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Thomas Frank - Former Head Coach

ricky2tricky4city said:
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.
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And if you build the wrong model, or draw the wrong conclusions, or don’t have a sense of what you should be looking for, all the data in the world won’t help you.
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
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.
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What’s odd is that he was gone in February. So just at the point that we’re coming out of the worst of the injury crisis, we’re securing the wins that virtually guarantee our safety, and make the decision to focus on the Europa, that’s when the decision is made.

So this is before even more of the losses come in. Which leads me to think at the time that the club again just drew the wrong conclusions. Words to the effect of ‘even with the injuries, the results haven’t been good enough and we need to compete on all fronts’. I just thought this was blather for the fans so they they could justify the sacking, I didn’t think they would actually be so oblivious to context that they truly believed it. Because the sacking decision was made way before the end of the season.

I genuinely just think it was injuries that cooked him, because the club made the decision to sack him right at the end of the worst of the injury run. and clearly they then decided, we need someone more pragmatic, we need someone that won’t play as intense a style because we can’t have all these injuries, we need more clean sheets.
 
billyiddo said:
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
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Yeh and lets be honest, we are a work in progress for any manager, rightly or wrongly it didn't work for him but this season has gone down the carbon copy route of last year, great in Europe, crap in the league, injury crisis and what looks like another 17th place finish. So although he might have been negative with his ideas and speeches, he isn't totally wrong about where we are as a club currently in some respects. I don't think we are 17th bad but its clear we can't operate on two levels, although the injuries have compounded it so has some terrible decisions at club level which has impacted.

Whoever takes over here has a massive job on their hands, we are in a post Kane & Son quandary IMO, the circus at board and exec level in no way helps, the Fab situation is just embarrassing
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
What’s odd is that he was gone in February. So just at the point that we’re coming out of the worst of the injury crisis, we’re securing the wins that virtually guarantee our safety, and make the decision to focus on the Europa, that’s when the decision is made.

So this is before even more of the losses come in. Which leads me to think at the time that the club again just drew the wrong conclusions. Words to the effect of ‘even with the injuries, the results haven’t been good enough and we need to compete on all fronts’. I just thought this was blather for the fans so they they could justify the sacking, I didn’t think they would actually be so oblivious to context that they truly believed it. Because the sacking decision was made way before the end of the season.

I genuinely just think it was injuries that cooked him, because the club made the decision to sack him right at the end of the worst of the injury run. and clearly they then decided, we need someone more pragmatic, we need someone that won’t play as intense a style because we can’t have all these injuries, we need more clean sheets.
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I don't think it was odd he was gone in February. He was open to be questioned at that stage.
If it was the injuries that caused such unpalatable form (not saying it is or it isn't btw) then the same reasoning would have to be offered to Frank?

The top and bottom of it was Frank wasn't the answer to Ange....but Ange wasn't the answer to Ange either.
 
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ricky2tricky4city said:
I don't think it was odd he was gone in February. He was open to be questioned at that stage.
If it was the injuries that caused such unpalatable form (not saying it is or it isn't btw) then the same reasoning would have to be offered to Frank?

The top and bottom of it was Frank wasn't the answer to Ange....but Ange wasn't the answer to Ange either.
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We could have given Ange, semenyo, Neto, Geuhi, and we still would have been a terrible version of Ossie Ardilles fab 5.
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
I don't think it was odd he was gone in February. He was open to be questioned at that stage.
If it was the injuries that caused such unpalatable form (not saying it is or it isn't btw) then the same reasoning would have to be offered to Frank?

The top and bottom of it was Frank wasn't the answer to Ange....but Ange wasn't the answer to Ange either.
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If we go from the City 4-0 win to February, where we barely couldn’t even field a team of 11 players, and had to play actually unfit players, and decide that this means Ange had to go, I think that’s insanely bad decision making to be honest.

If the decision on Ange was that we need someone with longevity, someone who has proven they can stick at clubs over the course of multiple years, and maybe someone that isn’t so stuck on one system that they need their best players always to be fit for it to work consistently, I get that. But it wasn’t why they hired Frank. They genuinely believed that we needed a more defensive manager because we conceded too many goals. And it’s just devoid of context. As well as the fact that football doesn’t work like that. You need everyone to be bought in to the plan whether you’re attacking or defending, otherwise you’re losing games

I think Frank has had injuries, but it’s only in recent weeks has it reached a truly insane level. The slide started long before. Alarm bells should have been ringing after the Chelsea game. Because it wasn’t the injuries with Frank, it was that the players were not remotely behind his style of football, and that game made it abundantly clear.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
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.
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Like I said earlier, he never passed the sniff test. Making Brentford stay in the PL with a small budget, and development of attacking players (again with a caveat of over multiple seasons which indicates more game time at level vs. direct coaching changes) was what you could say kindly.

Too little possession, no default style, too direct and then all the things re personality when you want to consider someone for a big club. Like Nuno, just not a good fit.

I suspect there is way more to the last couple of years than we will ever know (I could speculate), but the person who bet on Frank (there is always a "sponsor" for these kind of decisions) needs to be hel accountable
 
Raziel said:
Like I said earlier, he never passed the sniff test. Making Brentford stay in the PL with a small budget, and development of attacking players (again with a caveat of over multiple seasons which indicates more game time at level vs. direct coaching changes) was what you could say kindly.

Too little possession, no default style, too direct and then all the things re personality when you want to consider someone for a big club. Like Nuno, just not a good fit.

I suspect there is way more to the last couple of years than we will ever know (I could speculate), but the person who bet on Frank (there is always a "sponsor" for these kind of decisions) needs to be hel accountable
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Yup, very much agreed.
 
Gazza said:
Yes mate you can say that about both Ange and Frank.
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To be fair to Ange, there was a tactic

- 4-3-3 out of possession moving to a 2-3-5 in attack, with some key principles, player in possession was given license to move into any open space in front of them, wide players stay wide and play one of two cross options, either across face of goal for tap in by other wide player or cut back to center of box for runners. In addition, high line meant any winning of the ball would have us a lot closer to the opposition goal.

That system had a few problems that got sussed out and Ange never quite adapted, specifically
- The fluidity of players (moving into spaces, FB/winger swap, Porro ending up in middle of box) could be countered by man to man marking
- The counter was long ball over top to width (the center was usually congested), hence Ange was only close to making it work with VDV, probably needed another fastest defender in Europe to make it work

He also had three other issues
- No in game management, no ability even at 3-0 up to slow/close the game out, we were likely to score but also vulnerable for the full 90 minutes
- The players often cramped each other, too often you would have 3-4 players in same area (say out left) making it harder to exploit.
- Bit like Frank's weird zone 14 thing, despite having a player like Son (and Maddison/Deki), Ange didn't really want the cut in from wide, shoot from outside the box as a regular part of the system (Son himself mentioned it), Broader issue of the system bringing the player level down vs. raising it up.

All of that is wildly different from the 4-2-4 mid block game we played for last 8 or so Europa league matches.

For Ange, there was a system, and that's where being kind to him, you could (I don't agree) say that better players (Kane up front, another fast CB, players more technical/comfortable in tight spaces) could have led to success, I'd argue the system had too many flaws to overcome either way. Inherently it works at lower levels where the opposition will be less ruthless, less clinical in chance conversation.

Frank to me beyond the counter the opposition (how, with what transition plan?) seemed to be aiming for

- Get ball to Kudus, Kudus either beats his man or passes back to Porro, Porro booms cross into box (where only one CF would be fighting against 2-3 defenders), this is backed up by data (Porro and Kudus have the most crosses in PL) and who we wanted to buy, Robertson/Semenyo was to replicate the same fudging tactic on left.

At least that's the best I could come up with for Frank
 
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