Tottenham produced a miserable North London derby performance as Arsenal ran riot to win 4-1, piling pressure on manager Thomas Frank and his approach to the game
Thomas Frank took “full responsibility” for Tottenham’s humiliating defeat to bitter rivals Arsenal. Frank apologised to the travelling Spurs fans who made their feelings plain as the away end was virtually empty by the final whistle.
Tottenham boss Frank admitted that he got his tactics horribly wrong and had to abandon his back three defensive system at half time.
There was also another unwanted stat for Spurs as they have recorded the two lowest expected goals totals in a Premier League game this season, 0.07 against Arsenal and 0.1 against Chelsea at the start of November.
It leaves Tottenham in ninth place and 11 points behind their title-chasing neighbours Arsenal. It was only the second time they have started with that system which they did against Paris Saint Germain in the European Super Cup which they eventually lost.
Frank said: “I’m a very big believer that no matter what system you play you can be successful. I completely understand the question and I will always take the full responsibility. The full responsibility will always be on me today when we didn’t perform.
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“I picked a team that played 5-4-1, changed it half-time very clever on minute into it they scored. 3-0. Then the rest is history after that.
“What I would say is that no matter if we played another system we needed to be more aggressive and better in the duels. That doesn’t matter to the system but I need to take responsibility for everything today.
“It is concerning, of course. We are working very hard to try to make that better but sometimes it’s not only playing out and finding a nice pass but also in a game like this if you see some of the situations where they won it high, Arsenal, then there was a little bit more open space.
“We didn’t win it enough in those situations and then create from that. For me the creativity, I know it was very low, but it was not my biggest concern today.”
Frank conceded his players were too passive, did not create enough and it was a serious worry.
He added: “This is of course hugely disappointing that we didn’t perform better in the game against Arsenal our biggest rivals. I can only apologise to the fans for that. I was very confident on Friday when we spoke that we would be competitive today and weren’t over the 90 minutes.
“We tried to come here and be aggressive and press high and in spells go after them. We didn’t succeed with that bit. We didn’t manage to get near enough them in the situations we could.
“It means we got pushed back and got a little too passive. It looks like we are running after them. When we finally got on the ball we were not good enough to get out of those situations.
“No matter how painful it is to admit, they are definitely six years down the line and we are four months down the line but even with that I was still expecting much more from us today. Not that we could dominate over 90 minutes but that we could be as competitive as we were against Man City and PSG.”
Frank admitted Tottenham have a lot of work to do but pleaded for patience as they finished low in the table last year despite winning the Europa League. “I think there’s definitely a lot to work on still. I think it’s fair to say that we are very disappointed and unhappy with the performance today,” said Frank.
“I don’t want to run away from that. As I said, I apologise to the fans. I think it’s also fair to say where we’re coming from. We finished 17th last year. And we’ve tried to build something, which today didn’t look like we tried to build something.”
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