Thomas Frank doesn’t ‘understand’ Spurs and Brentford stalemate suggests he never will | OneFootball

Never has the disconnect between a manager and fanbase been more transparent than at Brentford v Tottenham last night.

Tottenham left with precisely what they intended to – a clean sheet and a precious point in their noble quest for an 11th-placed finish. But that is not at all what the fans want or expect or consider an acceptable target.

A point at Brentford is not a bad result for anyone this season. We’re halfway through the season and the only visiting team to win there this season is Man City, and that was a tense and tight 1-0 win.

The result is fine. The manner of it is not so much. Most Spurs fans would have settled for a point last night; but they will not settle for playing only for that point and showing neither the Dare nor the Do to strive for anything more.

That is what Thomas Frank still doesn’t grasp, and why last night’s draw might actually be his most damaging result yet. Because it highlights the gulf that exists between him and fans who spent the entire game singing for lost heroes from Dele to Christian Eriksen and Mousa Dembele. Even Eric Dier’s song got an airing as, of course, did Brennan Johnson’s. Along with more than one refrain of Boring, Boring Tottenham.

There is clear and undeniable logic behind the sale of Brennan Johnson. He has a particular set of skills that made him the perfect Angeballer, but such limitations that he is not only poorly suited to Frankball but most likely any successor too. It’s good money for a player who will only be worth less after another six months on the bench.

But the reports that Johnson was told by Thomas Frank and Fabio Paratici that he doesn’t feature in Tottenham’s future plans immediately begs further questions.

First and more churlishly: there are plans? But more importantly, how confident is anyone right now that Frank and Paratici are part of Tottenham’s long-term future plans? The former has just shown yet again just how poor a fit he is for the club he now calls home after that drab effort at the one he used to.

And the last we heard, Paratici was in deep and complex talks with Fiorentina that definitely weren’t all about Manor Solomon.

It is all a bit of a mess, and we cannot shake the idea that the performance at Brentford is Frank’s most damaging and perilous moment yet. Defeats are one thing, but at least after defeats, everyone is on the same page in acknowledging that losing games is not a good thing.

The travelling fans at Brentford were clear and unanimous in their displeasure – and this is the away fans Thomas Frank has previously praised for their deep ball knowledge and high tolerance for unwatchable sh*te, in contrast to those mean home ones who make it impossible for his players to beat even Wolves at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

But in Frank’s mind, the trip to Brentford represented a job well done.

It also represented the first time since the disastrous trip to Arsenal in November that he had paired Rodrigo Bentancur and Joao Palhinha in midfield, adding a further layer of nonsense atop that cement-mixer of a midfield by asking a third defensive midfielder in Archie Gray to play as a kind of false 10.

All three are good players. All three are perfectly valid and useful members of Spurs’ squad. They absolutely do not and cannot together constitute a viable midfield three.

But Spurs simply don’t have the numbers and their manager lacks the inclination to gamble. The lack of compelling alternatives is a significant reminder that Frank is not and never could be the only or even biggest problem with Spurs right now. But he is still a problem, and one more easily solved than other deeper issues.

He is getting less out of an admittedly depleted squad at this stage of 2025/26 than the now utterly exposed Ange Postecoglou was doing at this time last season when he had almost no defenders.

We keep hearing Frank remind everyone that Spurs finished 17th last season, but he doesn’t seem to understand – or is at least pretending not to understand – that this represented an unacceptable disaster so unthinkable that not even the club’s biggest success in 40 years could mask it.

It is not a baseline from which to work; it is a freak one-off occurrence never to be repeated.

Yet he has attempted repeatedly to position his task this season as clearing that specific bar, one so low it is in the Upside Down.

His team and tactics at Brentford showed it. Again. We already know that Joao Palhinha and Rodrigo Bentancur specifically are an either/or proposition. That you can and must do literally anything else other than pair them together given the disastrous knock-on effect it has on the football – or what passes for it – produced by the rest of the team.

Yet with Lucas Bergvall, James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski, Pape Sarr and Xavi Simons all still unavailable for assorted reasons this weekend, we fully expect to see Bentinha once again in dreary harness in Spurs’ midfield against Sunderland.

Except this time it’s at home. And it won’t just be 1700 travelling Spurs fans voicing their displeasure at the sheer indignity of it all.

He talks about getting the fans back onside, about how success will do that. But there is nothing to indicate that success is coming. There is nothing within what Frank is showing us now that even hints at the possibility of what a successful version of this might look like. We’re not even sure he really has a handle on what success even means. We’re not particularly sure Spurs fans do either, for that matter, now the trophy drought is in the bin.

But Spurs fans do at least know what they like. And Frank ain’t it.

There are plenty of Spurs fans who really will tolerate unsuccessful football that’s entertaining. There are more still who might tolerate tepid football that’s successful. But they won’t accept boring, unsuccessful football for very long at all. And right now Frank shows no appetite to change the former and no plan to change the latter and is losing even the hardcore away support. So where does that leave us?

Frank has made it to 2026 still in situ. How far he lasts into the year remains to be seen.