LONDON — A corner kick in the 28th minute, Guglielmo Vicario has gone down with an injury (one a cynic might suggest is to manufacture extra time for his team mates, given how he betrayed no further signs of injury) and Thomas Frank calls the huddle. All 10 outfield players descend on their manager, who has detailed instructions drawn out for his players ahead of the set play. The 2025-26 season in a nutshell, you might suggest.
Then again, there is something specific to Spurs that explains why that one corner felt so utterly critical that Frank found himself in timeout mode. Even that early in the game, it seemed apparent that if a set piece didn’t not offer something to Tottenham, then nothing would. When, six minutes later, Moises Caicedo’s ram raid through two lines of Spurs’ defense brought Joao Pedro his opener, this game looked beyond the hosts. Counterattacks were devolving into a string of backward passes, goal kicks seemed to function as little more than a pressing trigger for Chelsea. Ingenuity had been sacrificed on the altar of stability.
That is how it had to be when Frank took the helm in the summer. The team he inherited was one who conceded 65 goals, who might have suffered quite brutal injuries but who by the end of Ange Postecoglou’s tenure could not repel a plastic bag on the breeze without radically compromising “who we are, mate”. Spurs had to tighten up, there was no other credible way to do things.
And it is worth saying that they have been effective enough in this transition period. Prior to Saturday, they had ridden the set piece train just about as effectively as any Premier League team not named Arsenal. For the most part the defense has tightened up too, though today it was the profligacy of their opponents that kept the scoreline respectable. Chelsea’s failure to score a second meant at the final whistle Spurs still occupied third place in the Premier League table. If their expected goals difference, handed an almighty battering today, is anything to go on you wouldn’t expect them to hold a spot in the Champions League places for much longer but if this team does improve it could be competing at a level that was light years beyond them last season.
To make those improvements might require an acknowledgement from Frank that he has overcorrected on his course. The XI with which he started the match set the tone for a side who would be up for the scrap but might struggle to progress the ball into the opposition half. Even when Lucas Bergvall, concussed but utterly irate about it, made way for Xavi Simons in the eighth minute, Tottenham didn’t really get going. Simons in particular did not. He looks too lightweight for the Premier League, too accustomed to having a few touches before picking his pass. In pursuit of a goal, Frank chose to hook the summer’s marquee signing. You couldn’t blame him.
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Too much of their ball progression plan seemed to revolve around Randal Kolo Muani, both winning his duel and finding a teammate who might be 15 plus yards away. If and when the ball came to Mohammed Kudus, he felt compelled to attack on his own. More often than not, he was shepherded down blind alleys by Marc Cucurella. Still, it wasn’t entirely clear that Kudus running himself ragged wasn’t Spurs’ best route to goal. All three of their shots came from the Ghanaian. “It wasn’t entirely obvious that there was an option for this team to exploit other than get it to Kudus and hope”
After all, the problems started deeper than the frontline. Almost every goal kick seemed to involve a center back knocking it short to Vicario and getting it back, having allowed Chelsea’s forwards into the area. From there, it was either a hopeful ball up the line or a throttling by the opposition press, followed by a desperate ball up the line. It was easy, however, to see why a midfield of Joao Palhinha and Rodrigo Bentancur was so frequently being bypassed. Play it up to them and the ball would just go backwards.
No wonder the home crowd was grumbling. With one of their last chances of the game, Vicario knocked a free kick on halfway a few yards forward to Djed Spence. Quite swiftly, he got the ball back 20 yards deeper, hoofing the ball aimlessly up the field. With Robert Sanchez looking strong under the high ball from Tottenham set pieces, there really was nothing doing.
An end output of 0.1 xG is hardly to dare is to do and the boos at the final whistle felt significant, particularly the smattering that seemed to follow Frank as he made his way past the South Stand. It will be a long time before this frustration morphs into tangible pressure on a manager with a track record of high performance in the Premier League but this was the one note of caution that came with his appointment in the summer. The Dane had excelled at building reactive game plans to deliver success for Brentford but when Spurs are a goal down at home to a great rival, their crowd will expect them to come out swinging.
More attacking performances like this, and it will not matter whether or not Frank has eased the problems of the past. He will simply have created different issues in the here and now.
