Football365

According to reports, Manchester United are ‘seriously considering’ a Tottenham Hotspur target replace head coach Ruben Amorim for three reasons.

Amorim has been under intense scrutiny this season, and he appeared on the brink of an exit at the start of this campaign.

The pressure on the Red Devils boss has slightly eased of late as the English giants have had a five-game unbeaten run in the Premier League.

This was until Man Utd slumped to an embarrassing 1-0 loss to 10-man Everton at the start of last week, with this result and performance sparking criticism for Amorim and his tactical approach.

Therefore, Amorim desperately needed his side to respond when they faced Crystal Palace and battled back from behind to win 2-1 at Selhurst Park.

READ: Has Amorim got Man Utd on the Arsenal path to Premier League dominance?

This victory has lifted Man Utd back up into the top half of the Premier League table, but Amorim is not out of the woods yet as he is still among the favourites to be the next manager sacked.

Despite this, club legend David Beckham has backed Amorim as he thinks he is starting to “turn things around”.

“I think there are signs of the manager turning things around,” Beckham said on Sky Sports.

“He has tweaked a few things and we are coming into a few better results. There’s still a long way to go and there has been a few games where we haven’t been playing as well.

“But I think we’ve got a good manager there and I think he is changing things slowly.”

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Still, Man Utd appear to be keeping their options open as a report from Spanish outlet Fichajes claims they ‘want’ former FC Barcelona boss Xavi, who is also attracting interest from Tottenham Hotspur.

Xavi has been out of work since leaving Barcelona at the end of the 2023/24 season, but it has been widely reported that he is looking for a return to management.

Man Utd are also said to be admirers of Xavi for three main reasons.

The report claims:

‘Although there has been no direct contact yet, both Manchester United and Tottenham have decided that, if their results do not improve soon, they will talk to Xavi Hernández about a possible agreement.

‘His profile is appealing because he offers a long-term project, an offensive approach, and a ball-based strategy, qualities that fit very well with what both clubs are looking for.’

Pedro Porro was seen ‘screaming’ at Lucas Bergvall after Tottenham’s 2-1 defeat to Fulham on Saturday.

There were loud boos from the home fans both at half-time and full-time, along with ‘you’re getting sacked in the morning’ chants from the Fulham faithful on Saturday night as Frank’s Tottenham fell to their third defeat in four Premier League games to leave them mired in mid-table with fellow crisis-club Liverpool.

They’ve won just two Premier League games in their last eight and large sections of the Spurs support are now pushing for Frank’s exit despite him only taking charge in the summer.

Frank wasn’t happy at some of the fans’ ire being directed at Vicario specifically after the goalkeeper was at fault for Fulham’s second goal, which came in just the sixth minute after Kenny Tete’s deflected shot saw the visitors take the lead in the fourth.

Vicario dashed from his penalty area to the left touchline and gifted Harry Wilson the chance to swing his shot for distance into his empty net.

“I didn’t like that our fans booed at him straight after and a few times after that,” Frank said in his post-match interview. “They can’t be true Tottenham fans because everyone supports each other when you’re on the pitch and we do everything we can to perform.”

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And it appears Porro wasn’t too happy with the Spurs fans either, having seemingly had a go at Bergvall for applauding them after the game.

As reported by football.london, ‘Porro went down the tunnel at the final whistle, only to reappear moments later and march across the pitch, shouting something at Bergvall, seemingly telling him not to applaud the fans before he stormed back down the tunnel, whipping his shirt off on the way.’

Meanwhile, The Standard claimed ‘Sky Sports’ cameras picked up the right-back screaming “Lucas” several times as the 19-year-old started to walk around the pitch and show his appreciation to the home supporters that had stayed behind.

Thomas Frank was asked about the incident afterwards and told Sky Sports: “I didn’t see the incident so I don’t know exactly.

“We are in a tough spell right now and for my players it is about being as calm as possible and doing everything we can to work through it.”

Thomas Frank could have picked any word. He could have called it “unhelpful” to boo Guglielmo Vicario during the defeat to Fulham, or “disrespectful”. Maybe “unpleasant” would have worked. Perhaps “unnecessary” too.

But he had to go for “unacceptable”, in turn supplying ample ammunition for those same supporters he decided to call out after yet another home abomination.

They probably deem it “unacceptable” to win fewer Premier League home games in 2025 than West Ham, Wolves and Sunderland. They might think it “unacceptable” to slip below Frank’s former club in the table. They may feel it “unacceptable” to rank below every team bar Wolves and Burnley for shots per game. They could consider it “unacceptable” for the entire team to have played a league-low six through balls all season, as many as James Tarkowski has mustered on his own.

Being two goals down at the earliest point in the entire club’s Premier League history, at home to a team which had last won away on the penultimate day of last season? That right there is “unacceptable”.

It has taken Frank five months to achieve what his predecessors managed in much more time. Ange Postecoglou took nearly two years to properly and publicly turn on the fans, while Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte waited admirably long to explain in painstaking detail just how much they fundamentally despise Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.

In being pushed over that edge so remarkably quickly, Frank has drawn battle lines for a conflict he cannot possibly hope to win.

Gatekeeping what and who “true Tottenham fans” are achieves precisely nothing positive. Even Vicario, who called for “cooler heads” and “a little bit more help during some situations from the stands” after the miserable defeat to Chelsea, had learned that trying to turn the mirror on supporters could only be a dreadful reflection on those actually in control of what happens on the pitch.

“It’s part of football,” said the keeper. “I’m a big man and older. We can’t be influenced by the situation in the stands. The fans have the right to do what they think. It’s on us to stay calm.”

Frank himself admitted “this game we lost in the first six minutes,” so why would fans not vocalise their anger and frustration at that during the subsequent 90?

When Kenny Tete opened the scoring with a deflected strike it was the first time since September 2003 that Spurs had trailed in six consecutive home Premier League games. They should know never to go full Glenn Hoddle – and that streak did actually directly culminate in his sacking after defeats to Southampton and, of course, Fulham at the start of that season.

Spurs in the modern day have now lost three of their last four meetings with Fulham, drawing the other. There is no use speculating whether Marco Silva would have fared better than Frank but it is also typically funny that the club appears to have made the wrong choice, and that the universe wishes for that to be underlined, emboldened and italicised.

Even when Mohammed Kudus halved the deficit with a fine goal from Lucas Bergvall’s pass on the hour, there was no inevitability over the completion of a comeback. Spurs were on top but Fulham were comfortable. The visitors actually had the last shot of the game in the 84th minute, and rode out the last ten masterfully.

This was supposed to be the resistible force against the movable object; as atrocious as Spurs have been at home this season, Fulham had been wretched away, taking a single point from their last six games on their travels.

Yet they were made to look especially phenomenal in the opening 15 minutes in particular as Spurs summarily squandered any sense of momentum having been built in that curious PSG defeat.

Pedro Porro vowed that they ‘going to bring the same attitude and ambition’ from the Parc des Princes in midweek to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday. He ended the evening heading straight for the tunnel, re-emerging only to shout at Bergvall – seemingly for applauding the supporters – and storming off again.

Frank, seemingly eager to pick unwinnable fights with the fans, might be better served figuring out why such insolence is becoming a running theme after insipid home defeats, and why his players felt compelled to hold a sort of impromptu team talk on the pitch at half time before retreating to the dressing room.

Those acts feel a little more “unacceptable” than fans openly wondering why they are choosing to spend their time and money on watching this mess every other week.

Thomas Frank has hit out at the “unacceptable” behaviour of Spurs supporters during their 2-1 defeat to Fulham on Saturday, insisting those who booed Guglielmo Vicario “can’t be true Tottenham fans”.

There were loud boos from the home fans both at half-time and full-time, along with ‘you’re getting sacked in the morning’ chants from the Fulham faithful on Saturday night as Frank’s Tottenham fell to their third defeat in four Premier League games to leave them mired in mid-table with fellow crisis-club Liverpool.

They’ve won just two Premier League games in their last eight and large sections of the Spurs support are now pushing for Frank’s exit despite him only taking charge in the summer.

Frank wasn’t happy at some of the fans’ ire being directed at Vicario specifically after the goalkeeper was at fault for Fulham’s second goal, which came in just the sixth minute after Kenny Tete’s deflected shot saw the visitors take the lead in the fourth.

Vicario dashed from his penalty area to the left touchline and gifted Harry Wilson the chance to swing his shot for distance into his empty net.

Frank said: “When you’re down 2-0 after six minutes, there is a mountain to climb. When you’re in a bad spell, everything seems to go against you as well – the first was a deflected shot, the second is a mistake from Vic.

“I didn’t like that our fans booed at him straight after and a few times after that. They can’t be true Tottenham fans because everyone supports each other when you’re on the pitch and we do everything we can to perform. I’m fine with them booing after the match, no problem, but not during. That is unacceptable in my opinion.”

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Vicario accepted responsibility after the game, saying: “It’s tough because to go 2-0 down after six minutes, you never expect this. Especially the second goal was a mistake of mine. I take the responsibility for that. The intent was to clear the ball long but I hit the ball in a bad way.”

On the fans’ reaction, he said: “It’s part of football. So I am a big man. I am quite older. What can I say? We cannot be influenced by situations in the stand. Fans have the right to do what they think. It’s on us to try to stay more calm and focus on ourselves.”

Frank added: “This result leaves us in a place where we have lost another game. Every game has a single story, this game we lost in the first six minutes.”

Brentford have leapfrogged Spurs in the table and been an example of how to respond to the vultures, while Phil Foden finally helped out Erling Haaland.

Andoni Iraola also proved he might not be ready to rise up the Premier League food chain just yet.

Brentford 3-1 Burnley: Bees’ brilliance continues with Spurs leapfrogged

And with that, only one of the vultures who tore Brentford to pieces in the summer sit above them in the Premier League table.

No matter how prolific Igor Thiago can be or as ludicrously good a fit as Keith Andrews is, that is unlikely to change. Arsenal are the best team in the country by quite some margin and former Bees captain Christian Norgaard has his own personal place on the Gunners’ bench.

But Arsenal will know not to underestimate Brentford and Andrews in the same way most of us did this summer when the two teams clash in midweek.

The way they have sustained the loss of their manager, two top scorers and captain in one transfer window has been exceptional.

Burnley are the sort of side Brentford were supposed to be engaging with in their fight against relegation, yet they also represent the sort of opponent Andrews has stung most often. The Bees are one of the league’s best when facing teams in a bottom half they no longer occupy.

Manchester City 3-2 Leeds: Farke saves himself but Foden flips script back

In terms of Pepisms, “I have an incredible opinion of Daniel Farke. I have a really good relationship with him,” felt a little too on the nose.

When Manchester City scored within a minute, doubled their lead in the 25th and went in at half time having had 14 shots to two, it seemed positively parodic.

But Farke certainly threatened something “incredible” before a stirring comeback was ultimately shattered in stoppage time by a player experiencing his own resurgence.

Phil Foden scored in the first and 91st minutes to secure a victory which lifts Manchester City into second, but that tells barely half the story of how Guardiola’s side controlled, capitulated and then only just carried themselves through at the Etihad.

It is difficult to capture just how limp and uninspired Leeds were in the first half, nor their transformation in the second. Farke made two changes at half time and while Jaka Bijol helped shore up the defence, it was Dominic Calvert-Lewin who wreaked havoc at the other end.

The England striker capitalised on about three different individual mistakes from Matheus Nunes in one sequence to score, before winning a penalty Lukas Nmecha eventually converted after a save from Gianluigi Donnarumma.

The startling turnaround was summed up by Leeds having five shots to one from the start of the second half to the 70th minute; Manchester City were holding on and while they stabilised, Erling Haaland was still heading dangerous crosses clear with the scores level towards the end.

The Norwegian failed to score against his hometown club but Guardiola’s calls for someone else to emerge from Haaland’s shadow was finally answered when Foden took it upon himself to find a way through with a wonderful effort from the edge of a packed area.

Leeds deserved more based on their effort and determination in the second half. Foden, however, remains the sort of talent able to decide these games, despite providing little evidence of that for far too long.

Sunderland 3-2 Bournemouth: Crazy comeback exposes Iraola

With Thomas Frank struggling to make the step up from the Premier League’s overachieving mid-table into the elite, it will be interesting to see how that augurs for similar gambles.

Oliver Glasner, Fabian Hurzeler and Keith Andrews all deservedly reside in the top half currently, along with two managers whose credentials were both boosted and battered at the Stadium of Light.

For half an hour or so, this had all the hallmarks of a chastening afternoon for Regis Le Bris. In the soaking Wearside rain he witnessed a series of individual mistakes put Sunderland 2-0 down and in grave danger of losing their proud unbeaten home record.

It was an Andoni Iraola coaching masterclass, summed up by Bournemouth turning a Sunderland corner into their second goal within 16 seconds. Granit Xhaka played it short, Chemsdine Talbi played it shorter, and the Black Cats were pressed into oblivion before Tyler Adams lobbed Robin Roefs from within the centre circle.

That Sunderland were able to recover from that was a remarkable testament to their character – and Bournemouth’s capacity to collapse.

Enzo Le Fee halved the deficit with a ruthless penalty. Bertrand Traore wiped it out within a minute of the second half from Xhaka’s sumptuous reverse ball. And Brian Brobbey completed the comeback with yet more bench-based heroics; no player has contributed more goals as a substitute in the Premier League this season.

Le Bris has fostered an absurd mentality in this team, to the extent that Sunderland’s first ever Premier League win from two goals down does not come as a particular surprise for the side up in fourth.

Iraola, on the other hand, is a phenomenal manager whose shortcomings are still frequently exposed, as might be expected from an offshoot of the Mauricio Pochettino branch of the Marcelo Bielsa coaching tree.

Bournemouth’s Premier League games have involved 44 goals this season – at least two more than any other side. As outstanding as that is for the neutral, it is hard not to think that embracing the role of the modern entertainers will hold back both club and manager despite their ostensibly high ceilings.

Paul Merson feels Tottenham could ‘beat Fulham 16-0′ in the Premier League and still not make up for the ’embarrassing’ result they suffered last week.

Spurs have finally come out of the end of a difficult run of fixtures. In the last six games in all competitions, they’ve played Newcastle, Chelsea, Copenhagen, Manchester United, Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain.

They only beat Copenhagen out of those, and drew against United, losing each of the others.

Fulham, 15th in the Premier League, represents a chance to pick up some much-needed points, after Tottenham dropped out of the top four and have slipped to ninth.

But Merson, predicting the result for Sportskeeda, feels not even a huge victory could make up for losing 4-1 against rivals Arsenal.

He wrote: ‘Tottenham are a nightmare to predict! I thought they were blown away by Arsenal last weekend, it was just embarrassing. That was Tottenham’s biggest game of the season.

‘I know Arsenal are the better team but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it hard for them. Fans would have wanted Tottenham players to run through brick walls in this game but that didn’t happen. Spurs made it a walk in the park for Arsenal and even if they beat Fulham 16-0, it won’t make up for that derby loss!

‘Even against PSG in the Champions League, Tottenham took the lead twice and still lost 5-3. If they have a go at opponents, they score three goals and end up conceding five in return. If they hold back, they lose 4-1 like against Arsenal. Spurs are not able to find the right balance and that is a worrying thing.

‘Tottenham have been poor at home and they are very panicky when they are expected to go and win a game of football. This is one such game against Fulham and I don’t expect them to win.’

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Spurs’ form is such that it’s felt though they should beat Fulham, they’re probably not going to. Indeed, Chris Sutton suggested that while they should ‘have too much’ for the Cottagers, he also picked a draw as his result.

One of the main reasons for that was that Tottenham’s home record this term leaves a lot to be desired.

Spurs have won just four games at home this season, including against Doncaster Rovers and Burnley, so there’s cause for pessimism.

Thomas Frank has revealed if a Tottenham star is fit enough to play against Fulham at the weekend, in a game he simply must start in.

Spurs have been met with a few injury issues this season. Two of their best players in recent seasons, James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski, have been sidelined all season.

Meanwhile, Kolo Muani is one of the vast number of players who have been on the sidelines recently.

He came back from a muscle injury only to injure his jaw, but has been ok to play in a mask. He starred against parent club Paris Saint-Germain in the week and Frank has revealed whether he’ll be available to face Fulham at the weekend.

Frank said: “Nothing changed from the Arsenal and PSG games – obviously suspension to Cuti [Cristian Romero]. Radu [Dragusin] is not able to start yet, but he’s progressing in training.

“Yeah, he [Kolo Muani] will be fit enough to start against Fulham. I think he performed well, his best performance so far. That’s the challenge we’re embracing, three days between games, how can we find the perfect balance between games in energy, intensity, the right structure on the pitch.”

And with Kolo Muani fit, he simply must start against Fulham. He came on off the bench against Arsenal and the way he performed in games before and after that, it was proven that he should have started.

In the Champions League game against Copenhagen, Kolo Muani bagged his first Tottenham assist, and against PSG, he began to truly come into his own.

The striker bagged two goals and assisted one more – nodding the ball across to strike partner Richarlison for his assist, hammering the ball home from just outside the six-yard box for his first goal and jinking past two defenders before rifling home for his second.

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That type of performance against one of the world’s best sides suggests Kolo Muani should have no problem against lesser opposition.

The performance also showed that he and Richarlison are capable of playing alongside one another. When Kolo Muani rose at the back post to nod across to his strike partner, it was a perfect example of how the pair can dominate opposition defences.

Frank has chopped and changed his side a lot this term, but the 4-4-2 formation with both the strikers up top delivered one of Tottenham’s most potent attacking performances.

They scored three goals and while they lost 5-3, there was little change on the defensive end suggesting the two strikers are going to diminish the defence.

Arsenal can take another big step on their eerily serene march towards what is apparently an increasingly inevitable and straight-forward Premier League title with current nearest pursuers Chelsea in the Gunners’ sights this weekend.

Elsewhere, serenity – eerie or otherwise – is in shorter supply at Tottenham and Liverpool, who could both do with victory over Fulham and West Ham respectively to ease the pressure on managers who are currently becoming beleaguered at an alarming rate.

And at the Hill Dickinson it’s all eyes on Michael Keane to see if he can avoid getting lamped by a team-mate this weekend.

That sounds like a Big Weekend to us.

Game to watch: Chelsea v Arsenal

Depending on how the weekend’s earlier games have panned out, Arsenal’s short trip to Stamford Bridge will give them the chance to open a lead over the rest of at least seven and perhaps as many as nine points.

If they can beat a team that is, and we’re not quite sure how this has happened, their nearest current challengers then it really will start to become very hard indeed to see how anyone stops them ending what would be a 22-year wait for a Premier League title in May. It really does already look very much like the only team that can stop Arsenal doing that is Arsenal themselves.

It won’t be Liverpool. It almost certainly won’t be Man City. And that takes out the only two teams who’ve won the league since Chelsea themselves back in 2017. And the Premier League feels a very different place now than it did back then.

You’d like to think Chelsea will at least make things harder for Arsenal than Spurs did last weekend, but Arsenal’s current imperious form does lead one to suspect another victory for the leaders is on the cards and the four-team Premier League title race we dreamed of – demanded, even – really could be down to just one team before the Christmas decorations go up.

Team to watch: Tottenham

Meanwhile, in the other half of North London, something stirs. The capitulation in the North London Derby might – might – have finally caused something to click in Thomas Frank’s brain. He might have just realised that losing without even trying do anything but will get him sacked a lot quicker than losing but at least looking like you occupy a universe in which that might not happen.

It is profoundly and almost unimprovably Spurs to be able to say – and entirely mean it – that a 5-3 defeat in a game you’ve led twice was genuinely encouraging. But the 5-3 defeat at PSG in a game Spurs led twice really was genuinely encouraging.

We’re not quite sure where Frank plucked his wingless wonders midfield diamond formation from, but it worked really rather well for extremely long periods of the game in Paris.

The goals Spurs did concede in that game – and yes, there were an awful lot of them – came from individual rather than systemic errors. Spurs had held PSG at arm’s length alarmingly easy until Vitinha slapped home an equaliser off the underside of the bar from long range just before the break.

It all went quite dramatically downhill in the second half, but it never felt like the system was at fault. It, quite simply, never felt like Arsenal felt. Like a game surrendered before a ball had been kicked.

On another day with that exact performance, Spurs could easily have left Paris with a point. Three, even. There is no universe or dimension or timeline real or imagined where they leave Arsenal with anything other than a beating.

Arsenal and PSG away in consecutive games was always likely to end badly, but the hope must be that a penny has dropped for Frank after the contrasting reaction to contrasting approaches yielding, on this occasion, identical results.

But what we still don’t know is how Frank will apply what (we hope) he’s learned from those away games to the more prosaic but apparently for Spurs equally difficult task of picking up points from relatively far easier home games.

They are still without a Premier League home win since the opening weekend, their record at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium across more than a year now reaching an absurd three wins in 20 Premier League games.

What happens next against a Fulham team still down in 15th but showing signs of life after two wins in their last three games feels like it’s of enormous importance to Spurs’ wider direction of travel.

Manager to watch: Arne Slot

We weren’t at all surprised to see Liverpool’s Champions League game against PSV end 4-1 at Anfield. We were all set to dismiss Liverpool winning by such a scoreline as surely irrelevant to their crisis status. As meaningless as the 5-1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt proved to be to the prevailing vibe.

We were less prepared, even with a Liverpool team that had lost eight of its last 11 games, for it to end 4-1 to the visitors.

This is a season unravelling in front of our eyes in much the same way Man City’s did this time last year, and the evidence that Arne Slot doesn’t know what to do or how to do it to change any of it mounts by the game.

There are conflicting reports about his job security or lack thereof, but the fact we’re even talking about the very real possibility of Slot getting canned six months after winning the league is an extraordinary situation.

Liverpool have lost the run of themselves to the extent that almost every match looks like a trap now, but there surely aren’t many trappier ones for Slot to try and remedy things than this weekend’s task of West Ham away.

It’s a perfect combination of an opponent bad enough that only a comfortable win offers any kind of evidence of anything, but an opponent now confident enough to make achieving that fiendishly difficult.

They may still sit outside the relegation zone only on goal difference, but West Ham have found something that works under Nuno Espirito Santo now and have collected seven of their 11 points this season over their last three games. Liverpool, by comparison, have now lost their own last three games 3-0, 3-0 and 4-1.

It just looks a fixture absolutely ripe for even greater deepening of what has become a very deep crisis indeed.

Player to watch: Michael Keane

Everton face Newcastle this weekend knowing victory would take them six points clear of the Magpies.

The Toffees will be going for a third straight Premier League win, but a first straight Premier League win in which they manage not to get a player sent off for fighting a team-mate. We can’t watch Idrissa Gueye now, because his antics got him suspended, so we’ll have to see how Michael Keane handles it all instead.

And we have to acknowledge the incredible foresight shown by the all-knowing foresight of the ever-mischievous fixture computer in it being Newcastle, proud owners of the most infamous on-field intra-club scrap in Barclays history who Everton face straight after their own tangle with infamy.

Football League game to watch: Stoke v Hull

As Frank Lampard’s Coventry City, to give them their full name, disappear over the horizon it’s all on to see who might join FLCC back in the Premier League next season.

After a pair of defeats to FLCC and Leicester, Stoke got their own bid to return to the big time back on track with a 3-0 win over Charlton in the week.

And a Saturday lunchtime kick-off against Hull – who have for now slipped out of the play-off picture on the back of three defeats in their last four – offers the Potters a chance to set down an early marker for the rest of those in pursuit of FLCC.

European game to watch: Roma v Napoli

While we fear for the Premier League title race, we really do, over in Italy they look like they could be set for an absolute all-timer.

While the current gap between first and second in the Premier League sits at six points – and could very conceivably be nine once this weekend is over – with plausible rivals to Arsenal’s dominance falling away with alarming speed, those same six points currently cover the entire top six in Italy.

And look out, because just a point further back come Juventus who can’t yet be completely ruled out of anything.

It all means that right now on any given weekend you’re quite likely to stumble into a crucial top-of-the-table clash just by sheer weight of numbers, and this week gives us a doozy with current leaders Roma hosting third-placed defending champions Napoli, who would leapfrog Gian Piero Gasperini’s side with a win.

Thomas Frank doesn’t have the “character” or “the balls” to “control the dressing room” at Tottenham and is doomed to fail, according to a former Spurs player.

A 4-1 thumping a the hands of bitter rivals Arsenal on Sunday has ramped up the pressure on Frank, who was already feeling the heat having only taken charge in the summer on the back of a similarly insipid display against Chelsea.

A 5-3 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain hasn’t helped his cause as large swathes of Spurs fans are calling for his head having quickly grown tired of his style of football.

And former Spurs defender Ramon Vega, who spent four years at the club, argues that Frank is making “the players very insecure” by changing his team, making it very hard for them to “respect” him.

“He is changing his mind every two seconds,” Vega told talkSPORT.

“One thing with Ange, whatever you criticise him, he might be limited in his own way, but he had the balls. He stuck to his guns. He did what he wanted.

“The players need this kind of certainty in the dressing room. That’s why I think when Ange was winning the Europa League with the young boys, 80 per cent of the season was with the young boys [due to injuries], the dressing room was sticking to him. And you can see that.

“I’m not sure this dressing room is starting to respect Frank because he’s changing how they play. They don’t know where to go, what to do. They haven’t got a strategically stable place to go.

“And the dressing room, as a player, when you know what the coach wants and he’s doing it week in, week out, the mentality is there, then the team starts to play well.

“But if you’re changing every five minutes, you really, really make the players very insecure. They don’t know where to go. And you can see that in these two games.”

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Vega added: “If he doesn’t control the dressing room, he can be as good as he wants, as nice as he is, but he hasn’t got the balls.

“I don’t see Frank as suitable for this because I don’t think he has the balls. He hasn’t got a character to do this.”

Frank himself took plenty of positives from the defeat in Paris ahead of the visit of Fulham in the Premier League on Saturday.

“I’m pleased with the performance. It was the reaction I wanted from the players, from the team,” Frank insisted.

“We’ve been working very hard on that, the players, the staff, me, to make sure that we responded well and bounced back because that’s crucial after a bad performance.

“Today I saw more identity of the team I want to create, we want to create.

“Much more character, personality, aggressiveness. Three words you need to have in any team no matter how you want to do, how you want to play, whatever formation, whatever. Today we saw it, that I’m pleased with.

“Of course, I think it was a performance that was up there where we could get something out of the game, a draw or a win. So, that’s a little frustrating thing that we conceded some goals.

“But something to build on. Strikers scoring two goals. The whole team, I think, all performed well.

“Archie Gray, Lucas Bergvall, positive. When we played against a decent team where they have one Ballon d’Or winner (Ousmane Dembele) and I think the next one is playing in midfield. Vitinha. Wow, what a player.”

How do you solve a problem like Tottenham Hotspur?

There really is nobody else quite like them. Which other club could go and lose a game 5-3 having already lost their previous game 4-1 and do so under the watchful eye of the Premier League’s most defensive coach? Which other club could go and lose a game 5-3 and have you legitimately thinking there were actually quite a lot of encouraging elements to it and it was much better than anything else they’ve served up recently?

The thing with this Spurs performance is that about 80 per cent of it was really good, really disciplined and full of everything the surrender at Arsenal lacked. They were committed and organised in defence and showed plenty of genuine attacking ambition when the chance to counter-attack presented itself. They fought hard and earned the right to play a bit of football, which they duly did to halfway decent effect.

But the other 20 per cent of this performance was f*cking braindead. And now, yet again, we simply have no idea what to make of them. Can you really take any meaningful encouragement from a 5-3 defeat, even if it is to the defending European champions? Normal clubs definitely can’t, but Spurs aren’t normal, are they?

Let’s run through the good. The midfield diamond actually worked. Lucas Bergvall often managed to emerge from the middle third as a spare man, with PSG unsure who should be dealing with him. He remains young, naïve and desperately raw in his final decision-making, but Spurs are undeniably less drab when he’s on the pitch.

Many promising moments came to nothing from his bad choices, but when he got it right, Spurs took the lead with a beautifully worked move involving Bergvall and then Archie Gray getting involved right up in the PSG area and creating the opportunity for Randal Kolo Muani to give Richarlison an unmissable opportunity for his third goal in three games. That Spurs have gone on to win none of those games is just so Richarlison rhythms.

Kolo Muani was the other huge positive. Again, somehow very apt, very Spurs, very ridiculous that their best player on the night actually plays for the opposition.

He was fantastic, though, following that assist with his first two Tottenham goals after the break and all while wearing a mask after fracturing his jaw in the also-absurd 2-2 draw against Man United before the interlull.

Having arrived at Spurs on loan on deadline day, Kolo Muani was short of match sharpness having been left out in the cold by Luis Enrique. He then suffered a dead leg that kept him out of action for a month before his latest injury against United.

It’s meant a deeply frustrating stop-start beginning to his brief Spurs career but on this evidence he could provide a meaningful solution to a lot of their problems. He is a more nuanced and versatile striker than the chaos merchant Richarlison, and they actually make a compelling duo. The goal Richarlison scored was solid proof of concept and it might just be that one possible solution to the impossible Spurs puzzle really is four-four-f*cking-two.

We have at times this season clean forgotten Kolo Muani is in fact a Spurs player this season, and we now find ourselves pondering just what is in fact the earliest after actually being a new signing that a player can become Like a New Signing? As with everything else about Spurs, we simply don’t know the answer.

Other good things on the night included the performance of Gray and, for the most part, Pape Sarr. One thing we do want to firmly insist Thomas Frank does from now on is ensure at least one of Bergvall, Gray and Sarr is on the pitch at all times. That alone feels like it could do something to address the creative malaise in the long-term absences of Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison.

Now the bad. The stupid, ridiculous bad. Spurs completely switched off from a corner at the very end of a first half in which they’d held PSG at arm’s length with something approaching swaggering ease. Vitinha was not closed down, and slapped a wrong-foot swinger in off the crossbar from 20 yards.

Shortly after taking the lead for a second time, Spurs decided they wanted to see more of Vitinha’s long-range prowess and this time allowed him to switch the ball on to his left foot to curl an even more compelling finish inside Guglielmo Vicario’s far post.

Spurs were just warming up the ol’ comedy muscles, though. Having done so many good things for about an hour, they then decided to simply giftwrap a couple of goals to the best team in the world. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton.

The first gift, and PSG’s third goal, came from Cristian Romero deciding to try and play out from the back via an extremely marked Sarr. And minutes later Spurs conceded a corner unnecessarily and decided not to really bother defending it very much at all.

A quick burst of incredibly stupid decisions undermining all sorts of previous good work. We haven’t seen this sort of brainless collapse from a decent position by an inherently ridiculous team on TNT Sport since, well, Saturday morning.

The thing with brainless football, though, is that it can be contagious. And there was still time for PSG to catch the bug. The otherwise exemplary Vitinha gifted Spurs their third and Kolo Muani his second before restoring PSG’s two-goal advantage from the penalty spot to complete his first senior hat-trick.

To great surprise that was the end of the evening’s goals, but not the evening’s stupidity. There was still time for Lucas Hernandez to get himself sent off deep into injury time after giving in to his intrusive thoughts and deciding to just elbow Xavi Simons directly in the face while winning 5-3.

Why did that happen? No idea. Why did any of this happen? Not a clue. What does any of it mean? Maybe none of it means anything. Perhaps there is no moral to this story. Maybe it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.

Come back and ask us again after Spurs take an early lead before losing 2-1 at home to Fulham on Saturday night.