Did Thomas Frank really just ‘infuriate’ Spurs fans by telling them they’re sh*t and ‘can’t compete’? | OneFootball

Has Thomas Frank really been stupid enough to ‘infuriate’ Spurs fans by policing expectations after having a go at them over booing Guglielmo Vicario?

Obviously not. You’d have to be stupid/the MailOnline to think so. On which note…

To be Frank

Thomas Frank has said some silly things recently, as all Spurs managers seem to when they realise precisely what it is they have gotten themselves into.

But that has opened up the prospect every under-pressure manager faces: perfectly fine quotes being dragged completely and wilfully out of context to beat and mock him with.

‘Under-fire Thomas Frank infuriates Tottenham fans as he claims they HAVEN’T EARNED their big expectations – and suggests they can’t compete in cups… just six months after winning one!’ screams just the most MailOnline of headlines imaginable.

It quite handily sits proudly atop the website on a relatively quiet day, despite no other outlet leading on the ‘claims they HAVEN’T EARNED their big expectations’ line. What a dreadful oversight by literally everyone else, a site not a million miles away from Mediawatch included.

Thankfully Will Griffee caught it and was able to transcribe Frank dropping these fan-infuriating bombs:

Now that definitely sounds weird if read in a certain way, like Frank is indeed policing those “big expectations” and saying Spurs HAVEN’T EARNED them. But when you factor in a) he is surely not imbecilic enough to say such a thing, b) English is not his first language and points can thus sometimes be lost in translation, and c) he also said this…

…it becomes fairly clear what he is trying to say: Spurs have not competed on multiple fronts since the days of Mauricio Pochettino and that is what Frank is aiming to build towards.

At the start of the same press conference – in a part that was for some reason not quoted within the Mail’s story – Frank also said:

Honestly, see for yourself the bit that has ‘infuriated’ the three Spurs fans on the social media site formerly known as X who the MailOnline quote – one of whom declares themself to be ‘some dumb asshole’ and who collectively have 524 followers between them – but which, again, no-one else has covered in the same way.

Ange management

By Martin Lipton’s own admission, the headline to his Sun column cannot possibly be right.

While it says ‘Thomas Frank should be careful about digging out Tottenham fans – the last two managers to do so didn’t last long’, he goes on to cite the cases of about five different Spurs coaches, ranging from Antonio Conte all the way back to Andre Villas-Boas.

And the Ange Postecoglou comparison doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny anyway: ‘the start of his decline’ was not ‘when he criticised the Spurs supporters for their approach to the home game with Manchester City, where defeat scuppered Arsenal’s title chances’ at all.

That was in May 2024. He was sacked in June 2025; Frank would kill to be in charge more than a year from now after going down a really quite long ‘precarious path’ in having a go at the supporters.

For Postecoglou, ‘the start of his decline’ was probably somewhere around the time Spurs broke the 38-game Premier League record for most games lost by a team who avoided relegation. It feels like that was ultimately slightly more of a factor than disagreeing with some fans over the right way to hate Arsenal.

Mount doom

The seamless ability of the press pack to massively overinflate their importance knows no bounds, with Samuel Luckhurst offering this exceptional example in The Sun:

Mount played the full 90 minutes of a Premier League game for the first time since January 2023? It’s the Sun wot done it. Forget overcoming his injury problems; flanking Amorim at a post-season tour press conference was obviously the key.

On your Ed

That glowing appraisal of Mount features, with a distinct lack of irony, the claim that Edinson Cavani ‘had a tendency to make himself unavailable for games’ at Manchester United.

How unfortunate then that Cavani, ‘unworthy of United’s most fabled squad number’ because of said fleeting fitness, still boasts more Manchester United appearances in two seasons (59) than Mount has racked up in two and a bit (58).

There are many ways of hailing Mason Mount. Mocking another player’s physical durability in a supposedly flattering comparison is not one of them.

Squad goals

‘Mikel Arteta must learn from past mistakes as Arsenal injuries begin to pile up’ is a strange headline to see on the Daily Mirror website about the Premier League leaders who have been without their captain for the majority of the campaign, and whose top scorer from last season has not featured at all since making a half-hour cameo on the opening day.

‘They have to put their trust and faith in the squad to get through a demanding month of fixtures,’ John Cross writes. Did he miss Piero Hincapie and Cristhian Mosquera playing away at Chelsea?

Which…Arteta seems to? Because those back-ups are not called Rob Holding, Reiss Nelson or Eddie Nketiah anymore? Because past mistakes have been learned from?