Tottenham: Ex-Spurs analyst reveals where it all went wrong for Thomas Frank | OneFootball

Joe Newton, who worked with Frank at both Brentford and Spurs, defends decision-making process during short tenure

Former Tottenham analyst Joe Newton has described Spurs as a "completely different beast" to Brentford after revealing where it all went wrong for Thomas Frank last season.

Despite a positive first couple of months, Newton then left Spurs in February after Frank was sacked, as results spiralled after the turn of the year.

Speaking to the Chris Gill Podcast, which covers analysis, scouting and recruitment within football, Newton admitted he was taken aback by the publicity he received after it was announced that he would be leaving Brentford to join Spurs.

“I even remember when we used to go there with Brentford, and being told that the south stand in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium holds as many [fans] as the Gtech (Community Stadium).

Short-lived spell: Thomas Frank was sacked by Tottenham in February after just eight months in charge

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“So in terms of those sorts of facilities that we went into at Spurs, it's just on a completely different level.

“That expectation, I think as well, not took me by surprise, but obviously the sort of publicity around me specifically, going in with Thomas, my name was getting mentioned in articles and things.

“And honestly, for about a week, my phone was blowing up, and it was crazy. So that sort of made me realise quite early that it was obviously, I knew it anyway, but a big club that you're going into and that expectation.”

Spurs started brightly under Frank and pulled off an impressive 2-0 win away to Manchester City in just his second Premier League game at the helm.

Balancing Champions League and Premier League commitments, though, soon became a challenge and one that Newton and Frank had not experienced before.

Spurs’ league form plummeted quickly, and for Newton, the lack of time on the training ground, coupled with the club’s injury crisis, proved a real issue.

“The European games we were playing every three to four days, obviously, that limits your training time, prep time, everything's quicker,” Newton continued.

“Turnaround of games, analysis, meetings and player availability. It did end up sort of piling up.”

Spurs failed to win any of Frank’s final eight league games in charge, and Newton acknowledges that by the end of his tenure, “everything that could go wrong was going wrong”.

“I'd say that I'd look back at my processes and, of course, in hindsight, there might be an odd thing here and there I would have done differently,” he said. “But in general, I don't think I could have done any more.

“Because of the way Thomas works in terms of having these coaches meetings pretty much every day, we obviously came to decisions that you might from the outside think, ‘why on earth have they done that?’

“But every sort of scenario and the information that was passed to us, I think if you put us back in that situation, taking hindsight out, I think you would still end up coming to the same decision because I feel the process in terms of how we got to that decision was right.

“Some things just weren't going for us, and by the end of it, it felt like everything that could go wrong was going wrong.”