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Thomas Frank - Head Coach

Needs to get back to his principles.

We started well this season then got away from it, seemingly to try and make prettier patterns going forward.

If he wants us to sit deep, be mean with chances and play for set pieces, make it so.
 
Needs to evolve the squad, nothing sticks up front, no creativity on the left and no real backup at fullbacks. He has had one window when he first joined so not real understanding of the players, let’s see where he goes over next 2 windows
 
Baleforce said:
Needs to get back to his principles.

We started well this season then got away from it, seemingly to try and make prettier patterns going forward.

If he wants us to sit deep, be mean with chances and play for set pieces, make it so.
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We've only "got away from it" the last few games. When sitting deep we were shocking at it. Two Dms, everyone playing negative and we still coughed up chance after chance. Bar the first 4 games the results have been poor with the defensive system he used.
 
I’ve been as critical of the direction and the output under Frank as anyone but I thought today was just one of those where…if you concede first against a Dyche team, you make it really difficult for yourself. Bad individual errors, and a freak second goal at the start of the second half. I think it alters the game state so much that I don’t know what we can draw from whether Frank is on the right track or not. We had a good week or two leading up to this, so it’s a shame. And of course we could have played better. But I think Forest just got the bounce they needed a few times today.
 
I'll just point out that it is, still, a personnel issue.

Playing Djed on the left because Udogie is injured for the majority of the time, limits us down that flank. It's a personnel issue because we lack a genuinely good left-footed player to swap in for Udogie there. You can see Frank's desperation here given he threw on the aged Ben Davies to try and change things - I have no doubt it's because he's at least left footed and this can offer some width down that flank.

Vicario playing out from the back does not work - it didn't work for Ange, won't work for Frank, but it's the basis of modern tactical approaches and so we are forced to rely on Vic for that regardless. And get regularly punished for it as it's clear his technique and (particularly) decision-making, are not up to the mark.

We play Xavi in the middle even when he's having one of his anonymous games because no one else can conduct play that far forward, with Maddison and Kulusevski out. And in the middle, no one can really conduct play from deep amidst the group of midfielders we have.

If VdV goes down again, we will see further tactical issues because we have no left-footed player to replace him, nor one as speedy as he is. Both of those will impact our buildup and height of our line.

So, ultimately, we're paying for some very, very poor squad management that took place over years - none of this is the work of one man, one window, but a club approach that has seen a haphazard squad assembled over nearly half a decade.

It will take a long time to fix, and until then we'll keep seeing inconsistency. And this will be the case regardless of the manager you appoint, because they all have systems they want to play, and all of them will mean being let down by certain parts of this Frankenstein squad assembled across multiple managers and eras.

Give Frank time, money and patience. Nothing else will work, imo. I say this as someone who wasn't too convinced by our choice of Frank to begin with - but having chosen him, you have to give him time.
 
DubSpur said:
We've only "got away from it" the last few games. When sitting deep we were shocking at it. Two Dms, everyone playing negative and we still coughed up chance after chance. Bar the first 4 games the results have been poor with the defensive system he used.
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The first 4 games it worked.

I think we need to lean into defensive football myself, I think thats how we maximise PPG from this squad.
 
It was sloppy from the players who for whatever reason didn’t seem dialled in. So many were off the pace, showed no eagerness, no energy. It was a flat disjointed lethargic performance and it’s hard to know how much of that came from Thomas Frank.
 
Baleforce said:
The first 4 games it worked.

I think we need to lean into defensive football myself, I think thats how we maximise PPG from this squad.
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No manager has done well with defensive football. We end up imploding, and look like never winning.

Balanced football got us title challenges and CL final.

Ange-ball (whatever that was) win the EL final but almost got relegated.
 
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