In May, Thomas Frank was likely preparing for his fifth season in the Premier League with Brentford.
Few fancied Frank’s Bees to outlast one when they were promoted in 2020/21, but the Dane has performed continued miracles in West London.
That miracle-worker is now at a club with better resources, Champions League football and a fanbase expectant of great results. However, Spurs finished 17th last season, and the players are downbeat about the loss of the recently sacked Ange Postecoglou.
Although silverware arrived, the style of play deployed by the Greek Australian was a form of football extremism that failed.
Frank has plenty of work to do. The club recently celebrated the end of a long-awaited trophy drought; his performance in the Premier League will be closely watched.
Spurs chairman Daniel Levy has experimented with every brand of manager under the sun since the sacking of Mauricio Pochettino in 2019.
Whether it be the serial winners of Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte, or the likeable man-manager of Nuno Espirito Santo, no manager has made it to a third season since, but optimism must be higher than ever that new man Thomas Frank is the man to do that.
Who is Thomas Frank?
Born in the small Danish town of Frederiksværk, Frank played amateur football until he turned 23 in 1995, when he began coaching the Under-8s team of his hometown.
Rising through the age groups and ranks through 18 years of youth coaching, including stints in the Danish national team youth sides, he earned his first senior gig at Brøndby in 2013.
His three years in the Danish Superliga were nothing out of the ordinary; he earned qualification to the Europa League twice but failed to reach the group stages. He resigned after the chairman anonymously criticised Frank on an online supporters’ forum in 2016.
Frank joined Brentford in an assistant role in 2016, before being handed the job after Dean Smith departed in 2018.
After a rocky start, he picked up form to finish mid-table in the Championship, before earning promotion to the Championship after a 2-0 win against Swansea City in the 2021 play-off final, a year after losing to Fulham at the same stage.
His performances in the Premier League are well-documented, and despite losing key players often, the problem-solving and impressive recruitment of the Danish manager and the Bees have kept the squad floating in the top flight with one of the lowest wage budgets.
In many ways, Frank is the complete opposite of his predecessor, Ange Postecoglou.
Frank vs Postecoglou
Sit around a table with five fans of Premier League clubs, and you will learn that Ange Postecoglou was one of the most polarising managers in English football history.
To take a guess, you will hear words such as ‘arrogant’, ‘disrespectful to the media’ or ‘tactically naïve’ for those who dislike the ex-Spurs manager, while perhaps those who like the Australian will say ‘he gets it’, ‘speaks his mind’ or that he is a 'great motivator’.
Whatever you might think of him, none of those listed traits, whether positive or negative, can be particularly linked to Thomas Frank.
The Dane is extremely generous and open with everyone. He regularly offers insight, opinion and engages with the media. To avoid the generalisation that he speaks well, you can scour YouTube to learn more about the human.
Whether it be his appearance on Monday Night Football two seasons back, or his tactical analysis on The Coaches Voice of his first game in the Premier League, where his Brentford side defeated Arsenal 2-0, he is a pleasure to watch, and someone you would like to sit down and have a beverage with - beer or coffee - make your mind up.
For Tottenham Hotspur, this works. Of course it works. The club makes you want to rip your hair out sometimes as a manager. Resources are not a guarantee, and the fans are impatient.
Fortunately for Frank, he has patience – he will not be cupping his ear to the away fans or snapping back at journalists on Friday press conferences.
Postecoglou was the right man to get Tottenham across the line for silverware. He was a figurehead in N17. A man who defended his ideals and overcame the critics to create history. In many ways, he represented what the North London club is all about – if Audere Est Facere was a man, it was him.
Now is the time for the ship to be steadied. The monkey is off Spurs’ back, and Frank can focus on rejuvenating the team back to the top places in the Premier League through his expertise.
Tactical Prowess
All credit goes to our Brentford writer, Jack Brace, for this section. For years, he has closely analysed Frank at press conferences and has encapsulated the new Spurs manager's obsession with tactics.
Described as a methodical manager, Frank is all about the smallest of margins in football, and if there is a gain to be made, he will exploit it.
This can boil down to kick-offs, throw-ins or set pieces in your half. Those minor improvements have generated success for the Bees in the Premier League.
Most notably, during the early stages of last season, Brentford scored in the opening minute in three consecutive games against Manchester City, West Ham, and his new team, Tottenham Hotspur.
Bizarre approaches have been used in the past, such as 'sky ball', where two players would sit at kick-off, one would flick it up, and the ball would be hoofed directly up in the air, therefore creating an unpredictability for defenders.
Each opposition will mean a different approach for Frank and his coaching staff. Generally, this is the difference between the former and the new Spurs manager.
Postecoglou bullishly played similarly without adaptation, which had mixed results, whereas Frank will change his approach to provide his team with the best chance of being in every game, and is not afraid to change formation if players are unavailable. Last season, Frank opted for a 4-2-3-1 to utilise Mikkel Damsgaard's creativity as Brentford did last campaign.
The process of such detail and micro-analysis is likely only to come to fruition for his new side once he has settled, and his players understand the basics, however.
His approach is purely statistically driven. Frank is a believer in the expected goals (xG) model, and believes players shooting less from the edge of the box will mean higher-quality chances to score.
Personnel
Frank is a fan of the ball-playing goalkeeper and will regularly encourage playing out the back to focus on his possession-based style, which suits the abilities of current Spurs number one, Guglielmo Vicario.
Ball-carrying has evolved greatly, and the abilities that the likes of Micky van de Ven and Destiny Udogie hold in that compartment will benefit from the non-negotiables of Frank's style.
Unlike Postecoglou's approach of touchline wingers, Frank has had bundles of success with Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa, who invert to add several goals to this game. Unlike the profiles of Brennan Johnson and Heung-Min Son, it will be interesting to see the Dane's approach to his wide players in N17.
Though with the success of Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney at Brentford, Dominic Solanke could be a key player and goalscorer in attack under Frank.
Pep Guardiola, who stood alongside Frank as the longest-serving managers at their respective clubs in the Premier League before this move, said earlier this season on the Brentford coach at the time that he will “sooner or later be appointed with a team that fights for the higher targets and he will do it really well.”
Now, he gets a chance to improve a club with great potential, an extra challenge to his career. He will have his firsts in the coming season, and his first match will be an opportunity to win a Super Cup when the Lilywhites face Champions League winners PSG.
The fans who were adamant that Postecoglou should have stayed will need convincing at first; naturally, their emotional attachment to Tottenham Hotspur was questioned when the head coach who delivered a trophy for the first time in a long time was immediately dismissed.
However contentious that decision was, there was always a great case to sack a coach who managed Tottenham Hotspur’s worst finish in Premier League history.
Thomas Frank is an exciting character – tactically and emotionally intelligent, and likeable to everyone. Should the same miracles that were exercised at Brentford translate to North London, Frank will be fine for reaching the three-year mark.
