Thomas Frank is reportedly on the verge of becoming the new Tottenham manager, but can he replicate the success he had at Brentford on the other side of London?
“We are finding our feet in the best league in the world. We are developing a way of playing that is a little bit more pragmatic.”
Those are the words of Thomas Frank, speaking at the end of the 2022-23 season, in which his Brentford side finished ninth in the table despite having by far the lowest wage bill in the top flight, at £99 million. The pragmatism he spoke of had helped Brentford overachieve for a second successive season after promotion to the top flight two years earlier.
There is, in general, a strong correlation between wage bill and league position, but Brentford consistently defied their financial disadvantage under Frank to become established members of the top flight, something plenty of other clubs have failed to do in recent years.
When Frank led Brentford to that top-half finish, they finished just one point and one place behind Tottenham, the club where Frank is soon expected to be appointed manager. That was despite Spurs having a wage bill of £251m, more than two and a half times that of Brentford. If ever there were an advert for how to make the most of what you have to work with, Frank was it.
And as he proudly said, pragmatism was at the heart of what he had done. Brentford had won promotion with a possession-based style of play, consistently dominating their opponents and playing teams off the park. They ranked in the league’s top five for possession in each of Frank’s two full seasons in charge in the second tier, and also scored more goals than every other team in the Championship regular season in both of those campaigns (80 in 2019-20 and 79 in 2020-21).
But Frank recognised things would have to be different in the top flight. “We’ve found a way that is difficult to play against,” he told the Brentford website in 2023. “We know that if we go toe-to-toe with [the best teams], it will definitely minimise our chances to win. Now we go toe-to-toe in a different way that is a bit more defensive but, hey, you’re playing against six of the best teams in the world.”
And it worked; in Brentford’s second season in the Premier League, they won six, drew three and lost three of their 12 games against the traditional ‘big six’.
His pragmatic approach has surely drawn the Tottenham hierarchy to the Dane, with Frank having shown in his near seven years in charge of Brentford an adaptability that Spurs’ last few managers have lacked.
Spurs’ recent managerial appointments have jumped between the defence-first, win-at-all-costs football of José Mourinho and Antonio Conte (as well as Nuno Espírito Santo briefly in between them), and the adventurous, attacking, and sometimes downright reckless game of Ange Postecoglou.
But while there was little consistency in the style of play when switching to Postecoglou, there was continuity in the sense that every one of those managers was steadfastly wedded to their way of playing, and that ended up being their downfall.
Despite Postecoglou’s success in ending the club’s trophy drought with Europa League glory in Bilbao last month, he was sacked last Friday after recording the club’s worst ever Premier League finish (17th).
Spurs had failed to win now under win-now managers in Mourinho and Conte, and had hoped to build something stronger, more sustainable and longer-lasting with the ultra-possession-focused football of Postecoglou. Ultimately, however, his reign ended, ironically, with a Europa League triumph playing a brand of football more akin to that of his predecessors.
He had adapted in Europe to do what Mourinho and Conte – and even Mauricio Pochettino and Harry Redknapp before them – could not and won a trophy, but the damage had already been done in the league, and chairman Daniel Levy pulled the trigger.
Now, Spurs are turning to someone who is happier to adapt than any of Tottenham’s recent managers.
Frank has had to be able to do so largely because, as he said last month when asked about reported interest from other clubs in Brentford’s best players, “we are a selling club”. They have been a selling club throughout their rise up the divisions under the ownership of Matthew Benham, whose data-driven approach has been key to their success. Part of their philosophy is to cash in players when the right offer comes in.
That has meant losing many of their best players. In the last six years, they have consistently sold their highest goalscorer, with Neal Maupay, Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney all moved on for big money and Bryan Mbeumo expected to depart this summer, too. They have also sold David Raya, Saïd Benrahma and Ezri Konsa for big money, and have adapted every time. Maupay, Watkins, Toney and Mbeumo are all different types of forward, but each has succeeded under Frank. He is a master of working with the tools at his disposal.
There are many differences with Postecoglou. Frank is not going to be as wedded to playing possession football as the Australian, and there may even be changes in tactics from week to week. The predictability of Postecoglou’s Tottenham was one of their biggest weaknesses. “You can see what their ideas are very clearly,” an unnamed coach at another Premier League club recently told The Athletic.
But while there are many differences in the two managers, and Brentford and Tottenham did not play similar styles this season, Postecoglou to Frank should not be as big a change as the club saw when changing from Conte to the Australian.
Frank would have played possession football at Brentford if he could have; he did so as manager of Brøndby and in the second tier with the Bees. “I got the label in Denmark of having a tiki-taka and possession-based team,” he once said.
Brentford had the sixth-lowest average possession share in the Premier League this season (47.7%), but they also showed they could dominate the ball when they wanted to, beating Ipswich with 64.6% of the ball back in October, for example.
But although Frank wants his teams to play through the opposition’s press if they can, he is also happy for his players to go direct to avoid playing their way into trouble in their own half.
Brentford have ranked in the top five teams for the proportion of passes played long in every one of their four seasons in the Premier League, with their rate as high as 16.6% in 2022-23. That rate dropped as low as 13.1% this season following the departure of target man Toney, but was still the fifth highest in the league. They were among the most direct teams in the Premier League in 2024-25.
These numbers speak to that aforementioned pragmatism. Brentford aren’t a long-ball team; they have plenty of very capable footballers and keep the ball on the floor as much as possible. But they are also well aware of their limitations and try to play in such a way that means those limitations aren’t a problem.
Over their time in the Premier League, they have moved further towards the style of play they used in the Championship as they have grown in confidence and ability. The below graphic charts exactly how their football has developed in six full seasons under Frank.
Postecoglou’s Tottenham were built to play short passes – only Manchester City (6.0%) played a lower proportion of their passes long in Premier League games this season than them (7.3%) – but they showed on their Europa League run how effective they can be with a more direct approach.
All of this is not to say that Frank will turn Tottenham into as direct a team as Brentford, just that he is likely to encourage his players to play balls into the channels far more than Postecoglou did. And the direct style in Europa League run shows there is already something to work with for him on this front.
Despite the fact Brentford don’t have much of the ball and go long more than most, they by no means sit back and soak up pressure. In fact, they ranked sixth in the Premier League this season for high turnovers (winning the ball within 40 metres of the opposition’s goal line), with 319, just one fewer than Tottenham (320), who were one of the league’s most active pressers.
The difference between the teams is that while Spurs pressed at almost every opportunity when playing ‘Angeball’ in its purest form, Brentford pick and choose their moments more wisely. Only Brighton made more pressures in the final third (2,922) last season than Spurs (2,908), but Brentford were way down in 14th (2,265). And yet Brentford made only one fewer high turnover than Spurs. Perhaps they are just smarter with their pressing?
That could be something Spurs need given their players suffered so many injuries last season playing Postecoglou’s relentlessly high-intensity game. Spurs ranked third in the Premier League this season for distance covered (111.5 km per game) and second for off-ball runs (6,043), while Brentford were 10th and 11th, respectively. With Champions League football to contend with, perhaps a less taxing style of play will benefit the players, though Frank has never before managed a team in a full European campaign, so it remains to be seen how he fares on that front.
Efficiency is the name of the game for Frank, and that could be crucial in a busy season at a club expected to take the cup competitions seriously and facing at least eight games against the best teams in Europe in the Champions League.
Brentford are one of the most efficient teams at both ends of the pitch and have been throughout Frank’s reign. In a data-led environment, Brentford have long worked hard to increase the chances of their shots leading to goals.
“We’re a big believer in making the chance bigger,” Frank said in an interview with the Brentford Supporters’ Trust in December 2022. “It’s about creating good opportunities where we increase the opportunity to score.”
The numbers prove they are putting this idea into practice extremely effectively. In the Premier League this season, the average expected goals value of each Brentford shot (0.14 xG) was higher than any other team in the division. A season before, they had ranked second in this regard (0.13 xG/shot), and the season before that they were first (0.14 xG).
In fact, in their four seasons in the Premier League, they make up three of the top 10 seasonal averages for xG per shot.
It follows too that they take most of their shots from inside the area, taking up four of the top 10 seasonal averages for proportion of shots taken within the 18-yard box. Their rate of 77.0% in 2024-25 was the highest by any team in any of the last four seasons.
Creating chances close to goal was also important to Postecoglou, and Tottenham’s 2024-25 season is eighth in the above list, so again, this could be an area in which the players enjoy a feeling of some continuity when Frank comes in.
At the other end of the pitch, Frank has his team work hard to keep the quality of their opponents’ chances down, with only Liverpool (63.3%) and Arsenal (63.5%) facing a lower proportion of shots from inside the box in the Premier League this season than Brentford (64.1%). Brentford also faced the lowest quality chances on average, with the lowest xG per shot conceded in the division (0.09 xG).
They do concede a lot of shots, though. Only rock-bottom Southampton (681) conceded more than them (647) in the Premier League this season. But the fact that six sides conceded more xG (56.1) and seven teams conceded more goals (57) shows how efficient they were in defence.
Much of Frank’s philosophy is about extracting the maximum from any given situation, and he is not ashamed of the fact his Brentford have always placed great emphasis on set-pieces, and their numbers at dead balls at both ends of the pitch since promotion to the Premier League are hugely impressive.
Only Arsenal (66), Liverpool (61) and City (58) have scored more goals from set-pieces over the last four Premier League seasons than Brentford (54), but Frank’s side lead the way for expected goals from set-pieces (64.7 xG), and by a long way, too, with Arsenal (60.5 xG) their nearest challengers. They also have the highest xG per shot from set-pieces (0.10 xG).
When it comes to dead balls, Brentford boast a remarkable efficiency, part of which is down to how bold they are at such situations. In a 2022 interview with the Coaches’ Voice, Frank explained how he pushes all his players into the attacking third when they have a chance to launch a long throw into the box. “If you don’t take risks, you also take risks,” he said. Spurs will now hope Frank, who is reportedly hoping to bring former Brentford set-piece coach Andreas Georgson with him, can replicate his set-play success in north London.
Clearly, Frank has plenty of strings to his bow. He is open to different things, and willing to learn and use new techniques. He embraces data and proudly looks for efficiency at every juncture.
Making a change was a big call from Daniel Levy, but Frank looks like a risk worth taking.
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Adaptable, Efficient, Smart: Thomas Frank Appointment Will Spark a Shift at Tottenham Opta Analyst.
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