Gareth Southgate has defended Thomas Frank’s time in charge of Tottenham, despite their poor Premier League displays.
Tottenham sacked Frank when they were 16th in the Premier League, and replaced him with Igor Tudor.
Despite good results in the Champions League and also backing him in the January transfer window, the hierarchy decided that the Dane’s position at the club was untenable.
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Gareth Southgate believes Thomas Frank was unlucky with injuries at Tottenham
The former England head coach has jumped to the aid of the Dane and believes that there were things that were out of his hands.
In Southgate’s view, Frank was without his best players, and that was at least six or seven regular starters, which made the difference.
He admits that Tottenham have a good squad and that the former Brentford manager would have thrived had his main players remained fit.
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Southgate also attributes the poor performance against Arsenal, based on injuries, as he sees it to be a second-string side.
He said on The Football Boardroom: “Let me defend the managers because there are mitigating things. For Thomas to win matches without your best player or best couple of players is hard.
“I’d say he’s been without six or seven of his starting team at the beginning of the season. I’m looking at the Tottenham squad, thinking that’s not a bad squad.
“Only three of them are attackers. Now everybody’s looking at them at the weekend against Arsenal, saying this is a horrendous squad, but really that’s a second 11.”
Southgate gets it wrong about Frank
Southgate has been on Frank’s side in recent weeks, especially right after he got sacked by Spurs.
The two seem to be on good terms, and Southgate even revealed that he considers him a friend.
That clearly seems to be influencing his thought process, as Frank did nothing to merit staying on longer.
Yes, he did have injury issues to deal with, but Spurs had a better available team on paper than a number of sides they faced, but still got outplayed more often than not.
A good domestic start to the season masked the lack of tactical identity, but it did not take long for Frank to be exposed at the helm.
He worked wonders at Brentford, surely, but Tottenham seemed to be too big a step for him, and he never should have been handed the job in the first place.
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