Frank's Tottenham Tenure Hardly Justifies "Most In-Demand Manager" Billing

The Times delivered quite the headline this week: Thomas Frank should rank as the most in-demand manager in football. Cue the Twitter eruptions from 400 bewildered Tottenham fans questioning the premise with considerable profanity.

Most won't have bothered reading past the paywall, but those who did discovered the column itself somehow manages to be even more audacious than the headline suggests. Alyson Rudd's piece argues Frank genuinely deserves consideration above the likes of Xabi Alonso, Roberto De Zerbi, Enzo Maresca, and even Zinedine Zidane. Not Ruben Amorim or Ange Postecoglou either, apparently.

This becomes rather difficult to square with Frank's domestic numbers. Spurs have won just two of their last 17 Premier League matches and currently sit 16th, five points above the relegation zone. That's not exactly the CV that gets your phone ringing at Manchester City.

The column leans heavily on Spurs' fourth-place finish in the Champions League league phase as evidence of Frank's quality. There's merit to their European performances, certainly. Yet context matters considerably here. As a sixth English team, Spurs benefited from the competition's unusual structure this season, with half the top 12 finishers coming from the Premier League. More tellingly, Frank's side faced nobody who finished higher than 11th except PSG (who hammered them 5-3), and drew four of the eventual bottom six—three at home. Playing the weakest opposition available hardly constitutes a ringing endorsement.

The column's central argument—that Spurs fans are cruel, entitled, and impatient for wanting their team to not languish in a relegation scrap—rings hollow when you consider what supporters have endured. Ticket prices rank among Europe's highest, yet performances have been frequently dire, particularly in derbies against Chelsea and Arsenal that seemed lost before kickoff.

Rudd also emphasises Frank's character: he's down-to-earth, didn't enter management for money, and once installed a piano at Brentford's training ground because Bryan Mbeumo enjoyed playing it. Charming details, certainly, but they don't win football matches or keep clubs in the Premier League.

The column notably fails to address a rather inconvenient fact: Brentford have actually improved since Frank's departure despite losing him, 40 goals from last season, and their captain. A rookie manager has managed to maintain their trajectory, which rather undermines the notion that Frank was irreplaceable.

There's also the curious matter of how Rudd previously assessed Ange Postecoglou, describing him as a "cult leader turning Spurs into a parody account" during a rough patch of one win in eight. By that logic, Frank's two wins in 17 deserves similar scrutiny. Yet suddenly the columnist insists injury problems and budget constraints shouldn't excuse poor results—except, apparently, when the manager in question once chatted politely on Zoom during a modest loft extension.

The uncomfortable truth is that Frank took a 17th-place team and left them in 16th, five points closer to the drop. European performances can't simply erase that reality, nor should they exempt a manager from legitimate criticism when domestic form collapses so spectacularly.

Perhaps in twelve months, once memories fade sufficiently, someone will pen a thoughtpiece about why Keith Andrews deserves his opportunity at a big club. The cycle continues.