S15E24 - Aston Villa, Thomas Frank And The Double Pivot

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1:08I recently got back from a holiday in Balec in Turkey. It was brilliant, but I did spend it looking longingly at the golf courses in the area. In reality, if I'd taken my clubs, I probably would have come back from that family holiday single. It's a brilliant place, stunning beaches, five-star hospitality in some of the best hotels on earth. But for me, just getting out on those courses would have been the icing on the cake. Search Turkey on TripAdvisor now to book your ultimate golf holiday in the Turkish Riviera. It's the fighting. It's the fighting. Cock It's a fighting It's a fighting Cock I'm a churn Hello everybody Hello Alright Hello everybody Hello If I've got podcasts He's back I don't know why I say that Each time Because where the fuck Have we been going Within 15 years is every week.

2:16Why wouldn't it go back? Why even bring it up? John, how you doing? All right, mate. I'm on my second day of a hangover today. Oh. What have you been up to see, you little pig? I went to a UK garage brunch on Saturday, but it wasn't a brunch. It was just a massive rave at Coco. It was part of this crew, pay as you go, so solid crew. Mate, it was popping off, absolutely popping off. did they do 21 seconds to go they did 21 seconds yeah it got wheeled up about 400 times but um they did do it it was only actually harvey and someone else i don't remember who else was there so two two members of two of them and then it wasn't there like i don't know 17 of them it's shit loads of them yeah absolutely loads of them so that was a bit disappointing heartless crew there was no mighty mo so there were one down so it was sort of you know did you have a good time am I not?

3:10Yeah, mate, it was good. It was good. It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you hated it. It was good. It was good, but it would be like going, oh, do you remember when we went to the Oasis reunion and only one of them was there? You'd be like, what? Just bonehead. You're missing out if you don't get the full line. So that was a bit annoying. No, it was good, but what I realised is that UK Garage has a very interesting selection of people that enjoy it, right? There's like middle class people sort of liked it later on and got into it with like flowers or whatever. Then you've got the old school ravers who used to like proper dress up in like suits and wear it proper.

3:47And it was like big champagne and like quite smart. And then you just got like a proper selection of absolute wrong-uns, like proper scumbags. And most of them decided this would be an event they'd like to go to. So that was quite interesting. And yeah, I checked my bank today. I had one round that cost me 183 quid. so that was quite how many of you? there was eight of us so oh man that's unreal ten pound a drink YOLO God I don't know if this is going to help or this will improve the tone of the podcast and a good way to set it up I don't want to alienate any of our audience obviously I genuinely think UK Garage is the worst form of music that's ever been produced by human beings in the history of life that's a bad statement what's outrageous?

4:34you like it do you Rick? that's alright I wouldn't say it's the worst thing I've ever heard. I would rather listen to reggaeton on repeat. Nah, that is wild. Garage, like most genres, if you just hear or you get to listen to the top line of it, like what is popular, what people will refer to, I understand why people think it's absolute shit. I do get that. but underneath that layer of crap is a fantastic, very British genre that has a lot to offer musically. So if you're only hearing the top level shit, I completely get it, but it's good. I'll tell you what else is dividing opinion at the moment.

5:16Nice. Thomas Frank's tactics. Yeah, I was going to say, does it become a Vef? Frank. Fra. Fra. Ah. N. K.

5:29I'm still on board. I mean, nine games. I mean, hopefully everybody can kind of see that maybe this all doesn't come at once. But I think there's some frustrations that we've gone from swashbuckling football that we saw sort of, I don't know, 18 months ago. And some people kind of want it back. And others are thinking that the pragmatism that Frank displays isn't one that's going to see us win out. I actually didn't see much difference between Aston Villa and Tottenham. yesterday i thought they'd be pretty evenly matched and they scored two worldies if we just scored two bodies everyone would be buzzing yeah but we didn't so people are not so that's where we're at rick try that analysis yeah it's good it's good it's um it's a weird one actually because i normally i'm the one that needs to be talked off the ledge and I feel fine.

6:31Do you know what I mean? I just feel like I saw enough in the game yesterday where I felt like we could have won. I didn't really feel like Villa were going to hurt us and then they scored two great goals. But apart from that, I don't really remember them having any other clear-cut chances. But you go on Twitter or you go on Blue Skull, wherever you go on, right? rarely get your football news and there are a lot of people that are either pining for for angist our football there's people that are saying that we're that frank is not uh aggressive enough or he's not um you know he's being too pragmatic i don't really know what what people want anymore there wasn't actually calls for post-a-goggle back was there oh well i saw i saw oh i mean you know that you know compilations are of i miss this guy or i miss this type of football or stuff like that and i was just like no i don't miss that i don't like i really don't well yeah i mean i miss the bits where we were incredible those those moments where it just and if that was all the football then yeah 100 i mean it's still it'd be there ricky it's yeah yeah yeah i i just think i don't i mean it's the most obvious thing to say on earth after coming what you know after spurs lose is going on social media and going there's you know a few people that might be unhappy yeah it's like you're not getting measured debate on social media at all so So, John Boy, what did you make of it?

8:17I'm a bit like Rick, to be honest. I'm just quite calm with the whole situation. I'm not looking game to game, which is what I think drives people mad because in isolation, that wasn't good, right? Like, it's frustrating to lose in that game. It was quite conservative. There's issues that are under Frank's control. I don't like the Benson Kerr-Pellinho double pivot. It reeks of Sissoko winks. where you're looking at going, I get why he's doing it, but please, I don't want to see this every week. So there's problems and there's issues and there's stuff that Frank's responsible for that I think he can improve on.

8:51But you've got to give him time to improve on those things, right? He's got to have time to figure out why things can't work, why an approach needs to be different and adapt to it. And I sort of agree with what Rick was saying before, which is like, I don't really know what people want at the minute, right? Because we wanted to play exciting football but we wanted to win something well we won something but we did it going completely the other way and going super pragmatic just to win something and we got it we got that monkey off our back we won the trophy and now it was like okay and just gone now we're going to have like the adults are back in the room a sensible tactical manager who can you know like make the right decisions in the right games and set up depending on the opposition and be more quote unquote pragmatic that is what we've got and now people are not happy with it because we don't win every single game like we're not going to win every single game for one major reason our squad is still not very good in comparison to the other teams that are above us and so every so often we're going to lose some games because we actually still are in a position where unfortunately i think anyway there's still some quite big issues and if you look at the last time our squad was really like competitive to the point where like you were expecting to win most games that was that Pochettino side between then and now you cannot really say we've actually had a squad that can compete with the top end of the table or to at least try and be in the mix to try and win the league and therefore win most games we're not there now are we like there's some serious work to do so I want I want and the reason I'm sort of quite comfortable with where we are with Frank is I want a manager who's going to be given some time to build a solid foundation so when you start adding those pieces to this squad with some good players that we have that it can actually like go on and do something proper just chopping and changing every nine games because we don't win every single game is never going to get us anywhere like we have to at some point pick a horse and stick with it and i think thomas frank is a very sensible person to do that um but he is going to frustrate us like this like playing a bit conservative at home but he'll figure that out It won't just do that forever, I don't think.

10:59The fans forum, he talked about one of the first things that he needed to do, or one of the things that he needed to do, was to shore up the defence and fix potentially how porous it was last year. And so if that was the first thing, if it's his first job, or one of his main jobs, which obviously it is, then developing a team and a system that isn't porous is the start. right and and we're still seeing that now if this is if we're still playing games where we generate less than one next year a game in six seven months time the end of the season then genuinely you can start to question in any legitimate way the problem with being so critical right now is like questioning thomas frank is he the one is that there's been no room to develop that actually your approach to criticising Tottenham or Frank is more damaging because it prevents what potentially could be a quality outcome.

12:02Like if we suddenly start to develop, if things start to click, if we get that left winger in that he's able to damage, if Solanke is back, if Mwani clicks into gear, all of these things are all questions that are yet to be answered, then we may feel completely different. I think everybody, people ask our question. We had a question here from John Howick. He says, at what point do we question Frank's approach? I'm not saying I want him sacked, but he's two months in and our form has been very inconsistent. The home form is very poor. John, our away form is the best in the league as well, by the way.

12:37I'm hoping things improve by October, November, but it could be very painful if things don't improve. What is the level? What level is this painful? like what do you expect us to be like there were so many things to fix and so many things to turn Tottenham around from what what we had in the league last year we won a European trophy that we should have won I mean the difficult games were you know Man United in the final realistically um and so we we we delivered in that aspect but the actual Premier League is where the difficulty lies. So if there were many problems to fix and changing the way that this squad played together, losing Madison, Kulusevsky, Dominic Solanke for the first third quarter of the season is going to have an impact.

13:27Frank's approach is about not making us difficult to beat. And the fact is we were beat by two goals. Aston Villa won't score again this season. Certainly the second goal, they'll never score a goal like that ever again in terms of the entire build-up to that. It was incredible. Probably goal of the season. It might be in the list of goal of the season, top five in the end of the season.

13:50If they hadn't scored those two wonder goals, we'd be talking about a 1-0 win. And maybe the similar conversation would be there. But not everything is going to go right straight away. We're at the beginning of this. The very beginning. And I hate to mention them, and I hate to mention this man. But Arsene Wenger, Arteta two eighth place finishes on the bounce and now five years into the project and they're probably going to win the league this year as things stand they look the best team in the league so why would you make such a snap, not talking directly to you John by the way, I appreciate this is all coming off you asked this question and now I've gone on this diatribe but why not have an element of patience that might last a year or two, and I get that's not the way football fans typically behave, myself included.

14:48Why not just see how this goes and appreciate the fact that this isn't going to turn around overnight and, you know, a top eight finish, top five finish, I still think we're capable of doing that. I mean, that would be massive progress, right? And a run in the Champions League. I think, I know we want things to be a bit more sort of attacking and we want to knock the door down a little bit and we want to score more goals and we want to be more of an attacking threat rather than a pragmatic one. But in the formation of what we're trying to do in these formative moments, being solid and strong, it's not a bad place to start in my opinion.

15:29No, totally. And I think as well, I think some of the kind of a bit of, frustration or disappointment is like where how we're playing at the moment is it feels like for us to do anything in an attacking sense that has a bit of a an end product it is just passing to kudos and being like mate you gotta do something you gotta beat someone and isn't that rick it's just that kudos has the quality to make you notice it the ball went out to Odebeer many, many times. He just didn't have the abilities to do it. So if the system is, get it to our wide players and they damage, just because one can do it in Kudus and Odebeer can't.

16:14It doesn't mean the approach to – the entire approach is flawed. It just means Odebeer is limited and Kudus is excellent. That was – well, my actual next bit was going to be – Sorry, I'm furious. I'm furious with you. So we're relying on Odebeer, who's a young kid, where we need someone that's a bit more seasoned, a bit more senior, that maybe might be a bit more kind of, you know, Odebe is kind of like learning on the job. Same as Tell. They're both young kids and they're not always going to get it right. And this is what we've got at the moment because Madison and Kulisewski are out. Xavi is new to the league.

16:56He's going to take time to bed in. So there's a lot of kind of variations on our, you know, our final third in the attacking sense where it's not fully established senior players where they have kind of um made their mark in the game so yeah it is going to be frustrating at times and even i you know was frustrated at points yesterday but there were parts of where uh odomare i was like come on like beat your man beat your man and he he was attempting it and he was being a lot more positive um not all of it came off but at least i saw a bit of confidence in him to try and take the fall back on which was uh which is a plus really out of that can i just apologize ricky for that because you were working towards your point and i just jumped all over it mate don't worry about it uh as you was talking there i was reading um a report of the game and uh it could is this is essentially a thing called fan narrative i've mentioned it a few times really they it scans social media youtube comments reddit comments and twitter and and then stuff and then it creates a a mean a mean view of of or an average view of what most people are talking about and this is on kudus it says uh thrives in wide attacking roles providing creativity in frank system kudus had flashes ball progression is just pass it to kudus weaknesses over reliance exposes squad are attackers other than kudus do absolutely nothing and that was why I was irritated by that.

18:28And I thought that's what he was going down, but he wasn't. John Boy, the midfield two seems to be a bone of contention. Palinia and Ben Tencore. I spoke to James Alcott, who spent some time. I don't know if I mentioned this with you, Rick. I was on a preview on Patreon. But based on what we're doing at the moment, Ben Tencore is crucial, according to James Alcott. And he spent an afternoon with Thomas Frank talking about his tactics. Before that, he'd done his research and was watching Benton Kaur and what he does. Apparently, he's crucial to the way Frank wants to play currently, which is probably why he gets into the team.

19:09What's your frustration with those two? And this isn't, you know, if you do have frustrations, I think you mentioned it at the start there. Many other people do also. Yeah, look, it's become, I guess it's become another Tottenham culture war where people are talking about it, right? like these two in the middle. And whether or not you like or dislike Perlina, I know a lot of people, there's a lot of thought about him. He can't pass, he's not a progressive passer, and blah, blah, blah. And then the same with Bensicor, which, yeah, I love Perlina just for the record. Or whether or not, again, the same with Bensicor, whether you like them individually, but you just don't like them as a two.

19:45Basically, there's issues around them that people are raising. I think for me, the issue that we've got is there's not a solution. It's not like we've got like Steven Gerrard on the bench and we're going, oh, just drop him as the number eight. That's exactly what we need. We don't have someone who fits that position perfectly because, as we've said a hundred times on this podcast, if it's Saar, it's like he's more of a runner. If it's Bergvold, he's not quite ready yet. We don't have a progressive passer as our eight, and that's what we're missing, which is why I think a few weeks back we were talking about Simmons as the 10.

20:20If everyone's fit, I'd personally rather play Madison in the eight because you need someone who can pass the ball to Simmons, otherwise he's never going to get it. And when he was getting it yesterday, he was getting it so deep, then there's no one to play it to in the 10 position. So there is, at the moment, there is no good solution. And exactly like the same thing that Rick was saying about Odebert. I thought Odebert looked quite bright yesterday, but he's not at the same level as Kudos is on the other side. So there's not an option. It's not like we've got a 27-year-old human song that we're not playing, and then we go, oh, just drop him in and we'll be fine.

20:52Same with the centre-forward thing. it's like tell them richarlison like they're not harry kane right so that doesn't really matter which one you put in none of them are that great currently enough to go well there's the solution and that's why i do have a lot of sympathy for frank because i just do think there's actually still some glaring issues there's a big difference between having available players who play in a certain position and having quality players who play in that position who make the difference and so i do think we are a little bit hamstrung with the the options that we've got available and we do have a bit of an imbalance of some really promising young players and i'm not writing off tell an ode bear bergval these guys i'm not writing them off i think they'll be great additions in the future but we have to recognize right now they're not in the elite bracket that they would need to be for us to be very confident that we just roll over aston villa at home so i do think i do think we have some issues i don't really know what the answer is it's not like i'm just going well you play this person here this person there and then we're sorted there is no easy on The world's biggest soccer tournament has arrived, and you can trade the entire tournament on Kalshi.

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23:45Shop top brand appliances now at The Home Depot. Offer valid June 17th to July at the U.S. only C-Store online for details. Would a possible solution be given the fact that a home record is so poor and you're judged by how well you play at home? like away winning away typically in the Premier League year has been the most difficult thing you can do the most unlikely result but away from home when teams come on us it's a different thing and having Benzincor and Paulinho sort of being destructive and difficult to get through when you're playing away from home and there's space then for Simmonds as he did against Leeds who thought he was really good against Leeds and then yesterday less good because Villa just were so compact they choked the middle There's talk about the issue yesterday being Xavi Simmons being too lightweight.

24:34I think that's people not watching the game and just looking at his build and going, well, it must be that he's too lightweight based on absolutely nothing other than the fact that, oh, he's small, so it must be that the physicality of the Premier League is too fast for him. That's not what happened yesterday. What happened yesterday, Villa were narrow and they choked the midfield. Tactically, very good if you like a play that is difficult to get through. I think Villa and Emery will be commended by most people who watch that game Spurs fans as well but if it wasn't for these two worldies they wouldn't have won that game they generated nothing as Rick said absolutely nothing so the fact that Simmons didn't have any space to operate was largely down to what Villa did and basically doubled up on Kudus and the space was given to Odebe.

25:32And Cash dealt with him pretty much. I know he ran at the defenders and it was good, but Matt Cash yesterday was, as much as we hate to say it, probably man of the match. That's kind of my point though, Flav, right? It's like, as much as we're saying, you know, the plan isn't to just get it to Kudus on the right hand side. We do that more often than not because it sticks and he makes something happen. And so as the opposition, you go, well, if we have to gamble, let Odebauer have it. Yeah. Let him have it because we can get back and we can get back into shape and we can deal with that. But don't let Kudas get it.

26:05Don't let Simmons get it. So they can gamble knowing that there isn't the same threat. Whereas when you have basically on both sides two proper danger men, you've got someone in the eight position who can find passes as good as someone who's in a 10. The 10 can score goals as good as the strike. Suddenly you're like, well, we can't just gamble here. we've got to be a bit more steady. Or if they do gamble, that's when you can take advantage. I think the issue that we've got is we just don't have enough quality in the front line currently to really worry teams where they can just go, fucking go on, break us down if you want.

26:34Like, we'll be here all day. And we have seen that. We have really struggled to create a lot from open play because I think teams go, yeah, like you can have it in certain positions and it gives them enough time to reset. John, imagine, it's not as if the club haven't acknowledged this either. They literally went, did everything they could to get Savinho into the football club. Imagine the ball going out to Savinho yesterday. They couldn't double up on Kudis. And they couldn't choke Javi Simmons out the game because Savinho would have absolutely destroyed them on the left and it comes down to players.

27:06But we've got a question here about Ace, asked the question that says, is Tell, Solanke, Richarlis and Mawani good enough? I mean, Solanke hasn't played. And last season for a large part, I think he was very good. you know fine if those two things can live together but charleston isn't good enough in any shape or form tell he's young and muwani we don't know yet because he hasn't played but but the point is is that we don't have like maybe muwani given like out there given that amount of space that the odor bear had at times would would be much more damaging we've seen him do it previously as well so i think in terms of given the way he wants to play frank that having a solid midfield means you need really good forward players and maybe we just don't have that yet but it's not something we can't fix going forward so if we can be hard to beat and be creative going forward that's the dream but it ain't gonna come overnight it's not just gonna happen like that it's gonna take time yeah i mean like there's there's a lot of obviously there's there's a lot of chat about the Paulina and Benninger double pivot and a lot of people were saying that it's not brave enough and just not happy with with the partnership and especially us being at home not being on the front foot and I really like Benninger and I think he is brave when he's on the ball and he will receive it when he's under pressure and he's being pressed and he's a cool customer and he'll hold on to the ball i think he he gets stuck in with uh tackles and shielding with his kind of um with his passing he he does pass safe and it's sideways but that's not to say that it's bad um you know you can be like a bit of a metronome in that sense but um kish lily white lab posted a graphic yesterday of bendker's passing and when i saw it i was like right okay i see now and it it was literally very very short passes left to right um and in that instance when you are playing at home when you should be on the front foot when you should be brave you should be more aggressive in your approach that he should be playing more balls forward now that's not to say that because there has been a change of managers and the way we're playing and different styles that he'll get used to it and he'll become more confident in playing those balls forward but at the moment it's just not happening now in 20 games down the line he may kind of find that um again that confidence and you know he can pass so it may it may come to him a bit later when we're further down the road but at the moment we're not seeing it and it does make you think is he going to be able to get to to be that player that we need do you know what i mean so um i think there is a there is quite a lot of um disappointment with me how how are you how he played or at least how we're progressing the ball forward from a central position because simmons didn't get on the ball nearly enough as i'd as i'd like to like to have seen him i think if you do give him the ball and you do you do give him a bit of uh time then he is the guy that can make things happen but it's very hard where he is receiving the ball late and he's already in a very crowded Aston Villa midfield he's already got people pressing him so it's just I think if people find Simmons quicker and he has that extra bit of space that he can move around in then you'll get the best out of him as well there's no greater thing than watching Jael Paolini attack or somebody yeah oh mate it's hard I guess it's hard to see when you're in the stadium Rick yesterday the challenges you were putting in.

31:19Caicedo was the fastest player to 25 tackles. And when he played that game, I can't remember who they were playing. Maybe it was Liverpool. He was the first to get to 25. Now, Paulinho has 35 tackles compared to Caicedo's 28. Giza just breaks things down. and part of the reason why Villa was, you know, they scored a couple of worldies, get it, you can't defend against, so it's difficult to defend against those chances. He just broke them up. He broke them up and maybe if he is that good, that someone who's better with the ball and a little bit more creative next to him, he sort of protects the playmaker.

32:02Like I know, I don't think we'll see when John was mentioning about Madison playing in the eight, although I wouldn't hate it at home against lesser opposition. but someone a little bit more sort of dynamic and forward thinking with a little bit more vision in that kind of eight because Pauly is just a beast you just love to tackle there was one challenge yesterday where we broke away and we nearly scored from it their player went down injured I don't know if it was on but it just it was perfectly timed it was super aggressive but safe in the modern era it was almost like as crunching as it could possibly be without even ever being at risk at a yellow card.

32:42Like the geezers, mustard. And a couple of decent, you know, balls out to the wing as well and distribution wasn't too bad. I think it's overblown his inability to pass. But he's probably the best destroyer I've seen at Tottenham since, easily since Scott Parker. He's quality. Yeah, I think that the issue, and this is again, I think the like he can't pass thing is like massively overstated. but I do understand the point, right? Which is that he's not like the best forward passer. Like his long balls are a little bit loopy and stuff. I understand it. I get the criticism to be fair. But as I said at the start of the season, it's fine when you've got Romero because you just win the ball back, give it to Romero.

33:22He can do the forward pass. But we didn't even have him yesterday. So not only did we not have a passing, creative, forward-thinking eight, we also didn't have our fullback position, which is basically our centre-back who can do that. So we kind of, with two progressive passes down in that lineup yesterday before we even fucking kick off so i do think that is an issue and again it's like i agree for that but i would love to see a it's not madison right but bearing in mind the players we've got if everyone was fit that's who i'd be playing in there because i want someone who can possible ideally you want someone who's basically benton core but who can also pass and is really more creative and is much more forward thinking and doesn't want to play it safe because you do have the ultimate insurance policy in japan because he can just basically do the job with two people defensively.

34:07So that to me is like where, I think it's kind of obvious in my opinion, where we need to strengthen in January is that wide left forward and a passing creative central midfielder. That's what we need desperately. If we have that, then we'll be in a much better position going forward. Would you, Rick, would you like to see Berval or Saar in that role next to Paulinho? Would you want, are you ready to abandon this sort of double pivot Benton Korpallina would you like someone a little bit more forward thinking yeah I would I mean at the moment I'd probably go over Bergvall if I'm honest he's probably the best out of them fucking little blonde bitch he's the more like his passing range is a lot better I don't think it's I don't think it's excellent but it's a hell of a lot better he can carry the ball and he's a lot braver on the ball than Benton Korpallina Sarr I just not really not at all really so the players that we've got available i'd um yeah for sure it'd be and i think you will probably see a change in that well like playing at home especially rick um uh you um you went you went for a little lunch yesterday was our lunch little breakfast before the game yeah yeah i did where'd you go uh i went to enjoy cafe as i always go yeah with bardi yeah some some i want to talk about bardi in a second but what so someone has created a cafe and just thought what should we call it enjoy what do you mean enjoy well i think i want people to come and enjoy our food if you can't call it enjoy i mean make good food they'll come and enjoy it but if i call it enjoy they're coming in with the right mindset and that's why you keep going about it rick there's a there's a garage in where i live do you have a guess what the garage is called it's actual name fix it no petrol no it's called the garage like like honestly i'm just like fucking hell great name great music um but it was quite a poignant thing rick that you met uh bardi um because people will know long time listeners of the fighting cock will know bardi was a massive part of the fighting cock remains a massive part of the fighting cock spiritually um and but went off and fucking created another podcast so took food off my plate um but you know filled himself with plenty of greasy food on Saturday.