THE LAB | Thomas Frank’s Spurs Revolution with Adam Clery

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0:32The Wild Ones Cycling Podcast. Cycling can reduce anxiety and depression and sharpen cognitive function. All on Europe's biggest sport podcast network. Find your next favourite sport podcast. Search Sport Social Podcast Network and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Sport Social Podcast Network. Verified comparison at content.sport-social.co.uk forward slash comparison. Welcome back to the lab. Today we're joined by Adam Cleary, a football broadcaster and presenter whose YouTube channel was built a reputation for sharp, entertaining breakdowns of every tactical conundrum in football. If you follow his channel, you'll know he's been deep diving into Tottenham Hotspur recently from Thomas Frank's arrival and what it means for the club's style and culture to new signings like Xavi Simmonds and João Paulinha.

1:23In this episode, we're putting some of those ideas under the microscope and figuring out what might happen this season with Thomas Frank and breaking down everything you need to know about our new signings. This is a great episode of The Lab. And if you want to feel good about what might come in this season, then I think you will enjoy it. And if you do enjoy it, please hit the follow button. Because if you do hit the follow button, it helps the podcast grow. Enjoy the show.

1:56Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Lab. I'm very excited about this one because Adam Cleary has agreed to come on the podcast without any hesitation or difficulty or any kind of problem whatsoever. You know how difficult it is to convince people to give up their own time? Adam, you were very gracious with yours. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I wasn't busy. I wasn't busy. I've very, very little going on in my life other than watching games of football back. So if anything, I was just glad of the company. Oh, lovely, lovely. I have been aware of your work from 442. It was 442, wasn't it, when you ran the channel?

2:28And then obviously now you've created your own channel. But moreover, because when you talk about Spurs, as is the way with your videos, generally looking for the positive aspects of a transfer or a tactic or a managerial appointment. But one of the videos that really stood out to me was why Xavi Simmonds might be Chelsea's best signing this summer. how did it matter when he realized that she's not going to Chelsea and he's actually coming to Sutton well you know the worst part was I'd sort of done all the research for that and I prepped it and obviously working in a newspaper office now with the independent I'm far more likely to come across spots of information than I ever was previously it had been heavily linked that he was going to Chelsea for a long time so I had that video in my back pocket we had a quiet week and I was like I'll do the Simmons one now before it happens and I'd literally just got out of the studio and I think it was Miguel Delaney was like oh what have you been up to I was like I've just done the um Simmons to a Chelsea video and he just sort of winced and I was like what's what's the face for he's like oh I can't I can't really say and I was like is he was that not gonna happen and then obviously I my brain started going into overtime I was like Jamal Musiala he's gonna he's gonna go to Bayern of course oh there's no point doing a Bayern video never mind and the Tottenham thing started snowballing and every day it progressed I was like I could just see that wince in my head and I was like, yeah, that was a waste of everybody's time.

3:49But nonetheless, it all holds up. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, it does. And as a Spurs fan, you get like, it's doubly joyful, right? Because he didn't go to Chelsea and all of the great stuff he said about him in there. I was like, oh my God, we really, we might have signed a superstar or certainly one in the making. Yeah, I've had a lot of requests for like, when is the Xavi Simmonds Tottenham video happening? And he will at some point have an outstanding game for Tottenham and the entire focus of the video we do will end up being about him. So they will get a dedicated Tottenham video at some point, so long as he just doesn't have a stinker.

4:24As long as he's any good, they'll get one eventually. I was going to save this till later, but since we're talking about Xavi Simmonds, I think I just want to ask you some questions about him now. What's his specific qualities do you think that he can bring to Tottenham that might make him like a game changer under Thomas Frank? He's a nightmare. Like he's an absolute sort of nightmare to play against. like the reason Chelsea was so so horny for him is because it's like they saw him as like relieving the burden of the occasional like Palmer over dependence they go through in phases of the season like not just in a sort of like like for like replacement where you could play them alongside each other because they prefer being on opposite sides of the pitch but just if when Chelsea are at their worst it is because other teams have managed to get a hold of Palmer and they know eventually like balls in the final third are going to want to go there they know people are going to make runs based on what he's doing.

5:12And Simmons is like immediately at that level in terms of like ability to create, ability to receive in tight areas, ability to do the unexpected. Like I'm sure nobody in Europe got fouled more than him or some insane stat last season because you just run out of ways to sort of negate what he's doing. And he will buy things in good positions. He will drift into places you're not expecting him to go. like he's just such an immediate like immediate floor raiser for a team like it would have been for Chelsea as well but like for a team that's sort of coming from where Spurs were last season the way he elevates what they're capable of doing when they're attacking how much preparation the opposition have to go through just to think about him before they thought about anything else like he immediately raises the floor if you know it's very early days he's had one game so far remains to be seen how he gels with the teammates around him how specifically they want to use him but just in terms of what you are buying in that player.

6:09He takes the club on two or three levels all in one go, potentially. So I'm hearing, although you haven't said it explicitly, that he's better than Neze. That's what I've heard. He's very... They certainly are two footballers that have arrived in the Premier League this summer. How do you see him best fitting into Spurs? Because we were all excited to see him play against West Ham, time recording, you know, played West Ham last weekend. But he started out on the left, which isn't unfamiliar to him. But most Spurs fans want to see him in that 10 role behind the front man. What do you think? What's the best way to utilize his skill set?

6:49You sort of have to think of him. Like the Palmer comparisons, they're pretty much on the nose because Palmer, whether he plays in the 10 behind the striker or he plays out on the right, it's still that space in between the two that he wants to be operating in. So it just depends whether or not you see his like, Do you want to start him in one place and move him into the other? But the way Simmons works on the other side, you can play him wide left and have him drift across. You can play him 10 and have him drift out. The idea is to find him in that space between where you want your centre-forward to be and where you want the player who's going to provide the width.

7:22Now, Jed Spencer's out at left-back at the minute. He's really good at getting up that top end of the pitch. That does automatically move him in. And I think the West Ham game was a bit of a weird one because obviously being his first game, he'd not long arrived. You don't know how long they've had on the training ground. I did feel like every time I saw him, it was more or less on the touchline. But he did get into those spaces really well. Like did Richarlison come on from, I think, for about how long in the game it was. But he was basically just sort of like, it felt more like an audition than part of a system when you were watching him.

7:55Like it was more like he was trying to go, okay, well, I'll do what you're telling me to do, but I will, as I'm doing that, show you what it is I'm going to want to be doing while I'm here. The best way to use him is to manufacture some way of having a front five when you've got the ball and having him being the one sort of in that left half space as it's known. And from there, it's difficult to know whether the defenders step out to pick him up, whether the midfielders step back, whether the fullback comes across, whether the centre-back comes across. And it's sort of in that little square of confusion.

8:25If you can find him with the ball there, it doesn't matter what the space is like, what the options are. He can do things. So getting him central, but not necessarily completely central, is the best way to get the most out of him. Well, that makes a lot of sense and is encouraging because it's a challenge that's confronted any top team in inverted commas. Any team that wants to hold possession and attack, they're confronted with a low block that typically, or mid block, that the Cipolli is well-organized. and Premier League footballers are brilliant at what they do and teaching or training any Premier League side, including Leeds, to become compact.

9:08And we saw Andoro do it against England. It's hard to break down. It's difficult to break down. And you need to find a way of pulling defenders and midfielders out of their shape to create passing lanes and angles. And so the potential threat of Xavi Simmonds when he's off the ball is as impactful as when he's on it to some degree. Is there anything in that? Yeah, I mean, from where he's come from, he's not played for what you'd call a quote-unquote top side since he was at PSG, and even then he was very sort of peripheral. That's the challenge in this stage of his career for him, like in games where he is now going to see way more of the ball than previously he was.

9:46The highlight that kept going everywhere when he signed was that outside-of-the-foot assist for Benjamin Sesko, which is a breakaway from a corner. Those scenarios are going to be fewer and far between for him, playing for a side that's going to be dictating as many games as Tottenham are. But when you've seen him play for the Netherlands, when they play the vast majority of their qualifiers, they are the favourite team. They do see 60, 70, sometimes more percentage of the ball. He has got that in him, and it's his ability to receive it in absolutely nothing space whatsoever and turn out of those situations, play himself out of those situations, play teammates in from those situations.

10:21that sort of that's where the the potential is in him playing on like as in an open game playing with counter carrying the ball up the pitch yeah no doubt whatsoever he can do that and Spurs will find themselves in those situations as the season goes on but where sort of where the question marks over and the challenge to him I guess is can you now do that in increasingly tighter and tighter areas in tighter and tighter games but I mean we'll get on to it obviously as the podcast goes on like if you wanted to send a player like that to a manager with the objective being can you make good on your potential and can you do all the things it looks like you can do Thomas Frank is in the very first sentence of managers you can you'd consider for that well let's move on to Thomas Franklin um because uh we you know I think it's been widely Harrell did as a good decision I don't know who that decision came from, whether it was Daniel Levy or Vino Venkatesian, but whoever's responsible, we feel like Spurs are in a good place at the moment.

11:25What are the biggest cultural and tactical changes do you think Thomas Frank will bring to Tottenham, say, compared to someone a little bit more dogmatic like Posta Coglu? A little bit more dogmatic, was he? I mean, I've been kind of. To be fair, the contrast between Thomas Frank and an anthropocococcus is about as perfect a way of explaining him as a manager as you could possibly get like he's never been this far in his career which is you know still fairly young compared to a lot of managers but he's never thus far been like an ideologue he doesn't have like specific things that he demands his team does he doesn't have this set vision of how football teams are supposed to play like he adapts the system the formation the players the approach the mindset everything like over short and long periods to suit the players he's got to suit the better players in the squad but also to ensure that he's developing the one that you know the players below that in the system like the beauty of Brentford was that there's very few passengers there like there aren't very many journeymen there there's either players who've come in and have developed and are soon to be moved on and allow the club to continue what it's doing or there's players who are below that, who are on their way through, who aren't at the same standard as those big players, but they're only there because the idea is that they can get there or can at least get to a level where they represent a fantastic return on investment.

12:50Now, obviously, going to Tottenham, it's different because you don't want to think a club at that level, certainly as a fan base, also as a business, doesn't want to look at itself as a selling club. Like, we're only going to bring players in. we've got this developmental manager, we'll make all this money. But the key thing about it is the development. It makes sense when you're in Tottenham's position because the reality is they've got money to spend, they've done very well in this transfer market, but I'm a Newcastle fan, we find ourselves in a similar situation. Comically so this summer, there's always going to be a level of player who would be perfect for your club, but you're not going to be able to compete with if other clubs come in for them and start throwing other levels of money around.

13:29So being able to shop in that sort of aisle that's just behind that where these players have got all the potential in the world and they could get there one day but other clubs want the ready-made thing they want the instant hit being able to go and get them and know you've got a manager that nine times out of ten will get them there is absolutely massive but in terms of like in terms of the tactical stuff you'll see so much stuff change i think you already have really like first two games you had psg you start with the back five they sit deep they constrict the space they look to get up the pitch really quickly and then the first game of the season you got Burnley and I think you go from I meant to write this down before I came on it was like 20 something percent percent maybe 30 possession against PSG and then 70 against Burnley like those are two completely different football matches and the starting 11s like reflected that like you had Paulinia looked amazing against PSG and then he doesn't play him against Burnley because the need to have someone doing that job and the team to be set up in that kind of way completely changes.

14:27So the main thing about him is his adaptability. Like that's what he's always done at Brentford. It's what he's become sort of renowned for. And I think as the season goes on with Tottenham, you will see different systems. You will see players coming in and out of the squad. And yeah, that's who he is. That's who he is, mate. Do you know who went... There was a moment where I started to think, oh, wow, maybe we really do have a good manager. Not that I didn't think that already, I did have concerns about the problems and challenges managing compared to the ones at Brentford and the demands and the lack of opportunity sometimes, or lack of room to breathe really is what I would say at Spurs.

15:07But against PSG, we played about five, but we decided to press them. And I was like, what's going on here? And not only that, it wasn't press them. And we all know how great PSG are and appreciate it. It might be a half-cooked one in that game. But we were surprised by what he decided to do. And it was effective. So it is interesting. One of the conversations that are sort of flowing around the Tottenham fan base at the moment is that we've suddenly become very good at set pieces. And they've become an intrinsic part of how we attack the goal. And it seems to be, you know, in terms of long throws and corners floating over to the back post, sort of similar to what Arsenal's doing it pains me to say but it's not dissimilar to what Arsenal have been doing for the last 18 months or so but there has been some conversations like is this what we are not that there is any complaints at this stage but is are we now a set piece direct team or is there an argument if you're looking at the kind of positive side of things that he's getting the most out of what he can as quickly as possible and that things might change and adapt and become more progressive and expansive as he gets his grip on the squad.

16:23You've touched on something very important there. I think any team that is good at set pieces this season will be labeled as having copied Arsenal. However, even Nicolas Jova was with Thomas Frank at Brentford. Brentford were the world heavyweight champions before it was trendy of maximizing what you can do with a squad and maximizing attacking opportunities by looking at things that other teams weren't. They were the first team to really look at long throw. routines. Can we get the ball in the box from here? What is our approach for the first ball, the second ball? And obviously Arsenal have sort of made it fashionable because they're on TV a lot more.

16:57But that was something that was part of Brentford's model that Thomas Frank was brilliant at doing, brilliant at getting the players to get on board with. And again, even Nicholas Jova was with him there. That's where he got his start. Brentford have gone and appointed a set-piece coach to replace Thomas Frank. So I always find there's a bit of a sniffiness about it in this country because set pieces and getting the ball in the box and sticking it in the mixer and the big man getting his head on it, that feels like a part of English football that we like to think we've left behind and we're now technical and we can play it and we can pass it.

17:32We can mix it with these fancy foreign lads and their little one-touch stuff. Whereas if the ball ends up in the back of the net, if you get 10 more goals a season because you're great at long throws there's there's no issue with that whatsoever like the players Tottenham have got they're still going to play really expansive football they're still going to be really good with it on the deck but there's no point you know if you go charging up field with five players and the opposition stick it out for a throw in not having a plan for that if you goal keep if the goalkeeper makes a save and you get a corner you absolutely do want to be maximizing your chances of then converting that chance from there and Thomas Frank is so detail orientated like the reason you know he got the most out of Brentford with those set piece opportunities was because he looked at it in detail and he studied it and he found things that other people weren't thinking of and he worked with a really good team to make that a big part of their identity um and yeah I think I think you'll see Tottenham go right up the rankings this season for goals for corners goals from set pieces and even like the little stuff like just winning the first contact being better organized like they'll probably defend a lot better from set pieces as well because it works at both ends of the pitch I would have no issue no issue whatsoever if I was a Tottenham fan with every time we get a throw in see someone drying off the ball with like a dilap style towel and getting ready to stick it 40 yards into the box like it's it's all football's about margins and as teams become you know far better physically able to run more more tactically astute anybody can you know put together a decent low block now and everybody's capable of you know being expansive and whatnot Finding those margins is so, so important.

19:06And if your way of doing that, and if you're one of the best in the world at doing it, is by maximising set pieces, then that's a really positive thing. You mentioned just briefly, I mean, we're going off topic here, but my favourite player who doesn't play for Tottenham and has been for about 18 months is Walter Marder. Woof. He's been my favourite player for about three days now. Yeah, of course. but I say you know when you somehow you know in this game right if you if you find something before everybody else does like finding a new band before they become a popular I watched um weird I think I was watching Stuttgart late at night which is what I do you know and uh and and I watched him play and I'm like who is this kid the way he glides the size of him his frame and the delicacy of which he plays football and the fluency it reminded me of like a kind of taller, better looking kind of Berbatov.

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21:2525, 26 participating stores only while supplies last visit store for full terms. Just wonderful to watch play football. Really is. I wish Spurs had bought him. It's great. I think it's good. I know some people say that Newcastle were overpaid and perhaps they do for this stage of his career, but the upside to him is massive. Yeah. I just, just on a, on a, on a personal take on that. I don't think there's such, there is such a thing as overpaying when you're potentially going into a season without a recognized center forward. Like Visser wasn't here, you know, when we went and got him in. So we're starting the season with Anthony Gordon up front, who's not a centre forward and was suspended, and Willis Sula, who is a TikTok influencer.

22:01So I don't think whatever price Stuttgart had put on that, I think it was going to be worth paying. So I'm delighted we're going to avoid those questions now. Like, well, he's not scoring any goals, and all the link-up play might be good, but until he starts putting it in the net. So to get rid of that conversation after 27 minutes is beautiful. Great header as well. One of our signings, a free transfer, or actually a loan with an obligation to buy, is Paulina, Jao Paulina. You made a midfielder. Why Tottenham needs Jao Paulina is the title of your video. And I agree with you. I think we really, really needed him.

22:36What is it about his playing style, his physicality, tactical discipline, his ability to win the ball back? What do you like about him for Spurs? I think the Paulina thing is I think because he played for Fulham, who are not a trendy team and they don't get a lot of plaudits, and then he went to Bayern where he's out of sight, out of mind. Things become very easy to forget. For about two seasons, he was probably the best central midfielder in the Premier League at stopping you getting bullied. Whatever the situation was, whether you were defending, whether you were being counter-attacked on, whether you were trying to build up from the back, he would just make sure that at no stage were you going to come off second best physically.

23:13Again, another stat I should have written down, I'm sure he won the most tackles of any player in the league, I think over a combined two-year period or something like that. Nobody won the ball back more than he did. Tiseido was about, I think, about 120 tackles behind him, which is meant to admit that. Yeah, he's just... I have a Tottenham supporting friend, and he was asking, what is he going to do? And the only analogy I could give him was, you know, in cartoons where the big cartoon cat, someone puts a cherry pie on the windowsill to cool, and the lines come off it, and then they just sort of float over towards it.

23:48that's him with trouble. If there's a ball going to break or someone's out of position or there's space to be exploited, he just sort of floats over there like he smelled something delicious and he's just in the right place at the right time. And his technique for winning the ball back is fantastic. He's not... I could understand why it didn't work for him by him because, I mean, as we've already discussed here, they played against PSG, they had a back five. The idea was to shut off space to when they were trying to break down the low block, make sure someone was there to cover people getting dragged out of position, cover mistakes, cover people getting beat.

24:19And at Bayern Munich, that just does not happen to you other than maybe once or twice a season. So it was a bit of a weird fit. And certainly, I think I'm right in saying Tuchel bought him because he had a more sort of heavy metal approach in mind than what Vincent Kompany ended up using when he finally got in the job. So it was a terrible, terrible fit for him. But it doesn't detract, and I think Tottenham fans have already seen that, from just how good a reader of the game he is, how much he helps everybody around him. If you're in the midfield and you're receiving it with your back to play and someone's up your arse and going to take it off you, as happened so many times last season, he is going to make sure that if you do lose that ball, well, they haven't got a party immediately.

25:04They've still got another problem to navigate. Some Spurs fans are a little bit concerned about his distribution. I mean he's not Xavi Alonso is he? No he's not what we call in the circles these days a progressor that's again that's why he didn't get in at Bayern Munich because you know it's not that they didn't want to have someone who was capable of winning the ball but the amount of the ball they saw if your ability to carry it and to play it forward is lacking somewhat you are going to be a passenger for 80 % of that game at a team like Bayern Munich and obviously Tottenham is still going to be one of the top teams in the league there's going to be as we've said with Simmonds there's going to be more games where they're in charge than they're not.

25:43But in the Premier League, the amount of teams that can counter-attack against you at pace and can find these small little gaps, he's going to be a lot more use here than he was there. And I think you've already seen by him just not picking him against Burnley. You know, a£4-5 million loan fee, there's no sort of like, he's not going to be like this big weight around the neck of the rest of the team. He will play when he's needed and he'll contribute in a lot of games. But when you do play Burnley at home and you're going to see 80 % of the ball or something ridiculous, you'll just not play him.

26:16You've got fantastic players in the squad who can do the stuff he doesn't. And I think Frank's got the wherewithal to know when to use him and when to not. Yeah, it felt like a low-risk, high-reward type of transfer. It's a brilliant buy. How often do you get a player of that calibre who's still in prime years, he's got a couple of games at the Club World Cup, but he's not had some horrible injury. And you just get him for what represents a really reasonable loan fee. And I don't know, is it an obligation or are they... I think it's an option for 30 million. Oh, well, you're laughing. It's Christmas for you, that.

26:55It feels like it. This is lovely, Adam. In terms of Thomas Frank, his adjustments, team shape, I know in... I think this is correct. in the last season he started with eight different formations in the Premier League last year every single iteration of the modern formation and some of the old classics like the 4-4-2 but do you think there's a tactical formation or system at Spurs that he's most likely to implement that might be different from that at Brentford like we've seen five at the back we've seen four for the 4-2-3-1, we've seen a 4-3-3 already. Is that key? Is that the answer? It's going to be a number of things.

27:40I think it's a different question to answer that because of the players you've got missing. Like what this Tottenham... Whatever formation Thomas Frank uses will be a reflection of the players he's got available and what the game that's coming up requires of them. But at the minute, you're missing Solanke, Maddison, Kuliszewski. That's the three players who like this time last season were guaranteed starters. starters like there's no way of even imagining the attack functioning with any of them missing never never mind all three and like where are you now like the second highest scorers in the league like one goal less than Arsenal and Liverpool everyone thinks is going to win the thing so clearly there's no problem with the personnel available but I do think accommodating those players which is what he will try to do because they're very good footballers may necessitate something that we can't predict at the minute like I mean it was 4-3-3 against West Ham which he didn't really use that much against Brentford.

28:32He used lots of different things, but when he reverted to type, it always tended to be that 4-2-3-1, Darm's guarding behind Wisser and Bwemo off on the right. Whereas here, it's felt more 4-3-3-E, but even then, Bergwahl was in that three and felt like he spent a lot of his time in receiving the ball in what you'd call a more classic sort of 10 area. So the thing about, you've got to differentiate formations from tactics. because they're two very separate things. You touched on it before there. You had five at the back against PSG, but you still pressed them really aggressively. So just having an extra defender didn't necessarily mean you were being negative.

29:11I think it'll persist with this 4-3-3 until other players start becoming available or possibly in all likelihood the fixtures change, they pick up a few injuries, the weight of European and domestic cups start to take their toll on the squad. he's an impossible manager to predict over a long period of time I don't see any major reason to change it over the next couple of weeks but I think once you start missing players it's not going to be a case of we'll shoehorn somebody in the left-sided part of the midfield three because that's just how we play it'll be like, okay, well I'm missing X, Y and Z what can I do with what's available to me that'll maximise our chances of winning the game That's always, I think, been his strength as a manager.