Killing off Ange Postecoglou just after he spoke so optimistically at Tottenham Hotspur’s open-top bus parade was like all main-character deaths: a thrilling way to end a season but at a significant cost to the series arc.
Daniel Levy’s perfectly rational decision chooses a future of steady financial growth over the open-hearted possibility of a cultural reset with the wildly entertaining Postecoglou.
Fear of an Erik ten Hag situation has trumped the more hopeful view that Spurs ending their 17-year trophy drought could have rewritten the club’s DNA and radically shifted the trajectory of an admittedly-failing Postecoglou project.
It’s a victory for logic and a defeat for romance; bad for a television series, not so bad for the running of a football club.
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Thomas Frank as our new Head Coach on a contract that runs until 2028.
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial)
Welcome, Thomas! 🤍
But replacing big Ange with Thomas Frank is its own kind of gamble.
Here is a 50-year-old manager with no trophies to his name and no experience at a big club; a tactician renowned for detailed preparation moving from 42-game seasons at Brentford to 58-game seasons at Spurs; a man who thrives at under-dog clubs with ego-free players now arriving at a super-club; a manager shielded by Brentford’s immaculate club dynamic walking into the Levy complex.
The difference between well-run clubs with a firm structure and those led by the whims of a few powerful men is that the former have succession plans in place to ensure the transition from one head coach to the next is seamless (Thomas Frank to Kieran McKenna: perfect) while the latter tend to lurch from one extreme to the other, hiring someone with the opposite characteristics to the manager most recently deemed a failure.
Moving from the adventurous tactical idealism and charisma of Postecoglou to the flexible and mild Frank is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s important Levy doesn’t confuse the outward appearance of conservatism with safety.
Frank is not a safe option. For one thing, we have no real idea what approach he will take to the job.
Frank’s Brentford were a progressive possession-based team in the Sky Bet Championship, complete with a high line and positional rotations, only to move towards more pragmatic and direct football in the Premier League – a process that slowly reversed over the last two years as Brentford’s stature grew.
One thing we know for sure is that Frank is highly flexible, preparing tactics reactively and with humility, often adapting his plans to exploit opposition weaknesses.
In this respect he could not be further from Postecoglou, and that’s no bad thing; modern football is rapidly moving away from the ideologue and towards a more rounded way of playing the game.
Where it might prove to be an issue is convincing supporters that Spurs are on the right path.
They instantly fell in love with Postecoglou because of his fast start in 2023/24 and just as quickly rejected Nuno Espirito Santo for his defensive mindset (and poor results) at the beginning of 2021/22.
But what will the reaction be if Frank – who started very badly at Brondby and Brentford, his only two previous jobs – begins slowly with an approach that, to the untrained eye, appears amorphous and unfocused?
On the surface there is comfort and safety to be found in Frank, whose Brentford so consistently performed above their money-league ranking.
Levy knows Tottenham cannot compete financially with the five other members of the ‘Big Six’; knows that, like Mauricio Pochettino, a successful Spurs manager will need to dramatically exceed budgetary constraints through world-class coaching.
He may well get that from Frank, but there are considerably more unknowns than knowns surrounding a manager making an enormous step up.
Postecoglou was very much a big-swing appointment, which explains why Levy has gone with a sturdy Premier League manager as his replacement.
The problem is, for entirely different reasons, Frank is just as big a leap into the dark.
More from Sporting Life
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at and .
