The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Matt Davis Adams.

Thomas Frank has been sacked by Tottenham-Hotspur after a miserable eight months in charge.

A run of just two wins in 17 Premier League matches spelled the end for the Dame.

So who do they turn to next? And can that person fight off the threat of relegation? Here for this one, we've got Dan Kilpatrick. How you doing Dan? Hello, yeah, very well, thanks Matt. Yourself? Yeah, I'm not too bad, thank you. Seb, staff applause with us too. You okay, Seb? I've been better. Matt's been quite a dispiriting 24 hours, but I'm not too bad. Thank you. Seb, staff, applause with us too. You okay, Seb? I've been better. Matt, it's been quite a dispirited 24 hours, but I'm all right. We'll get into it. We'll get into it. Before we get both of your opinions, though, let's get the latest from our Tottenham correspondent, Jay Harris. Why did Tottenham Hotspur take so long to Sap Thomas Frank? You only joined the club last summer as a replacement for Anne's Poster Coglu, but to be honest, results and performances have been trending in one direction for a long time. I think the result which will really stand out is November's defeat to Chelsea. Spurs performed really poorly, recorded a really low XG, and then what happened at the end of the game when Mickey Vanne and Jed Spence walked past Thomas Frank and there was lots of booing from the fans just hinted at a disconnect between everyone at the club. Another moment which will stand out is January's defeat to Bournemouth when Antoine Semenio scored a last-minute winner. That's the game where before kickoff, Thomas Frank was captured by a photographer drinking from a coffee cop, which had Arsenal's badge on it. It's an image which the fans could never move away from, and it really damaged his relationship with them. Frank's final game in charge was the two underfeet to Newcast United on Tuesday, and if you just listen to what the fans were chanting, it was pretty clear that the atmosphere had just become too toxic. They were singing, you're getting sacked in the morning,

and they were chanting the name of their former head coach, Maricio Pocetino. Frank had a lot of success at Brentford, and at one point he said he had close to the perfect life while he was in charge of the West London side. His dream move to Spurs has turned into a disaster. Thank you to Jay for that. Seb, you can look at the stats, you can look at the league table, you can listen to the atmosphere inside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and all of these things will tell you that this is not a surprise. No, Matt, in many ways it's a relief because it's one of the parts of our job that I hate when someone's job is on the line and everybody's clamming from to get dismissed. Think about that in your own life. At the same time, there were no more arguments. There were no more arguments in favor of allowing this to continue. Because ordinarily,

you think when a team's form suffers a downturn, what are the positives? What are the trends?

You know, what are the injuries? What would happen if X, Y and Z were all in place? There was none of that. It just got progressively worse. And, you know, the amount of times, I mean, Joe mentioned it in his voice, no, you talked about how the fans have been singing, you're going to get sacked in the morning. Well, they've been doing that for a very long time now. And so every game leading up to that Newcastle game on Tuesday night has been like a new

low. It was absolutely dreadful. It was virtualist football. More dispiriting, actually.

Nobody seemed to have any faith in what they were trying to do during the game, which

it's kind of the point of no return. One of the key reasons behind this,

Dan, has been that home form and the atmosphere there in the stadium. To be fair to Frank,

there, this predates him, right? They've won five league games at home since November of

2024. Is it the fact that he never found a solution to that, which has been one of the main

drivers of this decision? Yeah, that's part of it i mean i think

you're right in saying that the poor home form the poor form in general the decline long predated frank

and we have to bear that in mind when we're having this discussion frank did not start the rot at tottenham

he is not the overall most responsible person for it.

That's Daniel Levy, by the way, if you're wondering. But he, in my opinion, he certainly was

accelerating that rot massively. You know, he wasn't a solution in any way, shape or form,

and he was only making things worse. And I think that's been clear for a long, long time. I certainly think the home form was part of it because the impression we've been getting from the club, and this has been clear for literally months now, is that they didn't want to make this decision. They would rather have bumbled through to the end of the season when, admittedly, there are going to be a much more compelling candidates on the marketly there are going to be a much more compelling

candidates on the market. It's going to be a much more open managerial market, particularly after

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