Is Thomas Frank ready to make the step up to Tottenham?
The 51-year-old Dane has firmly established Brentford in the Premier League since earning promotion in 2021 but the Spurs job would represent a significant step up.
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On the latest episode of The Athletic FC Podcast, Adam Leventhal was joined by Tottenham writer Jay Harris and Seb Stafford-Bloor to discuss whether Frank is ready to take the reins at Spurs.
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available to watch on YouTube below or listen via The Athletic FC Podcast's feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Adam Leventhal: Seb, how do you think Frank will deal with the tumble dryer of Tottenham?
Seb Stafford-Bloor: I've never seen anything that makes me think he wouldn't deal with it well. He seems to be a really balanced person, thoughtful and intelligent, and his man-management is very good. I don't think there are many egos at Tottenham, even though Spurs players will be earning more in wages. But you're not talking about going from Brentford to Real Madrid.
Where the difficulty lies is in the context of the situation. When the new season starts, there will be a lot of people in the stadium who still hanker after Ange Postecoglou, and who are still emotionally in Bilbao. You could make a case that this is one of the hardest times to become a new Tottenham head coach in recent memory.
If he can deliver quickly and show competence, flexibility, tactical acumen, and knock over a couple of big teams in the Champions League, people will get on board. Postecoglou would become this historic legacy figure who allowed a new era to happen.
It's going to be hard because Tottenham's summers are really difficult. It's only June and people are already getting nervous. We're already hearing conversations starting with comments like, 'We haven't done anything for two weeks, but look at what Manchester City are doing. Liverpool are about to sign Florian Wirtz and they've already signed Jeremie Frimpong, but Tottenham have done nothing'.
It doesn't take much for people to get really nervous and negative, so these are the difficulties. But you just can't know.
Jay Harris: Replacing Postecoglou is really tricky. Thomas Frank started badly at Brentford and at Brondby in Denmark, he didn't win any of his first eight games there. But there's no major international competition in Europe this summer, so he can go into pre-season and have a bit more time with the players.
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They go on tour to Hong Kong and Korea, but they're only there for a week, which is shorter than last year when they went for two weeks. But he will get a significant chunk of time to work with the players early doors. Whereas last year, I can remember a lot of Spurs players were all over the place. Cristian Romero reached the Copa America final, and lots of players got to the latter stages of the Euros, including Micky van de Ven. So that will help Thomas Frank.
I'm intrigued to see how he handles the media because when I covered Brentford for three years, he was always fantastic, very warm and very friendly. But a lot of the time, there were not that many people at those press conferences, especially for Brentford's away games. I would often be the only Brentford reporter there. At Spurs, he's going to have 10 or 12 people turn up every Friday to hear his thoughts, it's going to go on for ages, and we're going to pick the same wounds over and over again. So it'll be interesting to see if he still bats those questions away and deals with them well, or if he finds that step up in focus and scrutiny challenging.
He's said multiple times that he's had 'close to the perfect football life at Brentford', and that he'd only leave if it was for a special project. Well, it's fair to say Spurs is going to be a difficult project, and I don't think he'll have 'close to the perfect football life' anymore. But he will have the right attitude and try to make a success of it.
You can listen to full episodes of The Athletic FC Podcast free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and watch on YouTube.
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