Yesterday, Tottenham Hotspur released a lengthy statement from CEO Vinai Venkatesham on its website, and that was subsequently printed in the matchday programme for today’s Premier League match. It ends
what had been a protracted silence by the Spurs CEO; while the club has struggled on the pitch, the decision-makers have been almost completely silent, choosing to brief things anonymously through trusted English media sources rather than make an outright statement, or better yet, a public forum where questions can be asked and answered.
It’s actually a pretty good statement. Venkatesham is a gifted communicator who has a way with words, and he hits the right notes here. Obviously when the vibes at the club are this toxic it won’t take much for Spurs fans to find things in there to get mad about, but as far as statements go it’s fine — it acknowledges the elephant in the room that things are not going especially well, but tries to find the balance between acknowledging the clear failures of the men’s team on the pitch with a message of optimism towards the future. It’s a lot, it says, We’re working on it, and we all want the same thing: sustained success for Tottenham Hotspur.
You can and should read the whole thing, but here’s the main passage I wanted to highlight.
Our focus is sporting success, and in that we share the same ambition as our supporters. We know that words carry little weight without action, which is why recent months have been spent undertaking a thorough review of our operations.
Opportunities for a genuine reset are rare in Clubs of our size, and we have been determined not to waste this moment as we make the changes needed behind the scenes to compete consistently at the highest level.
Football has changed significantly in recent years, and while the club has evolved and achieved incredible things, we recognise that in some key areas we have not always kept pace. We all feel the gap between where we are and where we want to be, and while we know progress takes time, we share your impatience to close it. Our supporters want wins and performances to be proud of, and we know the men’s first team has fallen short of where we want to be so far this season. Significant work is underway.
Venkatesham goes on to highlight the need to strengthen the men’s first team squad, improve relations with supporters, continue to improve the pipeline between the academy and the first team, robustly support and improve Tottenham Women, and improve player development which includes the appointment of John Heitinga as assistant coach and the strengthening of the medical and sports science departments, among others.
Vinai’s message was notably silent about the overall job performance of Thomas Frank. But after watching Tottenham Hotspur lose to a terrible West Ham team that entered today seven points from relegation safety, and after weeks of fence sitting and milquetoast patience about Spurs’ performance under Frank, I’ve reached the point where it’s time for me to make a stand:
Thomas Frank is not the right person to lead Tottenham Hotspur and it’s time for him to go.
Like most of you, I watched Tottenham’s first team put in an absolute stinker of a first half today against West Ham. I cheered with most of you when Spurs played better in the second half and leveled the score, only to concede the match winner in injury time. There are usually positives you can take from a match, even bad ones and losses, and this was no exception — Spurs looked significantly better in the second half and had a pretty clear penalty shout waved off after a lengthy VAR review. But there’s no sugar-coating this loss. While there’s no such thing as an easy Premier League match and this is a London derby, this is a historically bad West Ham team. Spurs conceded 2.96 xG against a team that hadn’t won a league match since November 8, and that lost 3-0 to bottom-of-the-table Wolves.
I’ve been a Tottenham fan a long time — nearly 20 years. In that time I’ve seen a lot of football, both terrible and exceptional, and a lot of managers come and go. The one thing you can say about football club managers is that in the end it is inevitable that they leave, one way or another. That said, the churn of football managers at Tottenham Hotspur has been noted by many as unacceptable, and after the club sacked the manager who won them their first trophy in 18 years, I found myself desperately hoping that they would, finally, give the new guy a chance.
There is virtue in patience, especially for a club and fan base that is notoriously fickle. I hate the manager churn and how historically how quickly Spurs have been to fire managers instead of giving them time. But this is a season that has tested the resolve of even the most saint-like Spurs fan. It would be one thing to give time and grace to a new manager implementing a new style of football, if there were signals of direction he wanted to take the club. This season, I am not seeing any of those signs. The football is turgid, directionless, and unsuccessful. While the squad is injured and missing key personnel and relying on young developing talent that may not be up to the task, I have consistently failed to identify any sort of vision for how Thomas Frank wants his teams to play. There’s nothing aspirational in the way Frankball is implemented at Spurs right now. There’s just bad football, few chances, fewer wins, and toxic vibes among supporters, match-going and not.
To be fair, this is not entirely Thomas Frank’s fault. Tottenham’s squad is appallingly constructed, even acknowledging the long term injuries to players like Dejan Kulusevski, James Maddison, and Dominic Solanke. Spurs said goodbye to their captain and best player Son Heung-Min this summer, shortly after saying goodbye to club all-time scoring leader Harry Kane, but despite spending an incredible amount of money over the past few seasons, have not managed to build a squad that can cope with those losses. The players currently at the club are well-meaning and many of them could very well develop into top footballers, but are currently not at the level required to compete even for mid-table honors, much less Champions League qualification.
The Lewis family also took the extraordinary step of firing long time club chairman Daniel Levy as a means of converting Spurs into a modern, more nimble football operation. In the process, there has been significant confusion over who does what at the club, especially around football talent identification and recruitment. The embarrassing resignation of co-Sporting Director Fabio Paratici to a similar role in Fiorentina, four months after he was appointed — not to mention the weirdness of a co-Sporting Director to begin with — is one example of this confusion. There’s no publicly available organziational chart to know who does what at the club. With Paratici soon departing, is Johan Lange in charge? Is a new Director of Football coming? We don’t know. It’s maddening!
However, Thomas Frank is in charge of training the players and coaching in matches, and the football has been awful. Up until now, I have resisted the calls for Frank’s sacking from the fan base because I maintained hope that, somehow, things will click and the team will start showing at least some signs of life, something for us to point to and say see that? there’s a plan here, we just need time and players to implement it. But there’s nothing there for us to hang our hats on — just more turgid football with increasingly frustrated players in a home stadium that is the pride of England but a nightmare for supporters watching their team play.
Frank is a nice man. Sacking him would not be the end of his story, nor does it mean that he would not be successful elsewhere — he’s proven he can be a successful manager. But it’s been clear from the beginning that he was an awkward fit for this football club. His tactics, while effective at Brentford with an entire club structure aligned behind him, do not align with the ethos of Tottenham Hotspur. It has reached the point where continuing to back him despite plenty of evidence that things are not working would be worse than letting him go for an interim replacement. The supporters are mutinous, Frank continues to give statements to the media that are, to put it mildly, tone-deaf and at times enraging.
The players are frustrated too, though as of yet they have not leaked their dissatisfaction towards the manager via anonymous briefs to reporters. That’s to their credit, but the signs are there. This is not a happy football team, and I can no longer say with any justification that there are compelling reasons not to fire Thomas Frank for a caretaker manager until after this summer’s World Cup.
I consider myself one of the more level-headed, look-to-the-horizon, patient Spurs fans. Hell, I gave Jose Mourinho a fighting chance for my support, something I was incredibly hesitant to do. Thomas Frank has now lost me, much like Nuno Espirito Santo lost me, and he needs to go.
But it’s more than just the manager. Tottenham Hotspur needs a hard reset at all levels of the organization. If I could wave a magic wand to fix things, it would involve wholesale changes to the way Spurs are run, from the executive level down, including replacing Sporting Director Johan Lange with a competent Director of Football who can implement a clear vision of attacking, dynamic football, regardless of who is managing the team. In that sense, I do not put the bulk of the blame on Thomas Frank for the failures of Tottenham Hotspur this season. But he is in charge of the first team, and in football the manager is always the first to go.
Vinai Venkatesham alludes to significant change in his statement to supporters. True change takes time to implement and patience from all involved. I acknowledge what Venkatesham is saying, that the club needs everyone pulling in the same direction in order to move the boat down the canal and into open water. But it’s also important to acknowledge when you get things wrong, and take concrete steps to make sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes. While I appreciate Venkatesham finally making a statement, he also needs to take responsibility, and decisive action to start the process for change. Even better would be to be upfront and honest with supporters about how long it might take to retune the club and get it to where it needs to go to compete with the top of the table. I suspect fans would be significantly more patient with whoever is in charge of the club if club leadership was honest and forthright about the need for significant change and development, and that the process will take time.
That starts with acknowledging that Thomas Frank is no longer suitable to lead this football team. I’m not sure it matters who takes charge — Ryan Mason? John Heitinga? Justin Cochrane? Give it to someone who understands the club ethos, is willing to implement a style of football that gets the most of the players currently at their disposal, and work towards a permanent replacement this summer who can continue to play football the Tottenham way.
I love this club. It’s been central to my life for nearly two decades now. Winning the Europa League, even in the context of everything else that happened that season, was one of the best moments of my sports fandom — in any sport. It’s sad to see that energy, joy, and optimism squandered in such a short period of time. Thomas Frank doesn’t and shouldn’t carry the whole of the burden of Tottenham Hotspur’s failures, but it’s also equally clear that he is no longer the person who can lead us out of the wilderness. It’s time to let Frank go and start the process of finding someone who can.
