like a way of making your own argument logically consistent and not having to give any ground or appreciate any other context. Because if you accept that Poch actually inherited a bunch of average performing talented players with potential, then you would also have to accept what an incredible job of management that he did. And then you’d have to look at our squad now and surely agree that some manager out there should be able to get this squad full of talented players with potential to play aggressive football. But that’s not what happens, because this squad now is apparently bad and there’s just no way Frank can do more than he’s doing.
To be clear, my own position is that I am quite interested in whether the Frank project will succeed. I think he’s a long term culture builder himself, and I think he’s putting a lot of stock in rotation and varying intensity in matches which could well pay off at the business end of the season. I also think we’ve seen green shoots in the last month of players starting to ‘get it’ at least in a defensive sense. Although there is work to be done in possession.
Saying all of that though, I don’t believe that you have to talk down the quality of our squad in order to justify giving him time. Just give him time! Evaluate at the end of the season, or even his second season, if that’s your jam. But we don’t need to make out that he’s basically inherited Derby 08 in order to justify some of the poor play in possession - there are likely other reasons why it is taking time to come together. And equally we don’t need to make out that Poch inherited Barca 09 in order to make his achievements less. And while we’re at it, we don’t need to make out Ange is a PE teacher either. These are all elite level coaches trying to implement their ideas. Circumstances and context can make their job harder, and they all need time to really show what they’re about, if they’re lucky enough to get it.
We hahe a pretty good squad, it shouldn’t win the title, but it should compete for the European places. Nothing is usually as terrible or as amazing as it can seem after pockets of form here and there. Just judge things over a longer time horizon, appreciate all the context, and I think the discussion will be better for it.
SissokoWasGood (BoL)
Steve Carr
History is written by the winners.
Whose to say that if he didn’t have to deal with unbelievable constraints and could have been backed a little bit more, not only financially but also in selling the players he wanted sold, that he might not have been our Fergie. We’ll never know.
I don’t think I look back on Poch with rose tinted glasses or the one that got away. I think in cold hard analysis about what made him a great manager specifically for us, and I think all of those things still hold true. I think letting him go was a travesty. And it was just dumb.
I’m also not willing to use something like a dammed if you do dammed if you don’t situation like starting Kane as proof of genius or otherwise. TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR were in the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL. We hadn’t made a signing for almost 3 windows and started Winks and Sissoko in centre mid.
SissokoWasGood (BoL)
Steve Carr
I actually can’t believe this a real conversation. He didn’t bring any of those players in….hang on no he did. Son was signed under Poch. Dele was going to be loaned out for his first season but Poch kept him Toby was signed under Poch.
Which of the ones you listed had reached a performance level anywhere close to what they ultimately achieved under Poch before his arrival? You might be able to say Toby and maybe Hugo in the French league.
We had 86 points which would have won the title in a number of other PL seasons. We were against a winning machine in Chelsea that was way more deeply funded than us and didn’t have any European football. We had a 36k stadium, zero net spend and a mid table wage bill. And he got 86 points. Like…what more do you want?? Never in the title race…
with respect you keep offering the same opinion, so all I can do is offer my view. He did exceptionally and is a fan favourite, and yes he should have stayed, but we had a chairman who pulled the trigger at the wrong time as a pass time.
IulianSteaua
Eidur Gudjohnsen
Frank has a good squad and should finish in the top 6 and vastly improve our game from where it is right now. If he doesn't get any of the 2 done by the end of the season we should sack him. I think a great manager would be right up there with Aston Villa with our squad.
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SissokoWasGood (BoL)
Steve Carr
I respect your view, not sure where I’ve suggested otherwise?
I just think something like a discussion around Kane starting the final is not proof of anything. Surely it’s one of the most obvious damned if he does / doesn’t possible? If we lost and he didn’t come on until 60-70 we’d never hear the end of it. We lost the game. Liverpool were better than us overall that season anyway. Results can go awry when the people leading make the best possible decisions based on the information they have at the time.