Are Tottenham In A Death Spiral? | Thomas Frank on the Brink, Replacement Candidates & The Ownership

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1:42Jimenez, Vicario just had the head start and got that. but he's gifted it straight back and then it goes now Harry Wilson

1:56horrific scenes in the back for Tottenham Vicario in a muddle Tottenham two down in the blink of an eye hello everybody welcome back to Rule the Roach podcast Gavin mate help me help me make sense of everything right now I have no idea who we are, what we are, what we're trying to do. Does Thomas Frank even know? I don't know. Do you know? Please give me answers. Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm probably just going to raise further questions, really. It's... Equally valid. Equally valid, mate. I watched your post-match thing and I agree, really. I think we're going through maybe another mini-crisis.

2:44and I don't know I don't know how either I feel about us at the moment I don't know whether it'd be too dramatic to start looking at it as a kind of wider more long-term issue that needs to be fixed immediately or whether we've just employed the wrong guy at the wrong time and it's maybe as simple as that or maybe things could still turn it around so basically I'm just throwing out every single possible option and I also don't really know where to make where to start with it well let's start with him the man in charge thomas frank where are you at

3:24so i i was actually quite excited maybe excited to find a point on it i was actually quite happy when we first employed him i thought it was a fairly safe bet um i thought that you know it would make us more solid and all of that, all that kind of stuff. And actually we started off pretty well too, you know, that the PSG game was really encouraging. So was the first home game against Burnley as well. I think that's the only home game we've actually picked up any points on this season.

3:58But I, I already worry that the job is almost slightly too big for him. He just looks, he looks a bit defeated. I think he looks a bit beaten in his body language. even physically i think he looks he looks tired he looks worn a little bit honestly sorry to jump in but i felt that in the pre-match presser ahead of that fulham game i was watching it for the you know for patreon and everything and i was looking at it i was like it doesn't look and i hate doing this kind of like the the cod psychologist thing of reading into body language and all that type of stuff. But comparing and contrasting with previous iterations of him that we've seen where he does seem like a fairly upbeat guy in his own way, I agree with you.

4:47He looks quite defeated and it's quite alarming. It's the 30th of November. Like, you know, like, what? What's going on? Tottenham's going on. That's what's happened to him, I guess. And it will do it to the best of us. I really worry that he's that he's sort of overthinking everything now and I think he's obviously a bright guy and I actually like him I think on a personal level I really like how he seems to approach things I like his ethos and you know he seems like a really nice guy I know that doesn't necessarily count for anything elite in elite level sports but nevertheless he's the kind of guy that I like to think could be a good Spurs manager he doesn't seem to have much ego um and because of that I don't really have any particular real feelings of anger towards him I just feel like I was gonna say but yeah but yeah but also after the North London derby you know last weekend I felt that that was such a such a kind of he was almost neglecting what you need to do as a Spurs manager in those kinds of big games.

6:02I can't remember who said this. I think it keeps coming up that he pretty much keeps coming up with the wrong answers to every single question. And it's even like, even like the substitutions yesterday seemed to come at exactly the wrong time when we were just building up a bit of momentum. Bizarre, wasn't it? It was so weird. Yeah. And it's just like. Completely like stunted whatever momentum. Yeah. That we were growing. I don't. So I don't know. I just I really worry that he isn't it's maybe way too early to say this, but he just isn't the right guy for us at the moment. But then I don't know who necessarily would be.

6:37You know, I was under the impression that he would be this adaptable coach that could also get us playing some good football. And I think it's quite telling, maybe, though, that Brentford, they're not far away from us in the table. They lost Mbwemo. They lost Frank as well. um they lost with her as well as their whole coaching staff with frank as well 90 of it exactly and so they seem to have dealt with that enormous upheaval in a far better way than a club like spurs would so i wonder whether actually clubs like that they're just the structure is in place in a way that that it just isn't at tottenham and we've already gone through a period of upheaval you know with levy leaving and i know this is gonna be an unpopular thing to say but i do wonder whether they almost jettisoned him at the wrong time I understand that his time was up at the club but I wonder whether almost structurally that's left a bit of a vacuum you don't really know what's going on behind the scenes but it feels to me that something culturally is broken at the moment and it's quite intangible but surely no I know what you're saying that I feel that way because it just doesn't feel right.

7:50We've watched this team. We've been invested in the law of this club for decades. The majority of us are all listening to this right now. And you can just feel when it isn't right. It hasn't been right since the stadium, to be honest, since the stadium was open. Because to me, it felt like we were at a real existential crossroads at that point. with Pochettino spearheading that. And I get it. I know it's boring that I keep going on about this Pochettino period in this era. I know I need to get over it to a degree, but I still think it's relevant to what we're seeing today because that to me is the, that's the crossroads that Spurs arrived at.

8:32Spurs arrived at this place where we pretty much, we assembled and inherited. There was an element of luck to it, which I think you need unless you have Manchester City type wealth there was an element of luck and careful planning which came together to see spurs stand a real chance of actually winning something significant and that decision at that point was clearly made to neglect the footballing operation to see what it can do well it's gotten this far let's see how it can go let's put our focus onto hotels nfl formula one all that type of crap that we all like to have a laugh about and we all like the gallows humor element of but you can't help but feel he's seriously coming back to bite us now when you look at that squad and we'll get onto the squad we'll get onto the players and everything is happily look at the squad that is comprised of i think you would say a number of high quality individuals but as a team as an overall picture, what do they represent?

9:40What sort of system do they all play to? You would probably say many different systems, hence why we have this problem. But I guess to bring it back to Frank and to bring it back to the club and where they're at right now, in the short term, I'm in this internal wrangle of, are you being too emotional? surely we need to at some point stick with a manager we need to see what he can do with Kulisevsky we need to see what he can do in Madison so on and so forth but then there is an there's just a stronger voice inside of me saying you're not seeing anything from him yet other than he doesn't seem to be capable at this level he just he just he just doesn't seem to have whatever it is the the x factor or whatever it is that's required to be a top level manager it it doesn't seem to be there it feels like it's already broken it feels like i mean that that the the fulham game already was that that felt like death throes of a managerial reign already yeah We were awful.

10:56Again, the much required context here. This is a team that had won the point away from home this season. How many times is this going to happen to us? Wolves, I think, hadn't won a single game or gotten a point in however long. That was terrible. That almost started a terrible run of form. We were awful that day. They're literally the worst team in the league, Wolves as well. And we just scraped a point against them. I agree. I was thinking the other day about when, you know, that final camera shot of Potch looking really proud around White Hart Lane. Don't do it to me. And just what like a magnetic character he felt at that time.

11:39And I wonder whether actually we've evolved into the size of club where there needs to be a certain size of personality also that takes over the football club. And in some ways, I think Ange had that in a slightly different way, in a much more spiky way. But I think that at this level, the pressure has really got to him really quickly because he seems like a totally different character. And, you know, you don't know really what goes on behind the scenes, of course. But I can only assume that some of that must filter down into the players. And it certainly looks like that on the pitch as well, because I know that no matter what you want to say tactically, just the very basics, the confidence levels look totally shot.

12:28I saw a stat as well the other day that we've completed or attempted the fewest through balls in the entire league so far this season. And I think that's really indicative of the way that we're trying to play football. We were just, you know, yesterday seemingly putting crosses into the box continuously. that's the only way that we seem to try and score a goal we were unable to get ahead on them really or maybe apart from on maybe one occasion I think Mwani got his head on it um and so it's just it's just concerning and the reason why it's it's particularly concerning is what is it now three three wins three home wins this this entire year this entire calendar year or something and so I feel like he's just come off the back of one poor season and there's so little improvement that I worry that the potential for, not saying it's going to happen, but the potential for a death spiral is there.

13:28100 % mate, 100 % because the home form, let's make no mistake, the home form is relegation it really is and if our away form our inexplicably decent away form i think we should say it takes a turn we're in serious trouble yeah we're in serious trouble and i don't want to sound too pearl clutchy about it i don't want to sound too wobble-headed about it but this is a team that finished 17th last season yeah exactly yeah i mean i've heard so many times over the last 18 months commentators saying oh we're not seeing the best of Tottenham today this isn't the best of Tottenham I don't really know what our best is because I think continually we've just seen poor performance after poor performance it's been going on for the best part of of 18 months now and so I worry that we've got to a level that is extremely low for this currently highly competitive league.

14:33Go, go. Sorry, mate. No, no, carry on, carry on, please. Well, James Moore tweeted something last night that really resonated with me, which was this Spurs team are still suffering from the rot that set in last season. They don't look bothered about losing matches in terms of approach and intensity, not post-match gesticulating-social-media tub-thumping. I'm not convinced that Frank has the personality to change that right yeah I think that's a probably fairly fair assessment isn't it it's funny isn't it because you know right now a lot of the conversation is we shouldn't have sacked Ange this is it you know why did Ange go he won as a trophy I don't know exactly my feelings on Ange Postacoglu are clear great he won as a trophy thank you very much i have a fondness for him on that level i mean look what happened at forest precisely i have no interest in really you know giving that much air time but i think what unites both postacoglu and frank even though they are like diametrically opposed in terms of approach it's the fact that i think they are they are two managers who are playing a pretty poor hand fairly poorly.

15:53But I guess the point I'm trying to make is how much do we continue to blame the manager? Because, look, a bad manager at Spurs, you would say, right, as it was, right, let's look at them down the road. I know I keep doing it, but I think there are some worthy parallels in places. look at when they had, say, a poor fit in somebody like Emery and they had a number of poor players who perhaps were stylistically a bit all over the shop and everything. A poor season for them was, I think, the lowest they finished was eighth, was it? I don't know if even that was in Emery. That might have been an early Arteta season.

16:36But when they were doing poorly, it was around sixth to eighth place, shall we say. That's what a poor manager should be doing, I suppose. That's what Ange or Frank should have been doing at Spurs. And yeah, Ange finished fifth in his fifth season at Spurs. If I can get my words out, Ange finished fifth in his first season at Spurs. God, that was an unexpected tantrista there. I got the gist of it. So that is, you know, it is worth me giving him a nod for that. but there must be the like it just it begs the question for me what is it what is it about the club that is seeing us completely just i don't know plunge to these kind of depths yeah that we did in the 90s you know and that and that was widely acknowledged as a really dark time for Spurs when we could have gone down, you know, once, maybe twice.

17:45Once was only sort of significantly time when we got Jurgen Klinsmann back and he saved us and all that type of thing. But we sort of always teetered around being a team that could get into, like you say, that death spiral, the Everton type death spiral. I mean, they're a team that still always survived as well. Yeah, true. Yeah. But it does, I mean, I bring them up. that kind of feels like what we're at right now. It does. We feel like an Everton. We do. I can't even believe we're really having this conversation, to be honest. We're in a Champions League final a few years ago. It's quite mad.

18:20We went a whole season unbeaten at home. We were a few points off of winning the Premier League. And look at where we're at. I don't really buy either that we totally sacrificed the league last season. No, no, not me either. I think we were still playing some pretty strong teams right up until the end of that season. Maybe the last game, fair enough, I know they've been on the piss for like two weeks or whatever, or a few days. But it's, yeah, I think that there's definitely, I think there's definitely some kind of common thread that goes beyond the footballing operations almost. And I don't know whether it's just that we've become a fairly comfortable club for certain players with a lack of pressure.

19:06I don't know whether it's just the behind the scenes that there's a lack of pressure put on the players who are essentially their employees, I guess. It's really hard to put your finger on. One thing that I do think is quite tangible that I know we've spoken about before is around the new stadium and the ticket prices as well because there were so many empty seats yesterday. It was noticeable actually on TV, which isn't always the case because of the dark seats as well. And I do think that there's some kind of fracture that's slowly opening up and it's turning into a bit of a crevice because that kind of unity that we really experienced under Poch, I know, OK, fine, it's easy to be unified when you're doing really well, isn't it, and winning most of your games.

19:53But nevertheless, I think that there's a real disconnect, whether it be between the fans, the ownership, the players. There's nothing joined up, which is why I mentioned, again, Brentford earlier. And maybe like Brighton are another good example of a well-run club who seemingly have plucked another manager out of somewhere who is a bit weird, but seems to know also what he's doing. And they haven't, despite being a selling club, ever fallen into this pattern. I mean, the other thing that really worries me is, could you imagine if we were in a relegation battle and how much the rest of the league would love to see that happen?

20:31Look how much they wanted Leicester to win the league instead of us. when that came around. So stuff like that always really concerns me, particularly when it is Tottenham. So I guess the question here is, if we get a walloping at Newcastle and then... More than possible. Precisely. And then we're sat there seeing the sort of press leaks that he's got the Brentford game to save his job at Spurs, which again feels feasible, right? In a sort of cruel irony, we lose to Brentford. He loses his job. Who comes in? Who do we hire in, what, early December to come in and take over a team that seems to be on the verge of, as you say, a death spiral?

21:28I think it's almost getting to the point then where it'd be hard to attract the right kind of person wouldn't it um and but I guess that isn't that isn't our job as as fans to to to pick managers um you know you'd have thought there should already be some kind of roster you know almost like behind some glass to break in case of emergency you know that kind of um I mean what's what's Carlo Ancelotti up these days is he uh is he is he knocking about somewhere um I think that I could imagine us doing something like that, but I don't. Imagine buying your kid a toy only to find the batteries aren't included or buying furniture but missing the tools to build it.

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23:24This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. it's not going to he's uh he's brazil manager isn't he oh is he yeah okay uh yeah there goes that one yeah so i guess yeah christian stellini see what he's doing uh there's very there's very few few options and i don't even necessarily want to see him go because i'm not convinced that that will really change much either.

24:13We've looked terrible despite two really contrasting styles of play. So I'm not really convinced that a total change of manager is going to fix everything immediately unless I saw somebody, I think it was on your stream, mentioned Harry Redknapp. I wouldn't be too sure about that either. I think that there's not a massive pool of talent out there. If only we could get to the end of the year and maybe wait for, I'm going to say his name again, for Pochettino to sack off the US job. Do you want to, so according to OddsChecker, the list, well, the odds on the next permanent Tottenham Hotspur manager, the favourite is Oliver Glasner.

24:59I mean, that's so uninspiring to me as well. To me, it's the same, isn't it? It's like for like with Thomas Frank. I suppose he's won more than Frank. I mean, Frank hasn't actually won anything. You would say that Glasner has won some things. And I was actually quite up for the idea of Glasner, you know, simply because he has won stuff with Palace. But it has been brought up to me that he, like Frank, favours a style of football that sees his teams not in possession of the football. So, you know, that might not be ideal for us. we might end up in a similar place to where we're at now. Second, so joint second favorite is Marco Silva and Andoni Arreola.

25:48Third favorites, we got De Zerbi and Michael Carrick. And funnily enough, quite a bit down the list is Xavi Hernandez after that. I think he's still not employed. um i've been look i i know very very little about xavi as a manager um about his qualities or anything like that i have a i have a vague understanding that i mean he's obviously from the school of la masia there's going to be a an element of you know ball retention tiki-taka that type of approach um whether or not he has the managerial now to take that onto its sort of contemporary iterations as we're seeing with Pep Guardiola over the last few years who knows is that style of football really even that effective anymore because it's morphed into what Arsenal are now sort of a La Masia Stoke City hybrid you know which and I don't I don't mean that flippantly just have a sort of you know a jibe at Arsenal but that's kind of what it is let's retain the ball other than when we're lumping it upfield and you know trying to win the second trying to win the second sort of second tackle and all that sort of second touch um i mean we say all this when we know full word it'd be brendan rogers well mate i know and this this is kind of he's always there he's always lurking isn't he i just wonder sometimes you know how and i say this to myself on post-match streams and things like that you know football isn't that complicated i do wonder sometimes if just bringing in a guy like xavi hernandez who has won the lot who is probably a fairly stern personality he he presents that way you know he presents in a very similar fashion to somebody like pep or arteta somebody that would be fairly no nonsense sometimes I wonder if that that goes a long way yeah you know yeah potentially I mean he'd certainly garner respect you'd have thought wouldn't he from from the rest of the squad but I don't know I mean when when was he last in a job was it a year or two ago I don't know was it Barcelona was that his last job yeah I'm pretty sure so I understand the appeal and the attraction But then, you know, once again, I kind of come back to that.

28:15I feel like we've been so neglected on the pitch for three or four years that a huge amount of surgery is needed to get us even remotely close to the kind of top six, seven teams really in the league. So I actually think that with that kind of that gap has opened up now as well. I know that I shared this with you on WhatsApp. I looked at the lineups from when we beat Arsenal 3-0 under Conte, because that felt like another sliding doors moment and another opportunity to push on as well. And our squad in that game was, I mean, obviously we've lost Kane and Son now and Son might have been on the way in a little bit anyway.

28:57but effectively there were very few upgrades across the pitch Kulisevsky was still playing we still have Benton Kerr, Hoiberg but then I think almost Paulina starting to take up the Hoiberg mantle a little bit as well but then you look to Arsenal's team and it's totally unrecognisable they've improved it to such an extent almost in every single position you could argue from 1 to 11 so you know I think you know so much of this as well comes down to the fact that our recruitment has been has been poor um and we haven't probably moved quickly enough and I think that as well with um you know with the current iteration of the squad yeah there's some really exciting young players but effectively you're often then spending 30 40 million pounds on a player that isn't yet ready for the league they're not necessarily improving the first 11 which is slightly tricky and means that you end up in a situation that I think that we're in now really where we have a number of footballers that are probably going to be pretty good but I also really worry about their development within a team like Spurs I think that there's there's every opportunity that it may be stifled a little bit unless that we start getting our acts together and playing maybe a slightly more progressive style of football at least becoming a slightly more successful team as well well let's look at the other sort component in all this the players um because i sort of i've in my sort of scrabbling around to find meaning in all of this how spurs have gotten quite so bad as they have we're quick to sort of you know point fingers at the manager we're quick to point fingers at enic and i think we're probably correct to in both of those instances i don't think that's folly if you like but at the same time i i i'm sort of starting to come around to this idea that maybe some of these players maybe a lot of these players are being afforded a level of privilege they're they're they're almost able to hide in plain sight um my example i'm sort of singling him out and it you know i i don't mind doing so because he's written a pretty inflammatory instagram message today um which we'll get to but i i don't mean him solely but i look at somebody like pedro poro for example i mentioned this in my post-match stream but when you actually sort of stop to think about it the whole occam's razor a thing you step outside take one step backwards and assess kind of the problems that you're facing this is a guy that we're kind of like you know he's great at crossing he's great in an attacking sense but he can't defend to save his life and then we're sort of questioning why we concede goals all the time why we can't hold on to leads why you know why we're so poor in it when when the opponent are running at us and we're just so flippantly like well he's a great player but yeah of course he can't defend yeah it's like is he you'll see though and this is it and i kind of i look across this team and then i i sort of cast my mind back to when i go down like the annals of like topnam teams of of yesteryear and i think about teams that contain players like lennon huddlestone defoe players that we were always told are good but aren't good enough to see top them be a top side i look at and i think those sort of players walk into this team yeah yeah yeah i honestly don't think that is just bleary-eyed nostalgia yeah you know like i agree and that that's kind of worrying isn't it you know like so i guess my point is look ultimately it's enic it's It's the people in charge of the club who have assembled this squad.

32:56But, you know, we're constantly saying this team is so much better than X manager is getting out of them. I'm sort of getting to this point where I'm like, are they? I agree. And actually, I wasn't furious initially with Frank yesterday. I was just really angry at the players because there seemed to be such a lack of application for minute one. You could tell straight away all of that impetus that it seemed was present in the PSG game had dissipated again. And immediately there seemed to be a real lack of focus. We weren't really pressing quickly enough. We seemed to be really slow out the blocks.

33:34And also, like the second goal, I know Michael Dawson picks up on this. Why was nobody attempting just to try and get back on the goal line? There seemed to be such a slow way. It seemed to be slow to react. I still can't work it out, mate. I still can't understand why Vicario was just casually jogging back towards. It was weird. Again, like I said in the stream, Charlotte and I, when we were watching that, we were like, is that a goal? Has the whistle gone? What have we missed? I don't get it. That thing where you laugh really extravagantly, being like, oh, this is so funny how bad we are, isn't it?

34:04And I was only watching it on my own. I was like, no, no, what are you doing? You're not trying to save face in front of anyone. You're sat there on your own in your living room laughing, pretending. Maniacally rocking in the corner. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, like that, there's also, I don't know how many times we're going to go away to like a supposed big six team as well and just utterly capitulate. And it's basically been like that since, since Poch went. And that, that for me speaks to a certain level, not just of ability, but maybe sort of personality as well. because I know that, you know, this is often said, these are all elite level sports people.

34:51They all have a certain, they're all wired differently. But nevertheless, there are still levels to these things. Of course there are, otherwise there wouldn't be a best team in the country and a worst team. I think that there's still, because I do, I am starting to come around to the same opinion that, I mean, I even look at players like, I know he hasn't played for a while, like Solanke, who was pretty decent last season. I think he's a solid footballer, but I still think he's one of the worst, not worst, I don't mean that so derogatory, but one of the more poor forwards we've probably had over the last 10, 15 years.

35:27Like, I still feel like I would rather swap him out for, I mean, obviously Kane, but, you know, alongside that, Berbatov, maybe Keane, Defoe. We've had like a litany of some decent forwards over this period of time that now again seem to be nowhere to be found in this squad. I mean, even like Richarlison, you think he's probably a player that would get nowhere close to Spurs squads of the last 10, even 15 years. So we're going back quite a long time now, I think. We haven't been this bad for quite a while. Even under Martin Yole, we were competing for fourth, finishing fifth, sixth. It feels to me like this is quite a new thing.