Thomas Frank now knows what the fixture schedule holds for him as he embarks on his Tottenham Hotspur tenure.
The Dane begins work at the club this week and as he looks to take over the role from one of Spurs’ rare trophy-winning managers, Frank knows that he will have to hit the ground running which is something he was not able to do at either Brentford or Brondby. At both jobs he struggled in his opening eight to 10 matches but at Tottenham he will not be given the luxury of such patience to turn things around.
The expectation in the wake of Ange Postecoglou’s sacking has only been dialled up further by chairman Daniel Levy declaring that Spurs must compete on all fronts and then the Tottenham supremo pushed that to the extreme in a new interview this week.
“We’ve won a European trophy. It’s not enough,” said the 63-year-old. “It’s what we haven’t done that’s more important. We need to win the league. We want to win the Premier League. We want to win the Champions League. We want to win.”
So in short, Frank needs to win. The Dane is clearly a talented coach and the work he has done at Brentford has been rightly recognised with various big Premier League clubs looking at appointing him before Tottenham made their move. However, he is going to have to learn on the go about just how different it is at club like Spurs and what it is like to manage a squad across the multiple competitions that he is expected to go as far as possible in.
The Dane would have been waiting for the Premier League fixtures to drop early on Wednesday morning with his hands clasped in prayer, hoping that the fixture gods (or computer) were going to be kind. In the end they somewhat were.
Frank’s Brentford often beat the big boys in the Premier League but that was done after years of honing them to his ways before they even reached the top flight. He needs time to not only replicate that at Spurs but push it on to a whole new level across 10 to 15 more games a season than he faced with the Bees.
So to have an opening game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium against a promoted side in Burnley is as perfect a start as a new manager could wish for. A trip to Manchester City comes next but if you were going to choose a time to travel to the Etihad Stadium, it might just be early in the season before all those new signings settle properly and also straight after the holiday Pep Guardiola’s players are going to need to have following the Club World Cup.
Up next is another home game against one of the other candidates to replace Postecoglou in Andoni Iraola and his Bournemouth side. It’s a good chance for Frank to show why he was the top man on Tottenham’s 30-strong list of candidates.
After the first international break of the season comes the first London derby of the campaign as Spurs make their way on the short trip across the capital to West Ham. Frank has good form against West Ham, having won six and drawn one of the nine matches he’s managed against the Hammers.
Just a few days later comes Frank’s Champions League bow and whoever Tottenham draw in matchday one in the expanded league phase. The games come thick and fast from that point on with a trip to Brighton, the Carabao Cup third round, a home game against Wolves and then matchday two in Europe before a trip to Elland Road marks the pause for another international break.
Those will be the first 10 games of the Thomas Frank era and how the 51-year-old does in those fixtures will go a long way to deciding how the Spurs fans take to him and what kind of patience the Tottenham hierarchy show him after Levy’s grand statements. The north London club needs to be in a good position because November brings with it a horrible little run of fixtures, with only a longer burst of fixtures in February worse.
Everybody in and around Spurs wants Frank to succeed at the north London club and it’s clear that the squad he is given and any fortune he can enjoy along the way will be essential in deciding whether he becomes a great Dane or a forgotten one.
Daniel Levy’s big statement, Vinai Venkatesham’s new approach & what lies ahead for Thomas Frank – click here to listen to the latest episode of Gold & Guest Talk Tottenham. Or watch on YouTube here.
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