Thomas Frank - Head Coach

[braineclipse]

People get paid a lot of money to deliver certain results (Frank as manager, Lange as recruitment)

Not being a dingdong, I've worked jobs for 20+ years that pay well, but failure (every year) = fired, it's part of the expectation. And part of that expectation is the reason they pay you is because you have the skills to do those difficult things.

Look, maybe we sign two good players on deadline day, and the team meanders to mid table safety, it's still a death sentence for Frank, and maybe that decision has already been made so they don't care, but thet have taken a risk with the club

There's a risk no matter what. A caretaker would be a risk. Splashing money on players that may not be wanted or rated by a new guy in the summer is a risk/cost.

If I try to be somewhat optimistic perhaps the lack of action is a sign of cool heads prevailing? Not panic buying, not panic firing, not doing something just to ease the pressure from the fans that could ultimately be worse for us?

Again, trying to be optimistic here (and I have to try) I do think DoF first, then head coach/manager, then players being the order of priority. We can't do things in that order in January, so get some short term fixes that are versatile (Gallagher), relatively low cost (like Robertson) and trust them and the players already here to be good enough to get us out of trouble. Under Frank or a caretaker, depending on what happens in the coming weeks. Then try to do the sensible thing in the summer (DoF to head coach to players).

At least that's a process I could understand, even if I don't fully agree.

 

[glorygloryeze]

Bingo, every day it looks more like Levy was shielding us from these idiots vs. the story they want to pitch. For all his issues, he would never risk the club, he would not let us sleepwalk into a relegation battle.

Levy shielding us? Have you totally forgotten last season when the exact scenario was playing out??

 

[braineclipse]

Bingo, every day it looks more like Levy was shielding us from these idiots vs. the story they want to pitch. For all his issues, he would never risk the club, he would not let us sleepwalk into a relegation battle.

I have been rather pro Levy and I do miss him a bit, right now I'd rather have him in charge (maybe that's in part that he was a more familiar entity, knew what we were getting).

I think right now it's more a vacuum than him previously shielding us. Vinai still relatively new to the job. Others left with Levy. New people on the board and "new" owners. DoF structure in flux with Paratici leaving and (I'm guessing uncertainty about Lange's role). Then Frank under real pressure.

Both a lack of experience, knowledge and I'm guessing (again) people having to make big decisions they've not had to make that often in the past. At least with Levy we knew he'd been there before.

 

[parklane1]

I agree that there probably is a rather vast room for improvement on the decision making here, and most likely the sheer amount of changes at the upper levels since the summer probably contributes to that.

At the same time for me at least the only way to take decisive action in a situation like this is to sack him. Can offer all kinds of assurances and support, but ultimately it will end up meaningless if he loses the players at some point, or if results and performances slip significantly. So any such "he's backed until the end of the season at least" would only set up those people to the risk of having to go back on that at some point. Imo sacking him or seeing how it plays out are the only cards on the table.

The January transfer window is a difficult one. Obviously we're not as attractive right now. We don't know who our manager will be next season, maybe not even next week. Backing him significantly in the transfer market without a good security that those investments would also be good for the next guy would not be great at all.

Which again comes back to our DoF situation. The people that should be best suited to know with security that a signing would be good for the next guy would be Paratici and Lange. But Paratici is leaving and Lange's situation is probably uncertain until the DoF situation is sorted.

So we sign Gallagher, because he's a good player who will probably be good under most managers. But not a ton of those players around that we can attract and make a deal for.

As the most likely outcome of sacking him would be a caretaker those issues with transfers would be the same.

We should have course go into a kind of panic mode. Sign whoever we think will most likely make the biggest difference with regards to the threat of relegation. Future planning being left for the summer. I wouldn't be entirely against that at this point. Things definitely could get worse and even a small risk of relegation needs to be taken seriously.

So yeah. Sign Mateta or Toney, the best ready made left back we can find and worry about the future come the summer definitely isn't something I'd be opposed to. But I'm rather convinced that's not how the Lewis family envisioned a cash injection being used.

I kinda miss Levy.

Well the minority of fans demanded it.

 

[Raziel]

There's a risk no matter what. A caretaker would be a risk. Splashing money on players that may not be wanted or rated by a new guy in the summer is a risk/cost.

If I try to be somewhat optimistic perhaps the lack of action is a sign of cool heads prevailing? Not panic buying, not panic firing, not doing something just to ease the pressure from the fans that could ultimately be worse for us?

Again, trying to be optimistic here (and I have to try) I do think DoF first, then head coach/manager, then players being the order of priority. We can't do things in that order in January, so get some short term fixes that are versatile (Gallagher), relatively low cost (like Robertson) and trust them and the players already here to be good enough to get us out of trouble. Under Frank or a caretaker, depending on what happens in the coming weeks. Then try to do the sensible thing in the summer (DoF to head coach to players).

At least that's a process I could understand, even if I don't fully agree.

Very generous interpretation, I'd argue it's a risk/reward conversation

- Non 0% chance we get sucked into relegation battle
- Cost of every spot lower on table (IIRC it's was something like 1.5M/place?)
- Cost of missing out on European football (at start of Jan we were close enough)
- Cost of lost revenue (unsold seats, less food/drink, people don't stay back when we lose)
- Cost of reputation impact (for sponsors, for future players/managers, loss of perception of Spurs as top 6 club)

Having been in board meetings/proposals, I'd say it would be a very easy case to make to spend 100M in early January to mitigate the above, even if relatively little of that 100M was recoverable in future (i.e. maybe not long term players or players able to be sold on without a loss)

I can tell you my interpretation (from the outside, and yes, 100% speculation), you have a split leadership group

- 1 or 2 stuck their neck out for Frank's hiring (the 30 categories flimflam), and are reluctant to pull trigger because it reflects on them (which makes them even worse executives, good executives can admit something didn't work, take responsibility and correct)
- You have some who are against Frank
- Either the second group don't have enough power or there is a lack of understanding of who final decision lies with (GHod help us)
- And/or, second group think he's a dead man and summer is the decision point and they are not smart enough (see first section) to do the math, evaluate the risk position to push for change now.
- Push for change is probably affected by lack of succession planning, or, we have already made up our mind who the replacement is (3 guesses, it's not very original)
- and in all of that, none of know if these owners really are going to spend or they are all quietly whoring the club out for sale (again, fundamental misunderstanding that selling a club in European spots will be easier than one in 17th for 2 seasons in a row)

 

[Baleforce]

That's an interesting take, but I still think they could have done better.

Like it or not, their manager is under huge pressure. A guy they claimed was the outstanding candidate after a thorough assessment process. Six months into the job, it looks like we could be dragged into a relegation battle and, regardless of what we think of the squad, there isn't a single person who thinks Frank is over-performing.

If you want to take 'decisive action', you a) make it very clear he's not going anywhere, even if the situation deteriorate further and b) give him at least one marquee signing, as a sign of support.

They clearly haven't delivered on a). Every day we hear rumours about Frank's future at the club hanging by a thread and some directors who want to make sure everybody knows they want him gone. If it's made up, how long would it take for them to make an official statement?

As for b), even if you can't get the signing you or the manager wanted, you let the press (and the fans) know you tried. Transfer rumours are a good way to divert some fan pressure off the manager onto the board. That's where, in my opinion, they are doing a very poor job: they don't want to accept any responsibility for what's going on at the club. They don't want to back him, they don't want to sack him and they certainly don't want to get their hands dirty.

So we're left with a manager whose brand of football is disliked by most people (your good self excepted!) and a mediocre squad with zero investment so far. If that's good enough to finish 17th again, we can count ourselves lucky.

When a club like Spurs hovers over the relegation line, there's going to be some pressure. The only question is how you spread it and, so far, the board have left Frank alone on the frontline.

Is he under pressure from the senior club management though, they might be ok with things from their side.

All of the external stuff, press, fans, that’s just noise.

 

[Muttley]

You’ve somehow missed my point all over again…. Is it on purpose?

The point I was trying to make (I thought quite clearly but maybe not?) is that I doubt Frank is going to the board and demanding players (because he’s already hanging on to his job by the thinnest of threads) when he really needs to be doing that.

And I genuinely get that. However, my point still remains. In what capacity or role would Harry be doing this to help Frank? Where would he fit in the org chart and how would that play out with all the incumbents? Would it add value or even change a thing? You can probably sense in my questions that I doubt it would. Harry is / was a football coach and a player motivator. That's where his strengths lie and I think it would make Frank's job untenable if he did what he's best at. That is, unless it was all initiated by Frank to bring in Harry as some sort of assistant and I'm not sure why he would ever do that.

We all know that Spurs managers have a power of veto on any signing. There are always meetings between the first team coaches and the recruitment team. Ange has spoken about it. Frank has spoken about it. Ange even spoke about it when he wasn't invited and that was a massive clue on that outcome. Frank has spoken this season about working with Lange and being very involved in the process. I don't think anyone needs to be demanding players on his behalf. I also get very frustrated with Spurs managers when they go through their own recruitment process, understand what it means to be a Spurs manager and then go rogue whinging like little babies when they figure out they didn't take the Emirates Marketing Project job. I want them to be Spurs managers.

The real root cause is the total elephant in the room that Spurs never talk about. We don't have the brand or the recent history to attract these top, top players that any manager of ours will be demanding. Like Poch was, our managers are being asked to settle for non first choices and we're all pretending that they will make us better as we did with the last lot. It's a false prophecy.

That being said, there could possibly be a pendulum issue between the balance between analytics in recruitment and eye-test on players. I don't need a database to tell me that Adam Wharton would improve us. I'm not a genius when I say that the total budget we will spend on 3 or 4 players will have less impact than 1 of these types of players. Can we land them though? I don't think a 78 year old Harry would make any difference in this process. He'd probably end up doing a Pleat and claiming success on all our great purchases and never lay claim to any dud we buy.

 

[Mikey10]

Hard to believe people are actually trying to sell a 78 year old who’s been out of the game for a decade or more as any part of an answer to our difficulties.

Besides anything else, the players he had in his Spurs squad are vastly superior to what we have now. Bale, Modric, Defoe, Lennon, Jenas, Crouch, Rose, King, Walker, Dawson …imagine the poor old bugger being faced with our current lot!

 

[NoLimits01]

You’ve somehow missed my point all over again…. Is it on purpose?

The point I was trying to make (I thought quite clearly but maybe not?) is that I doubt Frank is going to the board and demanding players (because he’s already hanging on to his job by the thinnest of threads) when he really needs to be doing that.

I think they are all winding you up now