Thomas Frank - Former Head Coach

[tommysvr]

I think this is exactly what happened psychologically with the squad.

I do think Frank can succeed with another team, for sure. I think his appointment was completely the wrong one for what the squad needed, and it smacked of not really understanding what was happening with the team last season.

The guys on the Extra Inch podcast asked this…was no one talking to the players? They asked it in the context of how long Frank was allowed to continue. But I think it also shows that he was not what the players needed in the first place.

I think Frank could have come in after Conte or Nuno and had a much better effect. He’s not a bad coach. He was a very bad appointment because it happened in a very specific set of circumstances.

 

[Daisuk]

I'd like to know how many long throw-ins we took, how much time we spent on them, and how many goals we scored as a result of them. I'm guessing 0 goals scored (I can't remember a single one).

 

[Mabspurs]

Lol, the brick ones are on Levy, and the good ones were flukes.

I guess we will agree that 10 of the 13 coaches he appointed over his 25 year tenure were brick; as evident from their less than 2 year tenure - that's more than 75%!!...

As for the good ones... Poch is all his, I give you that. But MJ was certainly not planned and Redknapp was as much a desperation card as Tudor is right now. Even if you give him those three, it's still less than 25%. Compare that with the likes of Bloom, Benham and Foley at Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth who seemingly are able to bring in coach after coach who fits seemlessly into the fabric and culture of the club....

Problem is that the current incumbents show no signs of being different or more competent....

 

[thfcsteff]

I think Frank could have come in after Conte or Nuno and had a much better effect. He’s not a bad coach. He was a very bad appointment because it happened in a very specific set of circumstances.

I think that's a very fair point to explore.
He came in following a guy who'd won a trophy playing a style totally different to his.
I agree has he followed someone whose style he aligned with, it could well have been different.

 

[thfcsteff]

I guess we will agree that 10 of the 13 coaches he appointed over his 25 year tenure were brick; as evident from their less than 2 year tenure - that's more than 75%!!...

As for the good ones... Poch is all his, I give you that. But MJ was certainly not planned and Redknapp was as much a desperation card as Tudor is right now. Even if you give him those three, it's still less than 25%. Compare that with the likes of Bloom, Benham and Foley at Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth who seemingly are able to bring in coach after coach who fits seemlessly into the fabric and culture of the club....

Problem is that the current incumbents show no signs of being different or more competent....

I agree. I think our flip-flopping between styles and approaches has been somewhat ridiculous, as it not only puts a huge burden on whoever is in the squad to recalibrate and fast, it shows no cohesion of idea. RE: BMJ, I'd say that Arnesen had Levy won over, thus he kept Jol close knowing Santini wasn't the right fit.

 

[thfcsteff]

Why would you assume Levy and co have any specific insight or natural understanding for what works for us manager wise? When has that ever really been the case? Why would the appointment of Frank be any different?

I think the single biggest issue there is Levy always wanted a DoF he could trust, and once Arnesen fudged off to Chelsea, despite his best efforts in himself, he could never trust any of the ones he subsequently hired enough to let them do their jobs without sticking his nose in. Which was obviously a huge issue.

 

[Raziel]

I think Frank could have come in after Conte or Nuno and had a much better effect. He’s not a bad coach. He was a very bad appointment because it happened in a very specific set of circumstances.

I think that's a very fair point to explore.
He came in following a guy who'd won a trophy playing a style totally different to his.
I agree has he followed someone whose style he aligned with, it could well have been different.

Don't see it at all

- Clearly he never fully got the respect of the players, coming in after a manager with the reputation of Conte would hardly have helped, had he come in after Nuno he would have got even less time from fans (he would have been seen as Nuno Mk2)
- The circumstances aren't the issue, this is classic Peter principle stuff, he earned his shot, got the bigger role and failed. While every failure has caveats, and I have some sympathy for the circumstances, this failure is 100% on Frank. Like Ange in PL, if Frank had simply managed to sit around 12th, he would have a job and the circumstances become much more an acceptable statement. But you can't look at our 26 games and not say he didn't have enough for two more wins (just two), that what he got squad wise wasn't enough to match Leeds home form.

Frank needs to go away and have a hard rethink of his career (if he has the self-awareness to do so), he's going to need to rebuild his reputation but he's also going to need to figure out if he will ever be anything but a guy that plays percentage football where the main goal is simply survival (it limits the clubs he can work at, it doesn't scale to better teams)

 

[tommysvr]

Don't see it at all

- Clearly he never fully got the respect of the players, coming in after a manager with the reputation of Conte would hardly have helped, had he come in after Nuno he would have got even less time from fans (he would have been seen as Nuno Mk2)
- The circumstances aren't the issue, this is classic Peter principle stuff, he earned his shot, got the bigger role and failed. While every failure has caveats, and I have some sympathy for the circumstances, this failure is 100% on Frank. Like Ange in PL, if Frank had simply managed to sit around 12th, he would have a job and the circumstances become much more an acceptable statement. But you can't look at our 26 games and not say he didn't have enough for two more wins (just two), that what he got squad wise wasn't enough to match Leeds home form.

Frank needs to go away and have a hard rethink of his career (if he has the self-awareness to do so), he's going to need to rebuild his reputation but he's also going to need to figure out if he will ever be anything but a guy that plays percentage football where the main goal is simply survival (it limits the clubs he can work at, it doesn't scale to better teams)

Think you missed the context of my post

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I have to say, after catching up on this week’s podcasts, it does make me more angry that the club appointed Frank and wasted this season, and put us into a very real thread of relegation. I really tried to see the logic in it, but it’s clearly been a disastrous decision.

Really interesting listening to Poch on the High Performance podcast. What comes out is so much of the insight he offers as a manager is not what you can read on a spreadsheet. It’s about genuine connections, authentic leadership, empathy, having a sense for something by the actions of the human being. Eg being able to see that Kane was going to be quality worth investing in because of the way he acted around the training ground, or the way he could touch and finish. Little things that don’t show up on a spreadsheet, and in that example with the club wanting to move him out for Welbeck, thank GHod we had a manager who had a great sense of what the right thing to do was. Equally the example of not putting out a statement saying he was happy with his 3 striker options…Poch rightly deduced it would look defensive and to Kane like he had something to defend about him because he was the third option.

Brings me to JPB on TVFTL pod. Talking about how the players never looked like they really believed in Frank’s plan. The slow starts. The ability to raise the game in the second half when the plan sort of has to go out of the window and we need to fight to get back in the game.

Overall, there’s a big theme here about the club being overly invested in ‘the data’ and not having a good sense of what our squad of players actually needs. And then there’s a sense of Frank, for as good a man as he is, also just not being the right person for this squad. Lange has serious questions to answer for putting us in this position. I think they made completely the wrong conclusions about Ange’s tenure. And then drew completely the wrong conclusions about what the data said about what Frank could do for us. Eg ‘our model says he over performed by X amount at Brentford, if he does the same with us we’ll be golden!’.

What made Poch an interesting manager for us wasn’t that he ‘over performed’, it was that he developed younger players into a cohesive unit, on top of the foundations of a culture of high standards, and the right balance of structure and freedom, so that they actually became elite level footballers. They weren’t over performing, they just reached a high level together. Frank’s approach is rooted in ‘over performance’ and not reaching an elite level. And I think our squad of clearly talented players wants to see a path to performing at an elite level, to be trusted to play like that. Which is why they never believed in Frank.

So yeah, pretty angry now being able to reflect on all of this! A wasted season, and a genuine chance of relegation. And it was all so avoidable. This did not need to happen. A repeated cascade of utterly terrible decisions by people who don’t really get football or who are in positions of power way above what they deserve.

The bottom line is the precious valuable intangibles only come from a select group of managers......and even then you have to rely on a bit of luck with timing.

Data is a great resource. But a resource that every club has these days.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I have been one of the people trying to defend Frank as much as possible but I think if you look at my posts at the time he was appointed I was saying that Frank’s approach wasn’t the cheat code, that I wasn’t convinced it was what the squad needed because they never actually lost faith in Ange. And I was worried that by drawing the wrong conclusions of why Ange struggled last season (eg the decline in form in his last 18 months versus his first 6, which they mentioned in the sacking announcement) that they would the make an appointment to rectify the wrong things. Because they missed the context. And honestly I think that’s exactly what has happened.

Props to Ange for getting the team to retain faith in him....that's a tough gig when you're losing every week.

So although he ticked that box....it must have been the football/tactics that cooked him.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

Ok mate, I’m sorry I said you were offended. It was a slightly facetious comment but I didn’t mean to come across like a dingdong. If I have done so, I am genuinely sorry.

I can’t quite find the words to express what I mean. I’m not trying to claim I had some massive advance insight, I’m trying to say that I’m frustrated with the decision makers because I trusted them to make the right decisions, and I do believe that a lot of the concerns people would have had about Frank have been absolutely borne out. Like, I assumed they would only have hired him if there was going to be a different style of football. I assumed a bunch of things would be different in order for Frank to work. But in the end he just looked out of his depth and the players did not look inspired.

I think the mistake you've made is being wound up by podcasts.......give twitter a go!

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I’m trying to say that I’m frustrated with the decision makers because I trusted them to make the right decisions

Well let's hope DL was the big voice in the decision making ..... because if it was VV and Lange....they've just made an even greater critical appointment

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

Spot on mate - other than the fluke appointment of Poch; the only coaches that came good were MJ (who was not even chosen initially) and Redknapp out of sheer desperation....

I think the 'hit ratio' is pretty much the same across all clubs tbh

 

[Baleforce]

The bottom line is the precious valuable intangibles only come from a select group of managers......and even then you have to rely on a bit of luck with timing.

Data is a great resource. But a resource that every club has these days.

If there are intangibles, it just means you don’t have all the data.

 

[Raziel]

If there are intangibles, it just means you don’t have all the data.

Football inherently will have an issue with data, and that's sample size.

A lot of decisions, e.g. buy Semenyo two years ago, vs. buy him this January are limited perspectives based on sample size (one season wonder). And people on this board will swear that "they knew" Semenyo was the real deal, what they conveniently forget is how many others "they knew" at that point of time that didn't make it.

My metric as proof is was there ever a more guaranteed sure thing than Dele at 21? what would data have said about him? none of the current 21-year-olds in England come close to what Dele was, and look how that turned out .. Who knows what Conte would have done here if 3 people around him (or even the one) didn't die unexpectedly.

 

[Lemonade Money]

Football inherently will have an issue with data, and that's sample size.

A lot of decisions, e.g. buy Semenyo two years ago, vs. buy him this January are limited perspectives based on sample size (one season wonder). And people on this board will swear that "they knew" Semenyo was the real deal, what they conveniently forget is how many others "they knew" at that point of time that didn't make it.

My metric as proof is was there ever a more guaranteed sure thing than Dele at 21? what would data have said about him? none of the current 21-year-olds in England come close to what Dele was, and look how that turned out .. Who knows what Conte would have done here if 3 people around him (or even the one) didn't die unexpectedly.

Dele and Bale were two standouts that you thought were going to be great, and we got them in spite of every top club looking at them. I'd imagine Modric and Berbatov had their suiters too. And we've apparently beaten some big names to Gray and Bergvall. Whoever got these done deserves alot of credit, and shows a market where we can compete with anyone.

 

[Baleforce]

Football inherently will have an issue with data, and that's sample size.

A lot of decisions, e.g. buy Semenyo two years ago, vs. buy him this January are limited perspectives based on sample size (one season wonder). And people on this board will swear that "they knew" Semenyo was the real deal, what they conveniently forget is how many others "they knew" at that point of time that didn't make it.

My metric as proof is was there ever a more guaranteed sure thing than Dele at 21? what would data have said about him? none of the current 21-year-olds in England come close to what Dele was, and look how that turned out .. Who knows what Conte would have done here if 3 people around him (or even the one) didn't die unexpectedly.

I completely agree.

There is a lot of discussion over recruitment, but the profiles of players we targeted didn’t change, it’s just that not as many made the step up.

There was a time I would have bet my house on Dele being the player that from group that made it biggest.

 

[Baleforce]

Dele and Bale were two standouts that you thought were going to be great, and we got them in spite of every top club looking at them. I'd imagine Modric and Berbatov had their suiters too. And we've apparently beaten some big names to Gray and Bergvall. Whoever got these done deserves alot of credit, and shows a market where we can compete with anyone.

I think United were looking at Berbs back then too, Sir Alex was happy to pass and see how he did for us, knowing he’d be able to get him that way.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

If there are intangibles, it just means you don’t have all the data.

Have you got the data for Pochs lemons?

 

[SissokoWasGood (BoL)]

If I wanted to be kind I would say that possibly he focused too much on the negatives of last season/our general position & weaknesses when taking over and set out with too much caution as a result. The goals against, the defeats, the high number of possession losses etc - he referenced the latter early on iirc, I wonder if that meant he treated us like his promoted Brentford team rather than his more recent Brentford team (or his promotion chasing Brentford team) perhaps he thought playing a more front foot game with our lack of solid/consistent on the ball midfielders meant we would continue to be punished on turnovers. I've often referred to Brentfords build up play stats from last season and how they differ from what we were seeing here - they did build up through the middle of the pitch much more than what we saw here - so that gave me reason to think we would eventually see some development towards that here

If this is true, and honestly I think it is based on what we saw and what Frank said, this is a core reason for the big frustration,

It would mean that he wasn’t just saying ‘we finished 17th last season’ as a deflection to relieve some pressure on himself, but that he genuinely believed he was taking over the 17th best side in the league, and therefore needed to go more basic than even his most recent Brentford team.

It’s ridiculous. He would talk of adding layers and the need to do more in attack but it just never came.

Side note but I do wonder about this idea of Frank wanting to play front foot football, like who convinced our board that he would, or was capable? Because I think there’s a real difference between being able to find clips of nice, fluid moves a team puts together, versus knowing what the intention of that team was over 90 minutes. Much in the same way Levy was shown clips of Nuno’s Valencia to get him comfortable, as if clips are everything.

I get that a board member isn’t going to have time to sit through multiple 90 minute games of a different team. But I would love to know from people that watched Brentford closely, was the intention similar to what we saw at Spurs? Eg was it maybe attack for the first 20/-30 mins, try and get in front, and then counter? Or were there games against teams that they were expected to beat where they confidently controlled possession? Because that’s the difference between clips of nice moves and intention. If Brentford had never really controlled possession in any game, even in ones they were expected to win, it should be a massive warning sign for what Frank would do at Spurs. He played really basic form of football with us, and very obviously did not want to press high and control possession for anything other than the first part of a match. Again, the decision makers should have understood this distinction before hiring him.