There’s a lot to unpick after Tottenham Hotspur’s 1-0 loss at home to Chelsea yesterday, but the enduring image that people are talking about was the apparent snub by Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence to their
head coach Thomas Frank after the match. Caught on the tunnel camera and by fans with their cellphones, Frank appeared to try and convince Micky and Djed to go applaud the home fans despite the result, with both players, visibly frustrated, seeming to brush him off. Frank just stared at the backs of both of them as they went down the tunnel to the home changing room.
Frank was, naturally, asked about it in the post-match press conference, but the Spurs boss didn’t seem nearly as concerned about it as others did.
“All the players are of course frustrated. They would like to do well, they would like to win, they would like to perform well, so I understand that. I think it’s difficult to be consistent in good times and in bad times. That is why I went around to the fans as I did. It is more fun when we win, I can tell you that.
“I understand why you ask the question, but I think that is one of the small issues. We have Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence who are doing everything they can. They perform very well so far this season and everyone is frustrated. We do things in a different way, so I don’t think it is a big problem.”
Of course, social media and punditry is full of breathless exhortations of how Frank has “lost the dressing room” and how this could be the “beginning of the end of his tenure.” While Van de Ven and Spence’s actions certainly aren’t a very good lock, it’s not at all clear that the incident signifies either of those things. At minimum, and possibly maximum, it suggests that the players were every bit as angry and frustrated about the results as the fans were, and the decision to walk back to the tunnel might have been a reaction to the chorus of boos that rained down from the stands at the final whistle.
The truth is, we don’t know. It might be a small thing by two frustrated players who both had bad games. It could also, as some suggest, be the first cracks showing in Frank’s control of the dressing room (though that feels unlikely to me). It definitely seems like the end of Tottenham fans’ patience with Frank’s current tactics which has led to Spurs’ present position of fourth in the table but has offered up some absolutely diabolical football in the process.
I’d argue, however, that as bad as the football has been (and it’s been BAD, folks), I’ve never been supportive of fans booing players during or after losses. The fact that this is happening now feels to me to be evidence of a chronic lack of patience from a fanbase that has been especially fickle over the past decade… with reason, but still.
Let me make my position plain: I’m not happy with the way Spurs are playing either. Frank’s preferred tactics, combined with what now appears to be a somewhat disjointed summer transfer window, has led to a team that is defensively solid but completely toothless in attack and buildup, almost an inverse of what we saw under Ange Postecoglou (at least in his first season). But we also know that a Frank team has a history of being a slow burner at least to start, and that it takes a while for teams to fully internalize what he wants his teams to do. I think he has an imperfect squad that’s hindered by significant injuries and that still needs some key pieces to make it work.
I also am irritated by the same fanbase that criticized Daniel Levy for changing managers so frequently now already calling for further change. While I refuse to bring up the Ange Wars™ from last season, so many things have changed from last year — Levy and Ange are out, Vinai Ventaketsham and the Lewis Kids are in charge now, there’s a new recruitment structure in place, etc. — that if ever there was a strong argument to stay the course and give the manager time, it’s now.
Frank, to his credit, didn’t sugar-coat just how bad that match on Saturday was.
“We all sense the frustration and the emotions. That is part of football. It is extremely painful and of course that is part of the job to face you guys now and answer the very good questions when you just are burning inside. And you like to find solutions, watch the game back and see what went wrong, but I think it’s about trying to stay calm. In general, I think Chelsea were good and we were definitely second best.
“We performed badly. I think we lacked energy and intensity and that freshness we didn’t have that. Then I think the high pressure they came with, I don’t think we solved it well enough even though we worked on it, so that we need to keep working on. I think our high pressure, we lacked a little bit in the beginning until we got on top of it and then they went up 1-0 and we are chasing. Then it’s a bad circle where we are chasing, lacking intensity and energy and bad decisions.”
Guglielmo Vicario, who had eight saves and almost single-handedly kept the match from devolving into a blowout loss, was similarly direct.
“It’s tough to accept but this is the reality of today’s game. We need to look inside us and we need to do more because when you play for this club, we have to do things at 100 per cent. I know it’s tough but we have to do that every single day.
“When you go inside it’s tough to accept because you expect yourself to perform at your best, with a lot of energy but something today didn’t go in the right direction. Everyone knows that personally, we have to do a little bit more if we want to achieve good results, make everyone happy and make ourselves happy. Today is a bad day for us, we didn’t perform at our best level.”
Everyone hates losing. Spurs fans hate losing to Chelsea and Arsenal most of all. Spurs have beaten the Blues just once in the past 18 meetings, and this one felt winnable. And when that loss comes courtesy of some of the most insipid football we’ve seen in quite some time it makes it especially hard to take. Nobody’s happy, everyone’s frustrated. That’s quite a nasty concoction to have to choke down. That said, it feels pretty important to keep those jerking knees in check, back the team, and give everyone involved time to adapt and change.
What else can we do? After all, things could always be worse. We could be West Ham.
