Thomas Frank has apologised to Tottenham supporters after their 4-1 thrashing at north London rivals Arsenal on Sunday, but refused to blame his defensive system for the defeat.
After Leandro Trossard opened the scoring on 36 minutes, Eberechi Eze scored the first hat trick in a north London derby for 47 years with Richarlison‘s sublime long-range strike the only reply Spurs could muster.
Spurs lined up with a five-man defence and had just two shots all match — ending with an expected goals total of 0.07, the lowest figure of any Premier League team this season.
They have now taken one point from a possible nine against top four rivals Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United and Frank said: “I think it’s three different games. I think the United game was a much better performance than today and the Chelsea one. I also think there’s a difference in the Chelsea and the Arsenal performances. Even though both of them look bad on paper. I need to watch this back as well.
“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. I don’t want to run away from that.
“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.”
Pushed on whether Frank set the wrong tone with a negative team selection — fielding Kevin Danso alongside Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero in a back five while keeping Xavi Simons, Mathys Tel, Brennan Johnson Lucas Bergvall and Randal Kolo Muani on the bench — the Spurs boss replied: “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.
“I picked a team that played 5-4-1, changed it at half-time, very clever one 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.
“I think we were 100 percent too far from them in these duels we wanted to create, or getting pressure, getting close. In those duels, as I talked about before, we didn’t win enough of them. If that’s a lack of fight, a lack of whatever it is, we just didn’t do it well enough.”
Tottenham drop to seventh place in the table and travel to Champions League holders Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday.
