Thomas Frank - Former Head Coach

[thfcsteff]

This is how a Spurs manager should talk. We shouldn't be in shock when our manager's tell the truth. That helps with the culture change we need to go through. Then as the green shoots appear then the messaging changes with it.

There is just no point creating echo chambers in life. It gets you nowhere.

Honesty is not always stating the obvious.
Why do people forget that he came into a club which had just won it's first major trophy in decades?
It's the equivalent of a restaurant winning a Michelin Star only for a new owner to come in and say, during his first press conferences, "There will be some bad meals from time to time, that's life, it happens..."

Your last sentence bears so true behind the scenes, and those are the echo chambers this club should've resolved a long time ago. Levy got hammered but he was essentially acting under orders from the Lewis family. They are now in charge and seeing how deep the issues are. AND that their behaviour has been part of the problem.

Just seeing pull quotes from Ange's Neville podcast. None of it surprises me, much of it I'd heard.

 

[thfcsteff]

I'd prefer my boss to say that sometimes things are going to go wrong but we'll deal with that and move on positively, rather than saying they expect constant perfection.

Anyhow, it was a throwaway comment. As is usual nowadays, the 24 hour news cycle means there's no such thing any more.

I do feel that both our last two managers have been badly treated by the club when it comes to PR advice. They've both made pretty basic errors which those in authority should have been helping them to avoid.

A point you know I've been making for a long time. Not to much agreement too often it has to be said...

 

[tommysvr]

I wonder if he regrets those “season 3 is always better than season 2” comments? Yeah and sometimes they kill off the main character Ange. I wish he had just quit while he was ahead. It was the ultimate mic drop moment to say he always win in his second season only to actually deliver on that statement.

You know Ange actually said this the day after?

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[Gazza]

Honesty is not always stating the obvious.
Why do people forget that he came into a club which had just won it's first major trophy in decades?
It's the equivalent of a restaurant winning a Michelin Star only for a new owner to come in and say, during his first press conferences, "There will be some bad meals from time to time, that's life, it happens..."

Your last sentence bears so true behind the scenes, and those are the echo chambers this club should've resolved a long time ago. Levy got hammered but he was essentially acting under orders from the Lewis family. They are now in charge and seeing how deep the issues are. AND that their behaviour has been part of the problem.

Just seeing pull quotes from Ange's Neville podcast. None of it surprises me, much of it I'd heard.

He said nothing extraordinary , people got annoyed with conte and he got hammered for outing the club. I get the bias that people didn’t like conte or take to him, I personally thought he was magical in his passion.

I loved what he said personally.

This echo chamber you speak of is surely the managers office. From the outside, new stadium, London, training facilities, loyal fan base, big club going places?

No.

 

[braineclipse]

Honesty is not always stating the obvious.
Why do people forget that he came into a club which had just won it's first major trophy in decades?
It's the equivalent of a restaurant winning a Michelin Star only for a new owner to come in and say, during his first press conferences, "There will be some bad meals from time to time, that's life, it happens..."

Your last sentence bears so true behind the scenes, and those are the echo chambers this club should've resolved a long time ago. Levy got hammered but he was essentially acting under orders from the Lewis family. They are now in charge and seeing how deep the issues are. AND that their behaviour has been part of the problem.

Just seeing pull quotes from Ange's Neville podcast. None of it surprises me, much of it I'd heard.

Obviously after a sacking and in a difficult situation a lot of noise will come out, with all parties being interested in painting themselves in the best light possible.

Some of the reporting/rumours around Frank have included players thinking there was too much focus on the opposition, not our own game. Focus on defending with the attacking play being overlooked.

That to me matches what we've seen on the pitch. And to me that also match my perception (my perception, not necessarily reality) of Frank in the press conferences.

To me a mentality that probably suited Brentford and being underdogs in most games. It doesn't suit us.

 

[braineclipse]

Poch was great a nurturing and as he got into the role he figured out each player's runway. Some like Mason plateua'd just below Poch needed but the pair of them were incredibly professional about their separation. Other players that he worked with had incredibly high ceilings.

I know this isn't for this thread, but it's always worth thinking about which players in our current squad would an incoming manager look at and think about the incredibly high ceiling they have. Xavi and Gray are the 2 that spring to mind that might become a Dembele or Eriksen.

Poch is a great example of playing style, motivation, culture and player development melding together.

No doubts Pochettino was a great motivator for us at that time. But I don't think he would have gotten those motivational effects if not for his style of football suiting both the players and the club really well.

Had Poch asked Eriksen to do what Frank asked Xavi to do for significant parts of the season (play as an isolated 10, fight for second balls, hope something drops to you, little to no attacking play through the middle and through you) Would Pochettino'motivation have worked as well on Eriksen?

Pochettino repeatedly talked about being brave in possession, accepting the risk of losing the ball when playing with risk. That obviously suited players like Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Dembele. They believed, not just through motivation, but actually believed that this was the way for them to play their best football for this team and to develop.

Did Porro truly believe that him getting the ball under pressure deep and wide to then be left to find the magical forward pass on his own was the way for him to play his best football? I doubt it.

To me it mostly looked like the players were trying to execute Frank's plan, but I have serious doubts that they truly believed that this was the way. That will impact performances, that's not on the players, that's not on the culture. That to me is human psychology. In a way it's not on Frank either, it's on whoever hired him.

If he had any ambitions of changing the culture the players believing in his plan for how to play is vital in that, so it's not only on those people who hired him.

 

[johnola]

Good luck to him hope he goes on to a decent club and takes them forward.

 

[Muttley]

He said nothing extraordinary , people got annoyed with conte and he got hammered for outing the club. I get the bias that people didn’t like conte or take to him, I personally thought he was magical in his passion.

I loved what he said personally.

This echo chamber you speak of is surely the managers office. From the outside, new stadium, London, training facilities, loyal fan base, big club going places?

No.

I'll take both of these.

Conte - wasn't that good a coach in this environment. Picked up Jose's title winning squad after the doctor fiasco, reshaped it into a back 3 at a time when nobody played it. Fair play for that. One season of disruption then he was picked off by the other coaches. Our own coach, Poch, matched him up with his 3-5-2 even in that first season. Dele did the rest. This guy had spent all but 2 years of his life in Italy as player, manager and international manager. He doesn't travel well. He then came to Spurs and did the same thing except we didn't win the league. He lost the Chelsea changing room and he lost ours. No doubt he said some valid things along the way but he was as much the root cause as our club. Interesting snippet in Hugo's book after he won the world cup. For someone with passion whose club captain had just won the WC as international captain, he didn't even congratulate Hugo. He just asked when he would be back for training. He might have had passion but he didn't have emotional intelligence if that makes sense.

Echo Chamber - yes, it has partially come from the manager's office with almost every manager except a few. That is the big debate. Frank is definitely one that didn't care for it. Ange clearly did. Jose definitely did. Harry definitely did. They talk about the good things as if they are amazing things and conveniently forget the elephants in the room. Frank actually didn't and he has been shot down for some for it.

 

[clownfoot]

Poch is a great example of playing style, motivation, culture and player development melding together.

No doubts Pochettino was a great motivator for us at that time. But I don't think he would have gotten those motivational effects if not for his style of football suiting both the players and the club really well.

Had Poch asked Eriksen to do what Frank asked Xavi to do for significant parts of the season (play as an isolated 10, fight for second balls, hope something drops to you, little to no attacking play through the middle and through you) Would Pochettino'motivation have worked as well on Eriksen?

Pochettino repeatedly talked about being brave in possession, accepting the risk of losing the ball when playing with risk. That obviously suited players like Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Dembele. They believed, not just through motivation, but actually believed that this was the way for them to play their best football for this team and to develop.

Did Porro truly believe that him getting the ball under pressure deep and wide to then be left to find the magical forward pass on his own was the way for him to play his best football? I doubt it.

To me it mostly looked like the players were trying to execute Frank's plan, but I have serious doubts that they truly believed that this was the way. That will impact performances, that's not on the players, that's not on the culture. That to me is human psychology. In a way it's not on Frank either, it's on whoever hired him.

If he had any ambitions of changing the culture the players believing in his plan for how to play is vital in that, so it's not only on those people who hired him.

I fully agree with the highlighted parts. Take VDV for instance, he did an interview for sky this season saying he still believed in Ange’s philosophy of football. I thought it was slightly strange to be doing that while Frank was here. Like pining for an ex in front of your current partner.

Ultimately Frank’s style never got the buy in from the players

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

Poch is a great example of playing style, motivation, culture and player development melding together.

No doubts Pochettino was a great motivator for us at that time. But I don't think he would have gotten those motivational effects if not for his style of football suiting both the players and the club really well.

Had Poch asked Eriksen to do what Frank asked Xavi to do for significant parts of the season (play as an isolated 10, fight for second balls, hope something drops to you, little to no attacking play through the middle and through you) Would Pochettino'motivation have worked as well on Eriksen?

Pochettino repeatedly talked about being brave in possession, accepting the risk of losing the ball when playing with risk. That obviously suited players like Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Dembele. They believed, not just through motivation, but actually believed that this was the way for them to play their best football for this team and to develop.

Did Porro truly believe that him getting the ball under pressure deep and wide to then be left to find the magical forward pass on his own was the way for him to play his best football? I doubt it.

To me it mostly looked like the players were trying to execute Frank's plan, but I have serious doubts that they truly believed that this was the way. That will impact performances, that's not on the players, that's not on the culture. That to me is human psychology. In a way it's not on Frank either, it's on whoever hired him.

If he had any ambitions of changing the culture the players believing in his plan for how to play is vital in that, so it's not only on those people who hired him.

I think the general target for any manager (and I can't think of a reason it wouldn't be) is to aim for a well oiled machine, change an injured/suspended player out seamlessly, tweak learnt formations within a game, and all that naturally pushes you to be greater than the sum of your parts.

Then there's the whole culture and psychology side, that goes a long way to getting you there.
This is very much on the manager to deliver. But not totally.

 

[clownfoot]

I think the general target for any manager (and I can't think of a reason it wouldn't be) is to aim for a well oiled machine, change an injured/suspended player out seamlessly, tweak learnt formations within a game, and all that naturally pushes you to be greater than the sum of your parts.

Then there's the whole culture and psychology side, that goes a long way to getting you there.
This is very much on the manager to deliver. But not totally.

I may be misinterpreting the role of a DoF but I get the impression the first paragraph, especially the well oiled machine part, is down to them as much as the manager. Or at least they pick a coach that does all those things with a certain philosophy in mind

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I may be misinterpreting the role of a DoF but I get the impression the first paragraph, especially the well oiled machine part, is down to them as much as the manager. Or at least they pick a coach that does all those things with a certain philosophy in mind

Think there's an overarching 'well oiled machine' as such that everyone (the club) is pulling in the same direction.

But on the pitch, it's pretty much on the manager (obviously he'll need or request ideal additions), constantly tuning his machine with the skills and tools he has.
He brings HIS personality/culture.
Obviously it's a personality/culture that the club are fully agreeable to on the way in.

The biggest fly in the ointment in the modern game is TIME..... brick don't happen overnight.

 

[johnola]

Whoever comes in I sincerely hope he can push them to strain the finances to the nth degree.

The best investment choice in my opinion is for enic to hot-house Spurs right now to become a genuine european force and sell it on.

 

[braineclipse]

Think there's an overarching 'well oiled machine' as such that everyone (the club) is pulling in the same direction.

But on the pitch, it's pretty much on the manager (obviously he'll need or request ideal additions), constantly tuning his machine with the skills and tools he has.
He brings HIS personality/culture.
Obviously it's a personality/culture that the club are fully agreeable to on the way in.

The biggest fly in the ointment in the modern game is TIME..... brick don't happen overnight.

We may be in full agreement.

The potential benefits of having a fairly clear identity anchored with the DoF is that it means that when the ointment gets infested with flies you can move on and the time you've already invested in player purchases and development can be more valuable in the time to come.

The money and time we spent pre Paratici signing players for Mourinho was mostly wasted when Ange came in as one example.

But also Ange to Frank. We'll never know, but maybe someone with a more similar style could have gotten more out of a squad that had been built some way at least towards an Ange style.

Will the next guy want a Kudus type player? Will this season have further developed Kudus towards being the kind of player the next guy will want? Or have we again wasted time that could have been spent helping us down the line?

A manager will get time if the results and performances are good enough. For me the probability of that increases if they come in to a squad that's already well on their way to becoming the squad that manager needs.

Now it's all relegation and survival. But assuming we stay up we need to make sure however much time the next guy gets that time is being well spent for the one who follows after that. If everything goes great with the next one that will be irrelevant for quite a while (fingers crossed), but that would be the best kind of irrelevant "wasted" work could be.

Or to put it differently. If instead of Mourinho, Nuno, Conte, Ange and Frank however many managers who had then followed Pochettino had all had a fairly similar playing style and approach to Pochettino I don't think we'd be in this mess, even if some of those managers had failed like fly infested ointments. Because we wouldn't have wasted as much time as badly at least.

 

[Gazza]

The thing is people laugh when some fans say that we should be challenging. I get that we have overheads with the stadium burden with debt. But we charge the highest prices for tickets bar none, have this commercial monster in the stadium thanks to levy and co … but our wage to turnover ratio is the lowest in the league. I know that we have to tread carefully but is it a case that we need to tread with that much caution? At the end of the day we all want to win, but I think the owners are there for a fat payday. And if they are not then they are not knowing of how to compete at the very top.

No I’m not having a loan it’s an opinion.

 

[braineclipse]

The thing is people laugh when some fans say that we should be challenging. I get that we have overheads with the stadium burden with debt. But we charge the highest prices for tickets bar none, have this commercial monster in the stadium thanks to levy and co … but our wage to turnover ratio is the lowest in the league. I know that we have to tread carefully but is it a case that we need to tread with that much caution? At the end of the day we all want to win, but I think the owners are there for a fat payday. And if they are not then they are not knowing of how to compete at the very top.

No I’m not having a loan it’s an opinion.

I hope and think we will be moving towards spending more on wages. Not just the change of owners/chairman, but also that this probably being part of the plan for quite a while.

We've had to (or chosen to) replace essentially the whole squad in around 4 years, other than Kane getting limited in incoming funds. A lower spend on transfer fees and higher spend on wages during that period I don't think made sense. We needed too many players.

Now hopefully moving towards more "quality over quantity", higher wages.

 

[Raziel]

He said nothing extraordinary , people got annoyed with conte and he got hammered for outing the club. I get the bias that people didn’t like conte or take to him, I personally thought he was magical in his passion.

I loved what he said personally.

This echo chamber you speak of is surely the managers office. From the outside, new stadium, London, training facilities, loyal fan base, big club going places?

No.

I disliked Conte because he thought he was bigger than us, and it got worse when his ego wouldn't accept, he no longer was the manager he was at his prime, so he lashed out at everything.

Like all liars, there was a little truth in the blame/deflection, but the real truth is he was a busted man, that professionally/personally he fell apart.

And I will always give Ange one major acknowledgement, him winning a trophy with Spurs right after Jose & Conte keeps us out of those two's mouth, they can't continue their stupid tirades because some guy from brick leagues did what they couldn't.

 

[Bullet]

I disliked Conte because he thought he was bigger than us, and it got worse when his ego wouldn't accept, he no longer was the manager he was at his prime

Erm, he just won Serie A and the SuperCoppa. He's doing rather well without Spurz.

 

[Mikey10]

Good luck to him hope he goes on to a decent club and takes them forward.

Trophy win within the next two years. It’s what happens almost every time.

I fully agree with the highlighted parts. Take VDV for instance, he did an interview for sky this season saying he still believed in Ange’s philosophy of football. I thought it was slightly strange to be doing that while Frank was here. Like pining for an ex in front of your current partner.

He also gave an interview saying that he and Romero had to tell Ange the tactics to ensure we didn’t get dumped out of the EL, so I’m not sure he was completely in love with him.

 

[parj]

We may be in full agreement.

The potential benefits of having a fairly clear identity anchored with the DoF is that it means that when the ointment gets infested with flies you can move on and the time you've already invested in player purchases and development can be more valuable in the time to come.

The money and time we spent pre Paratici signing players for Mourinho was mostly wasted when Ange came in as one example.

But also Ange to Frank. We'll never know, but maybe someone with a more similar style could have gotten more out of a squad that had been built some way at least towards an Ange style.

Will the next guy want a Kudus type player? Will this season have further developed Kudus towards being the kind of player the next guy will want? Or have we again wasted time that could have been spent helping us down the line?

A manager will get time if the results and performances are good enough. For me the probability of that increases if they come in to a squad that's already well on their way to becoming the squad that manager needs.

Now it's all relegation and survival. But assuming we stay up we need to make sure however much time the next guy gets that time is being well spent for the one who follows after that. If everything goes great with the next one that will be irrelevant for quite a while (fingers crossed), but that would be the best kind of irrelevant "wasted" work could be.

Or to put it differently. If instead of Mourinho, Nuno, Conte, Ange and Frank however many managers who had then followed Pochettino had all had a fairly similar playing style and approach to Pochettino I don't think we'd be in this mess, even if some of those managers had failed like fly infested ointments. Because we wouldn't have wasted as much time as badly at least.

This is where the exec board should be doing so much better. At times I feel like they don't watch football. Since Poch, we have had more pragmatic managers then balanced or attacking combined. What can anyone say that will convince them that they will change their playing styles?

Now we need to hire a balanced manager with a more attacking bias.