No game is an island; every game is inevitably coloured by what has gone before. It is not quite five months since Tottenham last came north of the Arctic Circle and, for all that Thomas Frank insisted this is a “new situation”, that previous meeting with Bodø/Glimt in the semi-final of the Europa League can not but colour this one in the league phase of the Champions League.
There was an odd echo, too, in the buildup. Back then, the Glimt full-back Fredrik Sjøvold was dismissive of Tottenham’s pressing, which clearly riled Ange Postecoglou.
Frank is not somebody who gets riled, but he seemed taken aback by a (non-critical) comment from the Bodø goalkeeper Nikita Haikin expressing surprise at how much focus Spurs place on long throws and set-plays. A third of goals come from set-plays, Frank pointed out; why would Spurs not try to use them? “Set pieces are extremely important.”
Creativity, though, has been a problem for Tottenham as their flying start has yielded to a slightly more difficult phase. They lie fourth in the table, but are ninth in the Premier League for chance creation.
“Last year,” said Frank, “most of the games, it was [Dejan] Kulusevski, [James] Maddison, Sonny [Heung-min] and Dom[inic Solanke] who played. Now we have more or less a new front four and they are doing very well. Maybe we are creating more chances, dominating a bit more. All the right signs are there.”
It will be some time before Solanke is available. He sustained an ankle injury in the summer and has been restricted to two substitute appearances in the league this season. An injection during the last international break failed to resolve the problem so he will have what Frank referred to as “a small procedure” that is likely to keep him out for a few more weeks. Cristian Romero did not travel for precautionary reasons, while Randal Kolo Muani is just getting over a dead leg.
Bodø’s artificial pitch, inevitably, has drawn a lot of the attention, but Frank was determined to play down its significance. “It’s the same in Denmark, when I was coach for Brøndby, we were facing Nordjylland at that time. It was also a different surface. It’s the same today. It’s fine. They’re good here, they’re very good at home.
“There’s a lot of talk about the pitch. I rather want to praise the team, the Bodø team, and their coach, what they do. Because they do it quite consistently, home and away, the way they play.”
Frank turned down the opportunity to have his side train on the pitch. “If we have training here and we want to do a little bit of tactical work, with all due respect it would be a little bit more obvious what we would do. That’s the thing we like to keep for ourselves.
“If we train here, for how long we are allowed, 45 minutes? Is that going to make a difference? I know the surface is different. If you really want to get used to it, you need to train here day in, day out as Bodø do.”
Even at this short remove it is hard to fathom just how tense that game last season seemed at the time. Spurs led 3-1 from the first leg, but, largely because they conceded seven minutes from time when apparently in complete control, there was a fear they could somehow mess it up.
Tottenham’s history plus Angeball was a potent brew. Or rather the memory of Angeball, because Postecoglou had by then long since abandoned his ultra-attacking principles for something more orthodox and more effective. A scrappy game was settled by goals from Solanke and Pedro Porro in the space of six minutes midway through the second half. It was a functional way of winning, but it was the penultimate stage on the journey to triumph in Bilbao, so it stands as part of a glorious narrative.
For Frank, an away Champions League game against the same opponents simultaneously matters less and will probably be judged more harshly, but no team is ever going to rebound from finishing 17th in the Premier League directly to the sunlit uplands.
