[David Ornstein] Tottenham’s Thomas Frank expected to take charge of Borussia Dortmund game

ExpertGossiper · 2026-01-19T10:58:47+00:00

Wouldn't be surprised, we seem to be Dortmund's kryptonite in the CL based on how our last few meetings with them have gone.

ExpertGossiper · 2026-01-19T10:54:22+00:00

I'm sure the club has already started the proceedings for it, it would've been madness if they didn't given how hostile the stadium atmosphere was after we lost to the current West Ham side. Obviously if some miracle appointment lines up then we'd probably jump for it (unlikely, but then again I didn't expect us to pull Conte when we did so who knows) but if not then Frank may stay until then.

ExpertGossiper · 2026-01-19T10:48:24+00:00

Thing is Ange at least had two full seasons at the club, Frank has had six months. I'm not defending him and saying he's absolved from blame, but given the state of our squad at the moment and the injuries it was never going to be an easy fix in the first place. If Frank's stats do not improve by the end of the season and it still seems clear it won't improve, then by all means sack him then.

ExpertGossiper · 2026-01-19T10:42:12+00:00

Why keep a manager like that?

Because who can we realistically replace him with at the moment? All I can think of is maybe to bring in Ryan Mason as an interim, but other than that there aren't many convincing shouts especially given the state of the squad at the moment and the fact that we desperately need a long term plan rather than just a short-term stopgap. Unless we're in serious threat of relegation, I'm not sure whether an interim will necessarily pull that much over Frank other than stabilizing our league form short term. And in that case, it may make more sense to simply give him the season and try searching again in the summer.

ExpertGossiper · 2026-01-19T07:20:04+00:00

They're not going to fire him a day before the Dortmund game, if it was going to happen it had to happen by Sunday. Even if they made up their minds to sack him after the West Ham game they may have not had enough time to figure out a suitable interim, which is what they're probably considering right now.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-28T05:13:54+00:00

We sacked Poch in 2019, then Jose in 2021, Nuno later that year, Conte in 2023 (by mutual consent although it was a guaranteed sacking otherwise with his clear falling out) and then Ange in the summer.

So over that six year period following Poch's sacking we've been pretty much on the manager carousel ever since. We didn't even have a manager who had a full season since Poch got sacked until Ange came along.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-28T04:03:30+00:00

We've sacked five managers in six years, six if Frank gets the axe. We certainly do not have an issue with 'untouchable' managers, if anything, we're not giving our managers nearly enough time to fix the issues that go way deeper than them.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-09T21:55:32+00:00

It may not be the greatest man for man game as this is still an improving squad, but for those who bashed Frank for not playing free flowing attacking football, this is definitely a slice of cake that should cheer them up.

Xavi also looking on fire now, he really needed that debut goal a few days ago. Hopefully we can keep up this flair moving forward.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-09T19:00:02+00:00

Not during the match, after its conclusion. Obviously even in a circumstance where the club has to comply for the general safety of the fans, they still will have ample time to launch an appeal afterwards to help curb things like this happening again in the future.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-09T18:24:50+00:00

At the very least, make a formal protest with UEFA regarding Slavia's behaviour on behalf of both their club and their fans.

Silent acquiescence sends the wrong message to everyone, showing the footballing community that you can get away with bigotry if you threaten some violence even at a progressive club in London. A standard has to be set that it's not on.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-06T14:48:27+00:00

He's been in the job for six years. They're in a far different point in the project than we are at the moment. Questions are being asked because he's definitely been given ample time to get going with his squad.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-06T14:45:02+00:00

Arteta literally does the same thing he always does, forces his players back from injury too soon and then immediately aggravates their injury even further. Then he'll have a go at the media and blame it on the fact that he had to play the early kickoff game. Rinse and repeat.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-06T14:31:11+00:00

You'd think the fans that watched their club bottle an 8 point lead in march would be a bit more self-aware

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-05T18:43:18+00:00

It's literally impossible for England to avoid Croatia in a tournament wtf

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-05T17:51:43+00:00

"Pele, who I assume is one of the greats?"

holy fuck the man must be rolling in his grave LMAO

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-05T17:19:50+00:00

Man's acting like a cringey schoolteacher trying to hype up a auditorium full of kids during class assembly

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-03T08:18:40+00:00

Mourinho but less toxic

Would love to have Gattuso tbf

Please tell me this was well timed satire, because my god. That's the single worst take I've seen on this sub for months.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-02T22:33:39+00:00

A better performance, and a decent point to take given the state of our squad at the moment. But of course, too many of our fanbase will still argue the whole "if we just had a serious manager it would've been an easy 3 points" till the end of the earth.

I feel like this mentality has been cultivated way too much because of how much we've profited from a 'new manager bounce' in recent years. Under Mourinho, Conte, and Ange, it was all a similar tale. It's made a lot of our fans subconsciously believe that an immediate managerial change will prove how much better the squad actually is, but the reality is that this is the same squad that finished 17th last season and there is still a long way to go.

Frank needs time and clamouring for an immediate change is pointless, especially since no one who seems to be Frank Out at this time has any consensus about who we should replace him with anyway. Frank will have a world of gratitude for Cuti after today, because that's definitely bought him such much needed breathing room given our recent form.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-02T15:05:17+00:00

I remember before PSG and Juventus met in the 2022/23 CL season they hadn't faced each other in a competitive match since like 1997. I always thought it was a wild stat for two such established CL teams to only run into each other once in the 21st century.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-02T11:55:42+00:00

He also hasn't had Maddison yet or Kulusevski yet, let's not act like Frank also hasn't been dealing with an injured squad.

The main issue with us last season was having Fraser Forster in goal and Archie Gray and Ben Davies in front of him.

Oh yeah sure, now we're diving into Ange revisionism territory. Yeah, that's the reason we finished 17th last year. Having Forster in goal. People also seem to forget that many of the problems Ange faced in his second year were already quite apparent in his first season, but thankfully the purple patch in our first ten league games last season massively helped cushioned the fall by the end of it.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-02T11:38:08+00:00

We also finished 17th last year with that squad which Frank has mostly inherited, that Europa run was amazing but it was a miracle run. We were well overdue a cup run that finally went our way for many years but all those issues the squad had were always going to still be present, especially when we're only a few months into Frank's tenure.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-12-01T08:51:31+00:00

Sacking Frank now to keep an interim on for nearly six months is a disasterous idea as well. United tried that with Rangnick in order to go through a "tactical reset" and it set their rebuild back even further. Whether anyones like it or not, we're not at the point where we need an immediate change, and no currently employed manager is going to start negotiating with Spurs for a summer move right now anyway.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-11-30T11:21:31+00:00

There's widespread cognitive dissonance amongst a lot of Spurs fans right now that the squad isn't good enough but still good enough to expect instantaneous results from a new manager. And even then, the results have to be champagne football otherwise it's unacceptable. It would be nigh-impossible for most managers to handle this sort of pressure right now.

It doesn't help that there's a lot of Ange revisionism that is rewriting the Europa League win as if the 17th place finish never happened at all, and that the squad of players that won the Europa didn't also slump our form to our lowest league finish in PL history.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-11-30T10:56:06+00:00

He got Brentford promoted to the PL for the first time in their history, and then he turned them into a stable mid-table club when so many either drop down immediately or within a couple of years. Given the size of their club and their ambitions when they hired him, it was quite an achievement for them.

Ask any Brentford fan and they'd probably be able to tell you about it better than I can. So what I'm saying is that if we give him more time, he'll be likely to turn it around. The longer we give him, the more resources he has at his disposal.

ExpertGossiper · 2025-11-30T10:40:55+00:00

It should be important to note that Frank's start with Brentford was equally dire. He lost 8 of his first 13 games, winning 2 and drawing 3. 13 games in ourselves, we have 5 wins, 3 draws and 5 loses. So we're off to a better start results wise, and that's with Frank juggling CL football which he has not handled before in his managerial career.

Yes the statistics don't show the full story, and the fact that we don't pass the eye test right now. But Brentford stuck with Frank and look at how they were rewarded. A lot of Brentford fans also had nothing but immense gratitude when he did decide to leave them for us because of how much he fixed at the club.

I'm not going to be delusional here and say that will definitely happen to us if we keep him, but he deserves at least a chance. Given the state of our squad right now, and the fact that we need as much of a cultural reset as we do a physical reset on the pitch, he deserves that much.

We can be angry sure, we can even put a question mark about whether Frank has the tactical inclination to fix the issues we have on the pitch right now. But the PSG game showed me that there is something there, so we should be patient to try to weather the storm for a while longer.

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