- 3 hours ago
Thomas Frank looks set to be appointed as the new Tottenham Hotspur manager, after the club negotiated his release from Brentford. But after 7 years West London where he was the central cog in a perfectly oiled machine, how will he adapt to a more chaotic environment further North. Adam Clery looks at exactly what sort of manager he is, on and off the pitch, to work it out.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Right then, Thomas the Frank Engine Frank is the man we believe is taking over the Tottenham Hot Spurs
00:06and I, me personally, think that is a sensational appointment
00:11but one that does include a rather large roll of the proverbial dice.
00:16So we're going to go through both of those things that I think right now
00:19as well as what his Tottenham team may end up looking like.
00:24So, here we go.
00:26So, here we go.
00:30Don't know why I said, here we go then, that's quite embarrassing.
00:32Anyway, right, Thomas Frank, the most important thing to understand about him and his football
00:37is that there is no Frank-ball.
00:41But Thomas Frank's Brentford, this is their most used 11 last season,
00:45are not really Thomas Frank's Brentford in any sort of like tactically definable sense.
00:51And this is a massive oversimplification but there is nothing really that this team does
00:57purely because the manager believes deep down that's just how football should be played.
01:02Like, even the shape of the 4-2-3-1, it's not because Frank's a 4-2-3-1 guy,
01:07they play this because it gets the absolute best out of a number of their better players.
01:12It allows Wisser to stretch defences in behind and be the recipient of all the chances they create.
01:17It allows Damsgaard that optimised number 10 role in between the lines which is important
01:22because when he's played a little bit deeper or when he's played a little bit wider,
01:25he's struggled to be as effective.
01:26It's allowed Umbermo to work as this wide forward who comes into these half spaces to get onto the ball
01:31but also take a wider starting position to help himself get into the box.
01:36And the next highest appearance maker is Keane Lewis-Potter who is a very young developing left back
01:41who is protected in this area by big, solid, dependable central midfielders and central defenders.
01:46He has room to grow.
01:48Now the point I'm going to make now is going to sound really cynical, right,
01:52but just stay with me because I promise I mean it as a good thing, right?
01:55These four players were not signed by Brentford to allow their manager to realise some tactical dream.
02:02No, they were signed because they cost £8 million, £12 million, £5 million and £16 million respectively
02:09and are now with so much as a cursory glance at the transfer marked player values
02:15which admittedly are not official but they're at least pretty close
02:18worth £45 million, £38 million, £29 million
02:22and it looks like they're going to get somewhere between £60 and £70 for Umbermo.
02:27That's why they're here.
02:29And that's why I wanted to stress that I'm not just being cynical about this
02:31because I'm an enormous admirer of how Brentford operate
02:34but that is how Brentford operate.
02:37David Raya came in for £3.5 million, left for nearly £40 million.
02:40Ivan Toney came in for £5 million, left for £10 times that.
02:44Olly Watkins, £6 million in, £30 million out.
02:46Ben Rahmer, Mope, Mepham, Konza.
02:49That is how you go from 14th in League 2
02:52to five very stable consecutive seasons in the Premier League
02:56and a shiny new stadium.
02:58And the reason, my dear chums, I point all of this out
03:01is to show you that Thomas Frank's role is not to impose some rigid tactical identity
03:06that he believes in.
03:08His job is to work with the players that an excellent recruitment department
03:13believes they find value in
03:15and maximise their potential
03:17both through coaching and through his tactics in a game.
03:20And if that sounds like a negative, I assure you it is not
03:24because the really important part of that
03:26the coaching, the maximising a player's potential
03:29Thomas Frank is f***ing amazing at.
03:34Season just gone, he had the second lowest wage bill in the Premier League
03:37and they finished 10th.
03:39The season before, they had the 18th lowest wage bill
03:42suffered one of the worst injury crises in the division
03:47lost Ivan Tony to that eight-month gambling ban
03:50and still survived.
03:52Yeah, before that, lowest wage bill in the entire league
03:55and 9th in the table.
03:57I can remember the suggestions getting a little bit dismissed at the time, right?
04:01But I had it on very good authority
04:03from someone who, how can I put this,
04:07was involved in that situation
04:09yeah, that feels safe
04:11that he was this close
04:13to getting the Liverpool job in the summer.
04:15And the eventual decision to go with Arna Slott
04:17was obviously supported and has worked out very well
04:20but was not unanimous.
04:22There were a lot of people at Liverpool
04:23who still thought Frank was the right appointment.
04:26He doesn't get the hype externally
04:27because he's not someone whose teams
04:29you can easily point at and go
04:31there, you see?
04:32That's the thing all his teams do.
04:33That's what makes him a super genius.
04:36But just take it from me, right?
04:38Within football,
04:39Thomas Frank is considered one of the very, very best.
04:44However, however, however, however,
04:46here we get into the dry, wafery centre of the Kit Kat of a video this is.
04:51Does that necessarily make him a good appointment for Tottenham?
04:56Because what I have thus far been at pains to point out
04:59is that he is a very important and very talented part
05:02of a very, very well-oiled and functional structure.
05:07And now he's going to go work with Daniel Levy
05:10who gets mixed reviews, shall we say.
05:15And I mean, I can show you what Thomas Frank's Tottenham is going to look like
05:18because it's going to look pretty much exactly the same as Angers.
05:21Madison and Solanke are undeniably the two most talented attacking players
05:25in that squad at the minute.
05:27So you'll imagine they'll be what he builds the final third work around.
05:31And then Poro and Adogio are going to start spending way more time
05:34along the flanks and way less time in the middle
05:36because he doesn't really want to do any of that.
05:38Poro in particular will be given this sort of room
05:40to allow Brennan Johnson to get into the box.
05:43So expect to see him back to his up and down and delivering the ball best.
05:46And he loves to create numerical overloads all over the pitch.
05:49So expect to see nice sort of neat little compact triangles
05:53on one side of the pitch between the fullbacks
05:55and the defensive midfielders and the centre-backs
05:57in order to then hit the ball across the pitch
06:00to somebody who was theoretically in a lot of space
06:03because you've drawn the opposition over.
06:04And that's really all there is to it.
06:07What you'll do more than anything else
06:09is get this team back to basics.
06:12You'll make them difficult to beat again.
06:14And you'll almost certainly do that the same way he did it at Brentford.
06:18Like, if you look at the numbers from last season,
06:20they had the 15th lowest average possession in the division
06:23but were the 5th highest scorers.
06:25And the way you square those two seemingly conflicting statistics
06:29with each other is simply discipline.
06:31They didn't just hang on to the ball when nothing was going on.
06:33They were quite happy to let the opposition have it,
06:35sit a little bit deeper and wait for the right opportunities to develop,
06:39in particular to get Umbermo and Wisser in.
06:41And as a result, they had over 100 more goalkeeper passes than any team
06:46and the most touches in the ball in the entire division
06:50inside their own penalty area.
06:52Because when they did have the ball, they were patient with it.
06:55They didn't just needlessly give it back if they didn't have to.
06:59Again, they would wait for the right opportunities to develop.
07:02And yes, that did lead to some accusations
07:04of sometimes being a bit pedestrian,
07:06sometimes being a bit boring.
07:08But look at last season, look how many goals they scored doing it.
07:13Like, they battered some genuinely good teams.
07:16But when you look at numbers like that,
07:17like the low possession and the ponderous play at the back,
07:20it's easy to mistake that for being all they were doing.
07:24What I really like about Frank is that, yes,
07:26he would give this to his teams to make them solid,
07:29to make them stable, to make them hard to beat.
07:31But it was always just something he would then build upon.
07:36Like, to word that a lot better,
07:38Brentford always had a very well put together attacking plan
07:42to really hurt the opposition.
07:44But Frank would always build it from a robust and solid defensive plan first.
07:49It was always there.
07:50It was always the point.
07:51But he didn't want to, like, leave them too open doing it.
07:55And just to show you what I mean, right,
07:56if we rank all of their games by the possession they had,
07:59then, yeah, the low end, we've got Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal.
08:02They were super organised in those games.
08:04They were happy to sit really deep.
08:06They were happy to soak up the pressure,
08:07cut off the middle of the pitch.
08:08But wait a minute, hang on.
08:10Why is Southampton in amongst all of those teams?
08:14Well, because despite all the evidence,
08:16Southampton were getting to the contrary literally every single week.
08:19They still wanted to have a lot of possession,
08:22to build out from the back.
08:23And they were terrible, terrible at defending fast counterattacking sides.
08:29So Thomas Frank was more than happy to have Brentford sit off them,
08:32not allow them entries into the final third,
08:35and then counterattack at pace.
08:37Almost every single chance Brentford get in that game
08:39comes from a turnover in their own half or slightly further forward,
08:44meaning that when they got into the final third,
08:46they weren't coming up against a settled and sort of structured defensive shape.
08:51They were in situations like this,
08:54where there's loads of room, where you can have loads of fun.
08:56Like, they totally conceded possession to the worst side in the division,
09:01which sounds insane, but it was an exercise in adaptability,
09:06and it won them that game of football.
09:07But on the other hand, while they are clearly a low-possession side,
09:10sometimes they are just the better team,
09:13and their game plan then becomes to dominate the ball a lot more than they usually would.
09:17Like, here's Ipswich, here's Leicester,
09:19even Tottenham in the games where they had way more of the ball.
09:23And obviously, it doesn't always work.
09:25Like, you can see there's plenty of Ds and Ls in all of those columns,
09:28but this approach he has gets them playing way, way above the level they're supposed to be at.
09:34Like, Brentford are a mid-table team, a comfortable mid-table team.
09:38And if you follow the logic that the league table should normally match up with the wage table,
09:42they are consistently the biggest and best over-performers in the Premier League.
09:48And it's because Frank adapts them in every single game they play.
09:52They pick up more points than they've probably got any right to pick up.
09:55Here's another really good example.
09:57Like, Brentford are not one of the league's high pressers.
09:59I think they rank in the bottom half for shots leading directly from a high turnover.
10:05Should have looked that up before I did the video.
10:06I'll put it on screen now so you've got more information than I have.
10:10But anyway, they're not one of the league's high pressers,
10:12and yet in some games, they'll high press really well.
10:16This is Chelsea, and Brentford know that Sanchez's long distribution is a problem.
10:21So they set up, when Chelsea have the ball at the back, to stop all of his short options.
10:26And the main thing to spot in this clip, which shows you the quality of the coaching,
10:30right, is that Visser charges out to close down this pass.
10:34But the second it goes back to Sanchez, he stops running.
10:38Because the objective is not to try and pressure Sanchez, it's just to get him to go long.
10:43Which, of course, all these options being cut off, he does.
10:47Brentford immediately win the ball back, because his kicking is bad.
10:50And they get a chance from this situation.
10:54And this stuff is also why, like, putting the Arsenal hype this season to one side,
10:58they've long been considered the best set-piece team in the Premier League.
11:02Because that is a marginal gain.
11:04It's something you can coach incremental improvements into.
11:07They're one of the early adopters of having proper set-piece coaches.
11:10Like, I know we're all obsessed with, like, clever corner routines now, right?
11:13But in the Premier League last season, no team scored more than once from a throw-in, right?
11:20Except for Brentford, who scored five.
11:23God, you really can see how broken this thing is, can't you?
11:28But yes, sorry, what was my point?
11:30Throw-ins, yes.
11:31Thomas Frank is not ideologically wedded to the idea of throw-ins.
11:35That's just something that you can improve in your team through good coaching.
11:40Thus, he improves it through good coaching.
11:43That's what he does.
11:44And the same goes for the system.
11:45Like, it's been a 4-2-3-1 pretty much all season.
11:48But there's been plenty of games where instead...
11:51Let's see if I can just set this up while I'm actually talking and saying it out loud.
11:54Dave, is that what that looks like?
11:56They've gone with, like, a 3-5-2 situation with wing-backs.
12:01And Frank likes to do this, especially in the big games, because not only does it give you the option
12:05of defending with a back five, very nice, very solid.
12:08But also, if you attack with the front five players while still keeping this stable base, it means the opposition
12:13can get pulled around quite a lot.
12:15Like, most good teams with a back four don't get a lot of protection from the attackers.
12:20So you can stretch them out much better this way in attack.
12:23So again, goes back to that whole thing of he will set his team up to be as stable and
12:28secure as possible.
12:29But always with the ultimate goal of making them effective in attack at the same time.
12:34That's the kind of manager he is.
12:36And, like, just to hammer this point across, any manager can change the formation.
12:40You can set any team up in any way he wants.
12:42But it's the coaching of getting players so comfortable with the level of adaptability he requires.
12:49Like, some games, they're very deep.
12:50They sit in a 4-4-2 block.
12:52They become hard to break down.
12:53And in others, they will press really high.
12:56And they'll try and win the ball back much further up.
12:58They'll change the formation.
12:59They'll change the shape.
13:00They'll change what they're doing individually.
13:02And the key to that is the coaching.
13:05That's what very few managers can actually do.
13:08It's what Thomas Frank does.
13:09So the main takeaway you should have here is one of adaptability.
13:13Like, I personally really liked Ange Postacoglu.
13:16But it was impossible to get away from the criticism that in the Premier League especially,
13:20his just rigid ideology for how he wanted them to play was becoming a bit of a hindrance and probably
13:28not helping with the injury situation.
13:30Thomas Frank is like the spiritual, cultural opposite to all of that.
13:36He has no ego when it comes to how his teams play.
13:40He just wants to get a result.
13:42And thus, he adapts what his team is doing in every single game they play.
13:46And for a long time, I have believed he has deserved a chance to try this out at a...
13:53God, I'm not going to use the B word.
13:54At a more high-profile club with increased scrutiny and increased expectation.
14:00The B word there was bigger, by the way, just because I hate the whole, like, big club argument.
14:05It wasn't Bumberclart.
14:07So yeah, this is what I think Thomas Frank's Tottenham Hotspur are going to look like next season.
14:11Because if the club have any sense whatsoever, the moves they make in the transfer market aren't established players with
14:17no room to develop.
14:18It's gems you've probably never heard of who probably don't immediately then go into the starting XI.
14:24His job is to take what is already, in my opinion, a very good XI and get them away from
14:30the bottom of the table.
14:32Get them where this team should be, like the top end.
14:35But yeah, that's it.
14:35So if you have enjoyed this little foray into the hypothetical, let us know what you make of it in
14:41the comments.
14:41Tottenham fans, are you excited by Frank?
14:43Are you sad about Ange?
14:44Would you rather had somebody else?
14:46All thoughts, feelings, of course, welcome.
14:48And of course, if you haven't already subscribed to us here at ACFC, please do click the button.
14:52Because maybe, maybe this is the 100,000 subs video.
14:55Maybe this is the video that do that.
14:57Come on, Tottenham fans.
14:58You don't want it to be something I do on Arsenal or Liverpool, do you?
15:01Have some pride.
15:02Click the thing.
15:03You get me across all the social medias at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
15:07And that's it.
15:07I've said everything already.
15:09This is just a fantastic appointment, in my opinion.
15:13Well done, everyone involved.
15:15Goodbye.
15:17Goodbye.
Comments