The Premier League, managers, and minding the gap

There's no shame in winging it and we can all feel, look or be out of our depth from time to time even doing things we're normally really good and confident at doing. So I've no wish to pick on a Brentford FC analyst having a bad day, especially when it was likely caused by the very reason I know about it: a Sky Sports TV crew filming him so that it could also film, leaning back in a padded swivel chair in the analysis room flicking his hair around and praising Virgil van Dijk, Brentford's manager Thomas Frank.

But the clip has stayed with me not only because the young lad standing up front with a laptop on a lectern was stammering and looking from camera to boss and back as he tried to confirm how many attacking situations Brentford had against Liverpool, the sort of thing he probably does fine when Sky TV aren't, you know, there. It stayed with me because the whole discussion seemed deliriously banal. Here was a look behind the scenes of a post-match debrief at a Premier League club in the days after a big match, a chance to taste the sauce they call their science, and it made me wonder if Don Goodman and Andy Hinchcliffe might qualify as deep footie thinkers after all. Maybe that's why the lad looked so nervous, of people seeing through the busywork.

"My feeling having watched the game back is that we defended so well," says Frank. "So well. And I think it would have been a fair point. Of course you could say if there should have been a winner, it should have been Liverpool, because of the amount of shots and all that." And you could say that anyone doing an impression of a mid-tier Match of the Day pundit could say all that stuff without even watching the game once, let alone twice. 'A draw would have been a fair result but in the end Liverpool were good value for their 2-0 win.' Great stuff.

"Did you get the number of the offensive situations?" Frank asks his lackey at the laptop, about Brentford going forward. "I had, like, thirteen, fourteen," he replies. "And how many of them were shots? Five, maybe six, maybe less?" asks Frank. "Yeah," says laptop, "if we're lucky," chuckling and trying to make a joke and looking nervously at the film crew. "So let's say thirteen, fourteen dangerous attacks, how many...?" Frank is asking again, and now a coach at a desk with a piece of paper, Justin Cochrane, ends the agony by telling him: "It was fourteen. That's high." "Yeah, that's high," says Frank, "so we had thirteen, fourteen dangerous attacks," and he still can't let go of the idea of thirteen but never mind. Now that's sort of established, onto why Brentford didn't get anything from their thirteen, fourteen attacks. "Their centre-backs on the day," says Frank, "what a level." Well, yes. They were Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté. "We score in any other game," says Cochrane, "from one of our dangerous attacks." Frank agrees. "I agree," he says.

That's all I could stand of Thomas Frank: A Day in the Life and I imagine I've subjected you to too much of it. At least I'm saving you any quotes from 'What makes Thomas Frank special', a three-bylined article at The Athletic in December, or 'Brentford coach Kevin O’Connor on Thomas Frank’s football brain and dating-style team bonding' also from The Athletic in December, or 'The Big Interview: Thomas Frank' featuring Gary Lineker cooking him dinner on the BBC two weeks ago, or if you really want a rough time, his appearance on the High Performance podcast in December, telling Jake Humphrey about Brentford's 'secret sauce'. But I'm telling you about these media appearances, all from the last six weeks, just to let you know: I think Thomas Frank wants a new job for next season. If ever a manager has been putting himself out there, it's now, and it's him.

I don't know where he'll go and I don't particularly care and it'll probably be Spurs. Although they might try nabbing Andoni Iraola from Bournemouth, if they can. Sticking with Ange Postecoglou doesn't seem like an option. Will Spurs stick with whoever replaces him? Will Brentford or Bournemouth continue their success, Brighton style, by plugging in a new manager and carrying on? What is actually happening at these clubs? Is it all down to the manager? Is it the guy with the laptop counting attacks? Is it the coach impatiently telling them all how many and getting ignored?

The Premier League is sort of interesting this season in a masochistic way for a Leeds fan because, right at the top, you've got one-time Victor Orta target Arne Slot charging off with a likely league and Champions League double without doing a right lot. "The reason that the club ended up with me is because of many characteristics that I share with Jurgen Klopp," Slot said this week, and Cody Gakpo — who didn't sign for Leeds, he says, because a disputed goal was awarded to him and he thought it was fate — agrees that the change of manager hasn't been that important. "I think the biggest difference at this point is that last season we had a lot of injuries," he said. And let's imagine, briefly before it hurts, Slot taking over from Marcelo Bielsa or Jesse Marsch while there was still something to salvage, putting the players through a seamless adaptation, recovering players from the injuries that depleted Bielsa's small squad. Okay, already it hurts.

So we can only talk briefly about Iraola taking Bournemouth, including Victor Orta signings Tyler Adams and Luis Sinisterra, to 7th in the Premier League and playing some of the best football in it. He was the other coach Orta was begging after Marsch was sacked. After Slot, after Iraola, after Gakpo and Rodrigo de Paul and Josko Gvardiol, it looks ever more like Orta could always find the perfect people for Leeds but the perfect people didn't want to work with him. Hence the amazement when Marcelo Bielsa said yes. And the disaster when Jesse Marsch also said yes. And the understandable reaction when Alfred Schreuder was in Leeds and ready to say yes after Slot and Iraola said no. (Schreuder is now on his second job in the UAE Pro League.)