The first thing to say is that Thomas Frank was right. For Spurs fans to mock and boo their own goalkeeper during Sunday’s game against Fulham was utterly self-defeating.
Guglielmo Vicario, some may remember, is the guy who made a fabulous save in the last minute of Tottenham’s Europa League final triumph over Manchester United at the end of last season. It’s due to the Italian, as much as anyone, that Tottenham are playing in the Champions League this time round. Gratitude may be in order.
But the second thing that we need to recognise is that we don’t live in a world of logic and real order, not when it comes to football. Memories are as short as tempers these days and as such Frank, the Tottenham manager, would have been well advised to keep away from this subject.
In football, the time to talk about supporters and what they do and say is when you are winning. To take them on when results are poor and you’ve only been through the door five minutes is an exercise in sporting self-harm. Only pick battles you can win, they say, and Frank is on a loser with this one.
He’s a bright man, the Tottenham manager. When he said ahead of Tuesday night’s trip to Newcastle that his record at Brentford and Brondby shows how he always builds culture and successful environments over time, he did so with conviction and that’s because he is right.
But currently the Dane is strapped to a learning curve that must feel more like a bungee jump as he tries to adjust to the shift from a small Premier League club to a really big one.
Frank has always been a good communicator but the truth is that he’s a in a different environment now and needs to understand that quickly. Things that managers say at Brentford are not always going to work at Tottenham, where supporters and executives expect different things.
On Monday, he risked infuriating fans by suggesting they expect too much, saying: ‘You can say there is always a challenge when there are big expectations. No problem with big expectation if you have also earned the right to really compete for those big expectations, which I think it’s fair to say we haven’t done.’
He has also irked supporters by saying ‘it’s worth remembering that we finished 17th last season’ – with many fans complaining that that sets a low bar when the club was suffering an unprecedented injury crisis then rotating as they prioritised the Europa League.
At Brentford, it was always about gratitude. Nobody expected the West London club to fly so high. At Tottenham, it’s about expectations and minimum requirements. Losing at home to Chelsea and Fulham and surrendering at Arsenal in between is never going to be enough and when you start calling out your own fans at the end of it then you can quicky find yourself in a bit of trouble.
This is always the challenge when you make a step up. The glare of the focus is unrelenting when you work at a big club.
Graham Potter couldn’t cope with it when he switched from Brighton – where everything he said sounded like a life lesson for all of us – to Chelsea, where all anyone ever wanted to hear him talk about was how it felt to win.
David Moyes struggled when swapping Everton for Manchester United. The day Moyes said he wanted to take United to Manchester City’s level was one he will probably regret for ever.
And then there are those like Arne Slot. He moved from Feyenoord in the Netherlands to inherit Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool team with a compelling serenity that carried him all the way to a Premier League title and is now helping him cope with his first sticky patch on Merseyside.
Last Thursday at the club’s training ground, Slot was under the pump after his side had been hammered the night before by PSV. But you wouldn’t have known it. Slot stood tall, smiled, laughed a little at his own predicament and then took his team to West Ham where they won well and comfortably. That’s the way to do it.
Slot can be a little boring when he is public facing, to be honest. That’s not always great for the media but it can act as a shield when times are hard. He joked last week that he did ‘121 interviews’ after the PSV defeat and that is sometimes how it must feel.
We don’t yet know which way it will go for Frank. He is the kind of bloke who sees big pictures and has always had the ability to have his working life in its proper context. He once told me that he will not work forever as he wishes to go travelling with his wife Nanna. There is much to admire about that and it may help him when he closes his eyes at night.
For sure it’s too early to say Tottenham have the wrong manager. Let a builder build. But while he is trapped in the middle of this storm of poor results, Frank must realise that the wrong words at the wrong time can make it worse.
Looking at him sitting in a cavernous media suite after the Arsenal defeat at the Emirates was to see him resemble a small man in a big room perhaps for the very first time. To change that perception was always going to represent one of his early challenges.
For now he should let the Spurs fans have their moan – and then remind them of it once he is winning.
