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Thomas Frank - Head Coach

DubaiSpur said:
For sure mate. I caveated my assessment with that bit about it being rare that a player compares to his 16-17 equivalent - because Romero and Van de Ven, in my eyes, come reasonably close to Toby-Verts, even if they're not at that level on the whole.

But on Udogie, I think he's an illustration of my point. He was 2022's Souza-equivalent - a youngster bought because Davies and (at the time) Perisic were our wing-backs, and both were aging. He became a first team starter as Perisic left and Davies declined. Then he became a crock, likely due to being overplayed. But our replacement for him? An ageing Ben Davies. And now, possibly another kid, Souza, with even less experience than Udogie had at his age. The standards have fallen far from the days of Rose-Davies.



I think we were lucky to hit upon Kane, for sure. He's a once in a century-type player - we will likely not see a player as good come through our ranks for decades.

But Son wasn't magic - he was the product of good scouting and good coaching. Sonny was part of that period of our transfers under Edwards / early Paul Mitchell when nearly every other one was a hit - Toby, Sonny, Wanyama, Dier, Dele (though that last one was more Pleat). And before that, the spine of the side was built in the late Redknapp/AVB-era - Verts, Lloris, Dembele, Walker. Yes there was that scattershot Baldini era in between, And then there were some misses (Fazio, Stambouli, N'jie, N'koudou, Janssen, etc.), but it was nearly a 1 in 2 hit rate, which is amazing by football standards.

It takes good scouting, good analytics, and good timing. All of those things, in the modern day, are expensive -teams nowadays have analytics divisions of dozens of people to run the numbers, sometimes hundreds. Brentford and Brighton both have fully-owned companies doing this for them, using proprietary databases and IP.

I don't see us operating in that way. Nor do I see us spending the money to succeed a different way, by buying proven talent. Instead we seem to muddle in between - we don't pay high wages, but we pay high transfer fees, to sign mostly middling players.
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Don't want to deep dive here, most of it has already been said.

Think it isn't fair to compare the squad to the best team Spurs has put out since probably the 80s? and as @SissokoWasGood (BoL) said, we do have a few decent players still in team.

The real comparison would be something like BMJ's team that got 5th twice, and hint/shortcut, it's only the frontline (Berb/Keane) in that team that are good, the rest of this team and most of the 22 would walk into that team.
 
Mabspurs said:
Exactly!! Wow!! Second agreement today!!! :D

I rarely propose team tactics since I am not arrogant enough to think I know better than someone who is trained in the skill.

However I would move VDV to left back and bring in Danso or Dragusin who are very much low/mid block defenders
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Or perhaps just stop playing the bricky low block?!?

But yes, playing VDV left back to allow Spence to rotate with Porro at right back would also be sensible, especially as we know that Danso is a passable partner for Romero and if playing this horrible, low block system we don't really need to have pace in the centre but we do need players who can defend deep one on one and win headers in the penalty area.
 
Muttley said:
Whereas I couldn't imagine a line-up without Porro, Romero and VDV. They are the biggest fighters we have, probably along with Palhinha.

I'd shake Spence to the core and get him to start owning it like Porro does. He needs to care more about what is happening.

Most of all we need Dom back.
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Starting wearing the same colour boots on each foot...
 
Muttley said:
Yeah, only because they had the versatility to switch out to full-back. Ditto with VDV with VVD still doing the biz. Toby had that with Kompany.

In some ways it's like saying that most likely our best full-back is Romero. If we had world class centre halves, Romero would still be selected ahead of Porro and Spence.
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I doubt he would personally but opinions are opinions.
 
Mabspurs said:
We have not agreed on much but 100% with you there! Can't those baying for TF's blood see the problem is way deeper?? Or have ENIC managed so well to deflect their responsibility by sacking Levy, leaving the manager as the sole focus of the fan's ire at the club's obvious decline?
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It's not either or mate

- ENIC is a shed, and now the curtains are drawn, it's clear they put the limitations on the club, not the previous spacegoat
- Frank isn't good enough, he's managed 2 more wins and one less draw than Leeds and they are a fudging terrible side.
 
paxtonwolf said:
Could be pure b@llocks, but just read the Club is calling an Emergency meeting this afternoon

As I say, could be Internet cr@p, but if true, it could be over today?
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Might be to check if we can cancel Romero's contract and make him pay back what we've paid him thus far, breach of contract etc...



Well, why not:D
 
paxtonwolf said:
Could be pure b@llocks, but just read the Club is calling an Emergency meeting this afternoon

As I say, could be Internet cr@p, but if true, it could be over today?
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They fudging better be (regardless of result), and the answer should be one of

- Spend now
- Make decision to keep/fire manager (stick or twist, no fudging vote of confidence brick)
- Serious review of why we haven't already done step one.
 
Raziel said:
It's not either or mate

- ENIC is a shed, and now the curtains are drawn, it's clear they put the limitations on the club, not the previous spacegoat
- Frank isn't good enough, he's managed 2 more wins and one less draw than Leeds and they are a fudging terrible side.
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ENIC have indeed put limitations on the club. However to call Levy a spacegoat is wide of the mark. It was Levy that presided over a period at the club where our data and scouting were an absolute joke. He absolutely had the power to ensure appropriate money and personnel were allocated to those things instead of other things but it clearly wasn't considered a priority for him. We're now playing catch up on this. It may be that Vinai and Lange are addressing this at present, or it may not. We probably won't know either way for another 18 months to 3 years.
 
Raziel said:
Don't want to deep dive here, most of it has already been said.

Think it isn't fair to compare the squad to the best team Spurs has put out since probably the 80s? and as @SissokoWasGood (BoL) said, we do have a few decent players still in team.

The real comparison would be something like BMJ's team that got 5th twice, and hint/shortcut, it's only the frontline (Berb/Keane) in that team that are good, the rest of this team and most of the 22 would walk into that team.
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I also think we’re at the start of a cycle, having made the deliberate decision to ‘start again’ and go younger. So while right now we can say that Poch’s team was far superior in individual quality, those players started showing it after 3+ years with us. It wasn’t like under Poch or just before him we signed finished articles or truly elite players.

So I think that’s another way of looking at whether we’ve ‘downgraded’ the squad. I actually think we’ve done the right thing considering our station in the game, in trying to sign the best young players. Right now we’re at the start of a cycle AND in terrible form, so the quality comparison looks bad. But have this conversation next year, and in better form, and it might feel very different.
 
Not sure where this goes but Kudus out for 2 months, Bentancur bad hamstring injury and Deki has an injection that we’ll see if he can get back on the grass from in 3-4 weeks. The oncoming train is back. (All per Frank’s presser)

I do think it’s fascinating that a big part of Frank’s decisions have been to prevent muscle injuries and we’ve gotten them anyway.
 
Finney Is Back said:
ENIC have indeed put limitations on the club. However to call Levy a spacegoat is wide of the mark. It was Levy that presided over a period at the club where our data and scouting were an absolute joke. He absolutely had the power to ensure appropriate money and personnel were allocated to those things instead of other things but it clearly wasn't considered a priority for him. We're now playing catch up on this. It may be that Vinai and Lange are addressing this at present, or it may not. We probably won't know either way for another 18 months to 3 years.
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I'm 100% for the idea of modernizing, but I think the piece that most people miss is the "moneyball" type approaches fit a certain level of club.

- Whenever someone wants to point to the success of a data/scouting approach, it's Brentford, Brighton, whoever, the issue is we don't want to be any of those clubs, we want to be City/Bayern/Madrid (yes, I get miles off, and aspirational and all that).
- Frank is failing because he's playing the way the data tells him instead of opening his eyes

Levy made mistakes but JD, Keane, Carrick, Modric, Bale, Berbatov, Eriksen, Dembele, Jan, Toby, Son, VDV, Dele, even Romero, VDV, etc weren't eras of bad signings. I'd argue we were good pre stadium build, brick during stadium build and better post stadium build which lines up more with money availability (on owners) than scouting.

The biggest issue I have with Levy's time is the change in direction between types of managers that impacted recruiting coherency, and that's on him (even if in hindsight I get some if not all of the logic)
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Not sure where this goes but Kudus out for 2 months, Bentancur bad hamstring injury and Deki has an injection that we’ll see if he can get back on the grass from in 3-4 weeks. The oncoming train is back. (All per Frank’s presser)

I do think it’s fascinating that a big part of Frank’s decisions have been to prevent muscle injuries and we’ve gotten them anyway.
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FFS Ange!
 
Finney Is Back said:
FFS Ange!
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Indeed. Is Frank just extremely unlucky having done all the right things to prevent injuries and being hit by them anyway? Or was Ange never actually an injury devil and he was the unlucky one last year?

I do feel bad for Frank. Because I suspect it wasn’t really Ange’s football causing the injuries, and was bad luck. And equally I think Frank is getting shafted by some bad luck now. He can’t catch a break.
 
I think if you take out the long term injuries from last season/preseason what we have seen is much more normal than last season - seeings as you lot are hell bent on making it a talking point. I look forward to the rest of the season being an acceptable write-off though as a result... 😀
 
Rafa87 said:
It’s annoying me this morning, macaronic fans jumping on it like it’s some massive tribal thing.

Probably find he was stood at the side of the pitch talking to people, had asked for a coffee and someone handed him a cup that he didn’t even look at before drinking and then just never realised. You would have to be simple to think it was a deliberate thing from him.

Unfortunately a number of fans are jumping up and down banging pans together and shouting about it this morning - stupid issue and there’s much bigger things to worry about.
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Indeed, but as the old saying goes Little things amuse Little minds.
 
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