Thomas Frank [Alexander Canillas/SPP]

IT is back to square one for Tottenham Hotspur this morning after the club pulled the trigger on Thomas Frank’s disastrous eight months in the Spurs hotseat.

The club announced yesterday (Wednesday) that his tenure was at an end, following a 2-1 reverse at home to Newcastle on Tuesday night.

In the 26 years of covering Spurs for the New Journal, I have seen the club burn through 17 managers.

Frank’s miserable reign sits alongside Nuno Espirito Santos’s panic-stricken three months in terms of bad fits. Frank’s fare was as miserable as anything cooked up by Jose Mourinho’s defence-first policies, and was as bad tactically as our previous manager Ange Postecoglou’s “my way or the highway” approach.

At least with Ange the team had a system they stuck to. At least under Ange we could see discernible patterns of play.

Now, reflecting on eight months of pain in N17, any fan would be hard pushed to answer what exactly did Frank’s Tottenham set out to do, minus asking a defender to scramble a goal from a corner or a long throw?

Spurs, who have won just two league games in 17 attempts, are five points off the relegation zone and Tuesday felt like a point of no return. The manager had lost the fanbase by December: former coach Mauricio Pochettino’s name was sung to the rafters and the now unemployed Frank was warned he’d be sacked in the morning.

Spurs burn through managers in the same way opponents have burned through their midfield this season. Frank’s brief tenure will go down in club history much the same way as Christian Gross’s nine-month disaster in 1998.

Frank (pictured above) came with a reputation of improving players while being tactically flexible. Apologists can point to an astonishing injury list that saw 12 first-teamers unavailable for the Newcastle clash – a sick note roster that has been in double figures for most of the season.

There is no escaping the fact the manager had a terrible hand to play: a sign of how depleted the squad is was the starting of Yves Bissouma on Tuesday night. The midfielder has no future at the club. Yet there he was, expected to put in a shift in the centre of the park, having not made Frank’s squad until injuries bit so badly it became a matter of shoehorning any fit body into something resembling a game plan.

After Ange’s trophy-winning gung-ho approach, we were told Frank would bring some pragmatism, that he could set teams up to play more than the only way Ange knew how.

Instead, there was no tactical masterclass to deal with the resources available.

Of the 17 managers I have seen come and go, the best is clearly Pochettino, followed by Harry Redknapp and Martin Jol, for their attack-minded approach and general likeability. While the head might say Poch is not today’s man and was underwhelming at PSG and Chelsea, the heart says what have we got to lose? For a club in desperate need of feelgood vibes, if Poch walks back out pitchside, the reaction it would get would make the odds of failure worthwhile.
With 10 days until Champions-elect Arsenal visit N17, whoever is handed the reins will be desperate for some kind of new “manager bounce” to avoid what could be a humiliation. For the fans, the hope is assistant manager John Heitinga can step up and save the club’s Premier League status – and hold things together until after this summer’s World Cup, when Poch will be looking for a job.