Thomas Frank was meant to bring stability to Spurs, but ended up unpopular with fans and players

When Thomas Frank was appointed Tottenham Hotspur’s new head coach in June 2025, his task was to rebuild the club’s culture. But the defining image of his tenure — or rather the defining sound — was booing. And booing directed specifically at him.

Within a few months of Frank taking over, booing became a routine part of a Tottenham matchday.

At times, it was directed at the players, like at Guglielmo Vicario when Spurs lost to Fulham on November 29. When Tottenham drew at Brentford and lost at Bournemouth in January 2026, Frank was singled out for treatment by the Spurs away end. It got louder and more pointed time after time, when Spurs lost at home to West Ham United, when they drew away at Burnley. During Frank’s final game, the 2-1 defeat by Newcastle United last night, fans’ anger was mixed with resignation and a new sense of fear about the relegation threat. But they sang ‘Sacked in the morning’ at Frank again. And this time, they got their way.

There have been some unpopular managers at Tottenham in recent years. But even at the worst moments for Ange Postecoglou and Antonio Conte — the last two permanent predecessors — they were not as rejected, as scorned as Frank was on Tuesday night. Even the mutiny that led to Nuno Espirito Santo’s dismissal did not feel quite as personal as the anger that Frank has faced for the last few months.

For all the talk of cultural change and building a new environment, Frank never made much of an impression on the players, and leaves Spurs as the most unpopular head coach they have had in modern times.

Frank applauds the fans after Tottenham’s home defeat to West Ham (John Walton/Getty Images)

Only by a few months does Frank also avoid being the shortest-serving. He did at least make it more than halfway through his debut season. By surviving all the way through to February, he did far better than Jacques Santini and Nuno, both of whom took over in the summer (Santini in 2004, Nuno in 2021), and then left in early November. But while Frank only managed Spurs for 26 league games, he still managed to witness some of the most dramatic changes in Tottenham’s history. Changes that transformed the structure and direction of the club. Changes that left Frank exposed and demanded even more from him.

What Spurs have needed, more than anything, is a football team that people could believe in and rally behind. And Frank was never able to deliver it. 

While Frank left the job in fairly typical circumstances — as with Conte and Mourinho, he was sacked mid-season — he came to it unlike almost any other Spurs manager. His was a uniquely mixed inheritance. Because last season Tottenham both won the Europa League, their greatest moment for a generation, and finished 17th in the Premier League, their worst season for almost 50 years. It was a painful decision to dismiss Postecoglou but one that Daniel Levy took to rebuild Spurs as a consistent force in all competitions. Frank was sacked having utterly failed to rebuild Spurs’ standing in the Premier League, effectively running last season on repeat, from the huge gap between the records at home and in Europe to the devastating injury crisis.

Tottenham wanted to give Frank the best possible tools to succeed so he was allowed to assemble a high-quality backroom staff, including members from Brentford and some recruited from outside. It was an early sign of the club’s commitment to Frank’s rebuilding. But the most important tools for any manager are the players. And there is no avoiding the fact that Frank was not handed a strong group.

Spurs never replaced Harry Kane when he left in 2023, just as they did not replace Son Heung-min soon after Frank took over. In Postecoglou’s last Spurs press conference, he had bemoaned the “development gap” left by the club’s replacement of experienced players with teenagers. Tottenham had clearly been overtaken by Aston Villa and Newcastle, and had fallen further behind the rest of the ‘Big Six’. It was time to make up the gap.

Frank wanted more proven quality and goals from out wide, a new No 6 to shore up the midfield and, most importantly, a new No 10, with Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison both sidelined with long-term injuries. Spurs were able to sign Mohammed Kudus and Joao Palhinha quickly enough to feature in their season opener, the UEFA Super Cup, but a top-quality No 10 proved more elusive.

They had targeted Morgan Gibbs-White and Eberechi Eze, got close to both, but ended up with neither. Levy was suddenly so desperate for a win in the market, and eventually did a £52million ($71m) deal to sign Xavi Simons from RB Leipzig.

Tottenham failed in summer moves for Eberechi Eze and Morgan Gibbs-White (Jon Hobley/Getty Images)

Gibbs-White and Eze would have hit the ground running at Spurs, but Simons needed more time. Randal Kolo Muani, Kudus, Palhinha and Simons are not bad players, but balanced against the departure of Son, and the injuries to Maddison, Kulusevski and Solanke, not many would say that Frank started with a strong squad. The window ended as they all do at Tottenham, with fans furiously arguing about whether it had made the team and the squad better or worse. It felt like time for everyone to take a breath and focus on the football.

But instead, September 4, 2025, proved to be one of the most dramatic days in the history of the club. Levy, who had run the club with near-total control for almost 25 years, was sacked. It was a genuinely shocking moment which marked a radical change in how the club was run. And it meant that the man who led the process to appoint Frank, who signed the players he would choose from, was no longer in the building.

The challenge for Frank was to take this patchy squad, built together by a series of different executives for a series of very different managers, and turn it into a functioning team. A team that could correct the apparent excesses of the Postecoglou era — the ups and downs, the defensive frailty, the inability to play two good games each week — replacing them with something robust, flexible and sustainable. Just like Frank’s Brentford team, who got promoted to the Premier League and managed two top-half finishes in four years, but on a bigger scale.

And there was certainly a moment, a few games into the season, when it felt as if that hope might even be easily and quickly realised. Frank’s first game was the Super Cup in Udine against Luis Enrique’s brilliant Paris Saint-Germain team. Frank unveiled a bespoke 3-5-2 system. Palhinha and Kudus both shone on debut. Spurs shut the game down, excelled on set pieces, went 2-0 up, only to fade at the end and lose on penalties. A missed opportunity for silverware, but a clear statement of intent.

When Spurs beat Burnley 3-0 at home on Premier League opening weekend, the players were visibly buzzing with optimism about this new chapter. Best of all, Spurs went to the Etihad Stadium in their second league game, deployed another masterclass of organisation, pressing and countering, and won 2-0.

Looking back, the start of Frank’s tenure was also its peak. Burnley was one of only two home league wins. Manchester City was their only win against a top side. Beyond that, the best teams they beat were, with all due respect to the others, Villarreal, Everton, and Borussia Dortmund. 

So many of the problems Frank could never escape were evident in his third league game, a 1-0 home defeat by Bournemouth that flattered Tottenham. Spurs were painfully limited on the ball, recording an xG of just 0.19 (this felt shocking at the time, but they managed to record even lower figures against Chelsea and Arsenal). They looked predictable in their build-up, unable to move the ball forward or create chances from open play. They did not look like they knew how to take the initiative in a home game.

And every single subsequent home game confirmed this to be the case. Opponents would come away from playing Spurs marvelling at how predictable Tottenham were, how poor they were in possession, and how easy they were to stop. Especially when so much of Spurs’ play was exclusively directed down the sides, and never through the middle of the pitch. 

An early-season defeat by Bournemouth offered some ominous warnings for the season ahead (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

When they hosted Wolves — rooted to the bottom of the table — in September, they were even worse. They needed Palhinha to score in added time just to rescue a point. When Chelsea came to Tottenham, one of the biggest games in Spurs’ calendar, they looked utterly clueless in possession, finishing with an xG of 0.1. Their best moment was Rodrigo Bentancur not quite connecting with a Kevin Danso long throw. Against Fulham, they were 2-0 down after six minutes and could not recover. But no home game could compare to the toxicity when they lost to West Ham on January 17, and then to Newcastle on February 10, the two games when the stadium found its voice, united against the head coach.

Put this all together, and it made for one of the worst home records in the Premier League. Now, Spurs’ struggles at their £1.2billion stadium were nothing new. They were miserable there in the second half of last season, too. But Frank offered nothing for the home crowd to believe in and get behind. And with every passing home game, fans showed up less confident and less optimistic. Over time, the negative atmosphere toxified relations between the fans, the team and Frank himself.

After the Chelsea defeat, Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence walked off, straight past Frank, ignoring his requests that they acknowledge the crowd, an act for which they both later apologised. During the Fulham defeat, some sections of the crowd jeered Vicario after a costly mistake, leading to Frank saying that they were not “true fans”. Frank’s standing with the crowd never recovered from that moment when he challenged them. In recent years, most of the negativity at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was directed at Levy. This season, it started to turn on the team and then overwhelmingly on the manager. Frank was never able to turn that tide.

The respite, such as it was, came away from home. Frank’s Spurs took 19 of their 29 points on the road. If the blueprint was the City win, they followed it well around the country, marrying defensive organisation with set-piece efficiency. That was how they won at West Ham United, Leeds United, Everton and Crystal Palace, four away wins that suggested that Spurs did have a method to win.

Even if it was not a method that worked at home. Even the 2-2 draws at Brighton & Hove Albion and Newcastle were perfectly creditable, games when the team showed fight and commitment. But the biggest away game of all came at Arsenal in November. And Frank’s negative 5-4-1 set-up, like a League One team trying to earn an FA Cup replay, added to fears that he did not fit with Spurs.

A humiliating defeat away at Arsenal was a low point of Frank’s Spurs reign (Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

It was after the Arsenal game that the same question was asked, both inside and outside the club: was this job too big for him? Would he be able to make the step up from Brentford to Spurs?

It was a question to which Frank was never able to provide an adequate answer. It was after the Arsenal and Fulham defeats in November that Fabio Paratici, then Spurs’ sporting director, concluded that he did not fit this job. And after the 3-0 defeat by Nottingham Forest in December, Paratici started talking to Fiorentina, leading, along with his personal circumstances, to a swift departure from his new role.

Even on Frank’s few good days — those counter-attacking away wins — Spurs still set up playing reactive, minimalistic football, football that jarred with the traditions of the club. When Spurs fans in the away end at Brentford sang “Boring, boring Tottenham” after an unambitious 0-0 draw on January 1, it was the beginning of the end for Frank.

Many of the players did not enjoy the limited nature of Frank’s football either. A source close to one senior first-team player — speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their relationship — said, just before Frank’s dismissal, that he was ultimately a coach for a “smaller team”, focused on compact defensive shape, long balls and counter-attacks. This meant that Frank was unable to get the best out of the talent available to him, with the player in question feeling that he was only able to perform at “10 per cent” of his potential because of Frank’s restrictive tactics.

Frank told those close to him that the second half of the season would be “painful” and that although Spurs have great facilities, they also had a squad low on quality. This applied to the left wing, where he tried various players with none really excelling. Tottenham’s recruitment department deserve a portion of the blame for assembling a disjointed squad but Frank never settled on a starting XI and his constant changes impacted the team’s momentum.

It is a simple fact of football that managing bigger teams is different from managing smaller ones. There are plenty of examples of very good managers — even great ones — struggling to make a big step up. Like Roy Hodgson going from Fulham to Liverpool in 2010. Or David Moyes going from Everton to Manchester United in 2013. Or even Nuno going from Wolves to Spurs in 2021. 

Just like Hodgson, Moyes and Nuno before him, Frank struggled to convince that he could manage a club with the size and expectations of Tottenham. He was an intelligent, thoughtful voice in public, popular with staff, keen to know everyone’s name. But there was a perception that he was too nice, maybe lacking the ego or the out-sized charisma needed to lead a club of this size. The sight of Van de Ven and Spence walking past him when he urged them over to the fans played into that.

Frank and Micky van de Ven after the defeat by West Ham (John Walton/Getty Images)

Another Tottenham player believed that while Postecoglou was perhaps not the best coach, the players respected him, admired his charisma and listened to what he said. But those players soon stopped listening to Frank, because, as this player saw it, he did not have the personality required to coach a big team.

Another long-standing training ground source concurred, pointing out that the players would ultimately run through brick walls for Postecoglou, whatever his faults, as proven by the Europa League win. The players never had the same respect for Frank, and knew that they did not have to work as hard for him. Which meant that — in the eyes of this source — they never trained with the same intensity they showed under the previous manager. The players knew that they could get away with less.

It should not be brushed over that Frank faced serious issues in terms of player behaviour and dynamics that he was not able to solve. Discipline and time-keeping were always a concern. After Spurs lost so painfully to Arsenal, Frank lectured his players in the dressing room about standards dropping. The next day, multiple players — including Cristian Romero — still turned up late. The club deny this was the case. The example of Romero is an instructive one. He was the only possible choice as captain when Son left, but his behaviour on and off the pitch was not always what you want from the man wearing the armband. Frank always backed Romero in public, even after he had criticised the club’s hierarchy and then received a four-match ban for a challenge on Manchester United’s Casemiro a few days later, but privately he held reservations about the defender’s leadership qualities.

That, in part, is why the club realised they had such an issue with leadership over the course of the season. Sources close to players would repeatedly refer to the lack of direction on the training ground. Or to the fact that, after a defeat, the players would get too down on themselves, with no one there able to lift and refocus them on the task ahead. It left a miserable mood during Frank’s last two months which no one could ever shift. And explains why the club signed Conor Gallagher — and pursued Andy Robertson — during last month’s transfer window. They were desperate to plug that character gap.

Nor should it be forgotten that Frank had to contend with an injury crisis as bad as the one that sunk Spurs’ league campaign last year too. Maddison and Kulusevski — their two best midfielders — did not start a single competitive minute for him. Solanke, the best centre-forward, did not start a game until late January. Most of the rest of the team went down with significant injuries. Bentancur, Danso, Pedro Porro, Richarlison, Lucas Bergvall and Kudus were all also missing for the final weeks of Frank’s tenure. Wilson Odobert tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during Frank’s final game in charge.

This would not be a very strong squad with everyone fit. So take those players out of it, and they were never going to be able to challenge this season.

Wilson Odobert tore his ACL during Frank’s last match in charge vs Newcastle (Glyn Kirk/Getty Images)

But as a public figurehead, Frank never quite fit, never quite managed to find the right words when speaking in public. For someone who always had a reputation for talking intelligently in public, he appeared to struggle with the brighter spotlight that comes with being the public face of a big club. Spurs fans grew frustrated that Frank would never say anything to make them believe in him or his football.

When Frank joined, he said the only guarantee was that Spurs would “lose games”. In one light, that was a welcome piece of honesty. But over time, it was seen as defeatist. The contrast with Postecoglou, who said that he always won a trophy in his second season and then delivered, was obvious. Even when results were turning against him, Frank never came out fighting like Postecoglou would have done. When he said, in his post-match press conference after January’s damaging West Ham defeat, that he was turning the “super-tanker” in the right direction, most fans just got annoyed at him. The moment at Bournemouth when Frank was photographed drinking from an Arsenal-branded coffee cup was the most emblematic of them all. Such a small issue, yet also so telling about a manager who kept getting the optics wrong.

But for all the questions about Frank’s management style — whether he was too nice, too thoughtful, whether he had the charisma or the ‘aura’ to manage Spurs — in the end, it all comes down to the football. Tottenham, during his brief tenure, simply did not look like a good team. They never played with any style or creativity. They barely created anything from open play. They recorded low xG numbers, and then did so again and again. There was never any sense of where the football was leading. You could not see an obvious endpoint, a light at the end of the tunnel. Just more set pieces, and more of Porro chipping the ball down the line to Kudus.

Ever since Frank’s appointment, fans were wondering whether this was just a replay of the Nuno interregnum, that short spell at the start of the 2021-22 season. Nuno faced some of the same questions: whether he could scale up from a promoted side to a big one, whether he could coach a style of play suitable to Spurs’ players, stadium and expectations. But when Levy sacked Nuno, they still had Kane and Son, with Conte waiting to take over. There are no equivalent quick fixes from here nor fast routes back to the top.

Frank was Levy’s last big appointment at Tottenham, and his dismissal is the first big test of the post-Levy era. It was clear for some time that the hierarchy did not want to sack him, and he lost the fans and the players long before he finally lost the people running the club. The focus all season had been on patience, giving time for his cultural changes to take root.

The hope was that, if backed, he could transform the whole club. But instead, Frank was corroded by toxicity and negativity faster and more painfully than most of his predecessors. After last night, CEO Vinai Venkatesham had finally seen and heard enough, and made his recommendation to the board to make a change. And now that Frank is gone, the Tottenham hierarchy must answer what exactly they want to do with this football club.

Additional reporting: Seb Stafford-Bloor