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Thomas Frank - Head Coach

Daisuk said:
Oh, boy, more snooze fests incoming. I don't think I'm watching tonight.

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I don't disagree with him. We need to be able defend better than what we've shown not just under Ange but really since the end of the Poch era. Ange's was particularly bad but explained by his gung ho style, but we need to be able to defend I'm sorry if we don't like it but we can't going into season being happy to concede 60+ goals a season to score 60ish. Thats not going to lead us to anything.

Now what I want is a better balance between the attack and defence and I'm happy to give Frank the time to find that balance (if it's possible with this bunch of players).

For me it always comes down to the same thing, but better or produce better players and you will get better results.
 
harr1984 said:
Absolutely mate. I think whether we like to admit or not, we all to some extent highlight stats that support our argument and look to dismiss those that don't. I doubt that will ever change :D

My bug bear is things that were dismissed last season eg player quality and injuries are now being used as the excuse for what IMO has been tough to watch to say the least football (which comes back to what you are saying really). Its obviously pointless to get in a back and forth about it as we can see from this thread. I think as always the truth lies somewhere inbetween. I think the squad still requires plenty of surgery, but Frank needs to improve the style too (and yes given time he can/will). As far as I can see people have only offered criticism based on performances and what needs to improve, rather than a more aggressive 'This is rubbish, sack him' type comments (bar one or two).

I've only been critical of the football, I like everything else about Frank. I'm hoping he can improve the attacking side because I don't think it's unreasonable to say it hasn't been good enough regardless of the situation of the squad. I don't think that's an unfair assessment and just hoping to see some signs in the coming weeks of small improvements at least....
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Yeah that is fair enough. And it's all tainted by personal preference. For me last season kind of broke me. 22 loses I think it was.

I've always viewed it as we're never going to have the best players, but for a long term success we're going to have to first work on being hard to beat. Turning loses into draws and draws into wins. Part of that is learning to play ugly, historically Tottenham don't do that. Arteta realised he was never going to out football City, so just focussed on making them super efficient. When you do that and have a bit of quality it's possible to go a long way.

Right now we don't have our bit of quailty, but generally we're scratching out points. I would like performances to be better, but a brick team that gets points has a better foundation than an attacking team that drops them. I think that as fans we need to accept that success for Tottenham will only come on the back of this sort of ethos. We dont attract/aren't willing to pay for the best players so wil always need our 11 to play like 13 to win.

Even last season how did we win in Europe, by grinding it out, not the Tottenham way but the winning way. We were a cup team, now really we're a nothing team. Not good enough for the top, not bad enough for the bottom. "We're not Brentford". no we're not we don't fight like they did, want it like they did, keep going like they did. If we had the atittude of Frank's Brentford players and fans surely that would give us a platform for what we think is our higher quality of player to perform.
 
fernadez said:
Yeah that is fair enough. And it's all tainted by personal preference. For me last season kind of broke me. 22 loses I think it was.

I've always viewed it as we're never going to have the best players, but for a long term success we're going to have to first work on being hard to beat. Turning loses into draws and draws into wins. Part of that is learning to play ugly, historically Tottenham don't do that. Arteta realised he was never going to out football City, so just focussed on making them super efficient. When you do that and have a bit of quality it's possible to go a long way.

Right now we don't have our bit of quailty, but generally we're scratching out points. I would like performances to be better, but a brick team that gets points has a better foundation than an attacking team that drops them. I think that as fans we need to accept that success for Tottenham will only come on the back of this sort of ethos. We dont attract/aren't willing to pay for the best players so wil always need our 11 to play like 13 to win.

Even last season how did we win in Europe, by grinding it out, not the Tottenham way but the winning way. We were a cup team, now really we're a nothing team. Not good enough for the top, not bad enough for the bottom. "We're not Brentford". no we're not we don't fight like they did, want it like they did, keep going like they did. If we had the atittude of Frank's Brentford players and fans surely that would give us a platform for what we think is our higher quality of player to perform.
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Top post here and a thought process I understand both from you and if that how Frank wants to play it - I'm fine with seeing how it plays out working this way, we know nothing else has worked in the modern era.

My only criticism was I think we are better than what we have been showing from an attacking perspective but have always caveated that with he needs time...
 
Daisuk said:
Oh, boy, more snooze fests incoming. I don't think I'm watching tonight.

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I'll be interested to see if Bergvall plays and what impact that has. We need energy in our midfield, but currently the energy is on the bench.

I understand trying to be better defensively, but ball retention is key to that, and being able to put pressure on the opposition defence.
 
Grays_1890 said:
This is spot on IMO

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But what's the point in football if we can't discuss football? It's not sabotage. we don't kick off every game booing. It usually gets to half time, and the boos are when the floor is being wiped with us. I don't agree with it, but we aren't cheap to watch so people should at least feel like these players, that earn in a week what most wouldnt mind in a year, show some heart and pride in wearing the shirt - oh and they get to play football for a living.

I can't believe anyone is hoping Thomas Frank loses because he is our manager. But we are allowed to be unhappy at the performances, and the tactics.
 
Muttley said:
What gets me is the narratives. An entire campaign for Ange that he should get minimally 2 years and then a further campaign that he deserved the 3rd because of the trophy. Then Frank joins and the equivalent narrative becomes that he should get this season. Some are sneaking up to 18 months but nobody seems to be in the 2-3 years camp.

It's starting to feel like a double standard.
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I usually look at games 10 to 20 to see if we are getting better. That got me off when players will start trying to do more of what the manager is asking.

The main thing is to see us battling, and trying to play. We might lose but we need to see that we will soon play our way out. I thought TF started well, but we are getting out classed by lots of teams. Our level seems Kobenhavn at the moment. Even Bodo Glimt should have destroyed us.
 
It seems a number of people are already wanting to dump Frank. But with 6 managers
harr1984 said:
We had Kulu, Maddison, Solanke plus a shed load of otbers out at points last season - at any point in time we are going to have 'when player x,y and z returns' conversations. The point is having added Muani,Palinha, Simons and Kudus the squad is not in a worse position than last season when apparently it wasn't the squad that was the issue,,,,
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Muani has been unavailable for most of the season, and as for Simons, well he is yet to fully adjust to the pace and power of this league. Even Richarlison has been poor despite scoring 5 goals.
 
parj said:
But what's the point in football if we can't discuss football? It's not sabotage. we don't kick off every game booing. It usually gets to half time, and the boos are when the floor is being wiped with us. I don't agree with it, but we aren't cheap to watch so people should at least feel like these players, that earn in a week what most wouldnt mind in a year, show some heart and pride in wearing the shirt - oh and they get to play football for a living.

I can't believe anyone is hoping Thomas Frank loses because he is our manager. But we are allowed to be unhappy at the performances, and the tactics.
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I don't think its about discussing football IMO though, we can all do that

But there is this unhealthy side to our support which is why I agree with the tone of that post. We rarely all pull together as a fan base
 
parj said:
I'll be interested to see if Bergvall plays and what impact that has. We need energy in our midfield, but currently the energy is on the bench.

I understand trying to be better defensively, but ball retention is key to that, and being able to put pressure on the opposition defence.
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I like Berg, he's got all the tools to become a top player, but he suffers what all our midfielders do at the moment and gives the ball away to easily and in dangerous areas.

Saying that, I'd still play him over Bents as he is developing.
 
Legohamster said:
I like Berg, he's got all the tools to become a top player, but he suffers what all our midfielders do at the moment and gives the ball away to easily and in dangerous areas.

Saying that, I'd still play him over Bents as he is developing.
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That's exactly how I see it. He's going to be great though, I'd like at least one of him or Gray to be in our midfield as they at least try and be progressive. And I wouldn't blame the player or Frank for trying to be positive and losing the ball, all part of the learning curve....
 
Grays_1890 said:
I don't think its about discussing football IMO though, we can all do that

But there is this unhealthy side to our support which is why I agree with the tone of that post. We rarely all pull together as a fan base
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That's at lots of clubs. Liverpool fans are starting to turn on slot, arsenal fans wanted Arteta gone years ago etc.
 
harr1984 said:
That's exactly how I see it. He's going to be great though, I'd like at least one of him or Gray to be in our midfield as they at least try and be progressive. And I wouldn't blame the player or Frank for trying to be positive and losing the ball, all part of the learning curve....
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This is it ... Lose the ball trying to be positive. Right now we too scared to lose the ball so we lose the ball anyway.
 
harr1984 said:
Don't think anyone is expecting us to play magical football, I don't know why people keep suggesting fans are expecting the moon from him.

If I list all the players he has had available it is more than fair to expect better football than what has served up, no one is asking for miracles just evidence of an attacking plan beyond hoofing it. The same people criticising Ange and telling us it wasn't the players are now saying after we have improv d the squad with Kudus, Simons and Muani that what we are seeing is to be expected it's simply hypocritical.

FWIW I have said for 2/3 years people on here over rate our squad, but it fell on deaf ears until Frank arrived. That doesn't mean a team full of internationals should be resorting to the painful football we are seeing, that's on Frank and he needs to do better....
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I don't think Frank is Blameless, some of his selections have been questionable to say the least, Gray / Berg should be getting more minutes for a start, Bent is just not up to it and should be moved on.

How much better should it be? Johnson, Odobert, Tel, Richi, Simons, Kudos and RKM is a really average set of attacking options - Kudos and Simons being the exception and Simons is settling in

Some of this listed seem to lack the basics needed.

January can't come soon enough.
 
harr1984 said:
That's exactly how I see it. He's going to be great though, I'd like at least one of him or Gray to be in our midfield as they at least try and be progressive. And I wouldn't blame the player or Frank for trying to be positive and losing the ball, all part of the learning curve....
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Ha! Beat me to my next post

I think Gray is the better all round player at the moment, berg has that X factor
 
Legohamster said:
I don't think Frank is Blameless, some of his selections have been questionable to say the least, Gray / Berg should be getting more minutes for a start, Bent is just not up to it and should be moved on.

How much better should it be? Johnson, Odobert, Tel, Richi, Simons, Kudos and RKM is a really average set of attacking options - Kudos and Simons being the exception and Simons is settling in

Some of this listed seem to lack the basics needed.

January can't come soon enough.
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Yeah said many times both are true - we need some upgrades big time, but also Frank could be setting us up better. The players we have are far from great, but when our play is based around lumping it up to a forward who the whole world knows can't hold it up? I think it's fair to say Frank has to be held partly accountable, it's still a squad full of internationals that can pass a ball forwards.

As you say, roll on January (which will inevitably lead to more whinging somewhere :D ).....
 
Baleforce said:
I’m completely on board with that philosophy myself.
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I don't disagree with us working on the defensive side of things or even focusing on it - but we're playing football, we need to score goals as well. We're an extremely professional football club paying millions of pounds to hundreds of employees, yet we can barely muster up a chance while doing the core thing our club is meant to be doing. Why are we not able to do the very core thing we are meant to be doing? I would say coming out saying our main focus is defending, when we can barely create a chance over a number of games, is shooting yourself in the foot. We need to create chances and score goals as well as defend. Our highly professional athletes are able to learn both things. It's their job to do so. It's also Frank's job to help them do so. I dont get this "focus on" thing - of course we have the time and the resources to do both.
 
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