Boos for Thomas Frank as Spurs crumble in El Sackico

As Thomas Frank and Nuno Espírito Santo drift off to sleep every night, their minds must occasionally turn to what life was like this time last year. Frank’s Brentford team were fresh off a comeback draw against Manchester City, with Christian Nørgaard scoring a 92nd-minute equaliser. Nottingham Forest, meanwhile, had just drawn with Liverpool under Nuno’s watchful eye. Halcyon days which now can barely be distinguished from dreams.

Freeze frame, record scratch – I bet you’re wondering how I ended up here, they must ask each other, teeth gritted in opposite dugouts as Tottenham host West Ham.

Both managers are teetering on the brink of being sacked, with every match now a referendum on whether they should stay in the job. West Ham began the day in 18th place, already looking ominously far behind Nottingham Forest, who are at least struggling with life without Nuno as much as he is struggling with life without them. Tottenham were in 14th, an improvement on last year’s finishing position, but not by the amount desired.

In recent weeks, there has been plenty of discussion about the rise of the sporting director as god. At Chelsea and Manchester United, managers have faced the axe as a result of daring to question those above them. It is refreshing to return to the more traditional methods of managerial trepidation, namely having a team be bad at football.

It is hard to argue against the fact that both these teams are quite bad, although West Ham appear to have at least found some freedom in recent weeks, perhaps from accepting their ominous looking fate.

They began as the brighter team, with Crysencio Summerville giving them the lead after 15 minutes, as a deflection off Micky van de Ven wrong-footed Guglielmo Vicario in the Tottenham goal. After he had scored, he ran to Nuno on the sidelines to celebrate with his manager. There was certainly little to suggest that the players are disillusioned with their manager.

Tottenham were unsurprisingly booed off at half-time. The stadium announcer half-heartedly implored fans to get behind their team before the second half began but there was little sign of that as they directed their ire at Vicario’s sideways passing. A 64th-minute equaliser from Cristian Romero at least turned some of that frustration into anticipation, not that it was rewarded.

In some ways, it is strange to see Nuno struggling at a club who are lower down the table. His best work has been with teams who have seemed in vaguely hopeless situations and turning them into something greater than the sum of their parts. To have taken Wolves and Nottingham Forest to European football is no mean feat. The logic from his time as manager at Tottenham was that he was unable to deal with the raised expectations, lasting only four months in the end.

That appears to be Frank’s problem too. When a manager has spent their time coaching the underdog, expectations are different. Style does not matter so much as results, whereas the arrival at a bigger club brings more attention, requires more thoughtfulness.

The Arsenal paper cup incident – when he was pictured drinking from an Arsenal-branded cup ahead of Tottenham’s defeat by Bournemouth 10 days ago – is the perfect example of this. It is patently a ridiculous thing to get worked up about but equally it is a patently ridiculous thing to allow to happen. Image matters more as the clubs get bigger and the number of fans increases and there are more people, supporters and rivals, who are going to pore over everything that happens. Like it or not, it is harder to fade into the background. Frank’s technocratic energy is not well suited to getting people back on side.

For managers today, the art of picking the right project feels like a more fraught task than ever before. In the social media age, small incidents are picked up and amplified at a rate of knots. It is not just the fans and owner that need to be kept onside but a host of suits with nebulous roles. The success of smaller clubs like, for example Brentford, mean that the stakes are higher than ever. Spending lots of money is no longer a foolproof plan for success when others can do it smarter or better than you.

In both Nuno and Frank’s case, fans seem to want them to be closer to the precipice than their boards seem to think they are. West Ham spent millions on two attackers as soon as the transfer window opened, while Tottenham started Conor Gallagher, having pinched him from under Aston Villa’s nose. Johnny Heitinga, Arne Slot’s assistant at Liverpool last year, arrived this week to join Frank’s coaching team. It has been reported that Frank was involved in his appointment. Vinai Venkateshem who joined from Arsenal as chief executive officer ahead of the season saw the benefits of sticking with a manager in his previous job. At both clubs, the ownership remains a more accurate source of frustration, with Tottenham fans staging a protest prior to kick-off.

Ultimately it is hard to see either manager sticking around for the long term, although that could be said about the vast majority of teams in the Premier League. Is it still interesting to ponder the managerial merry-go-round when its spinning wheel is constant?

Some were referring to this match as “El Sackico”, which loses its funniness with every match that the epithet is applied to. It is hard for managers to find a good fit but the reality is they tend at least to find employment, even if it only lasts a season and a half, if they are lucky.

The frantic modern game means doing badly in a job sometimes ends up as a virtue. There is always another club looking once the current club have become fed up and so gainful employment can be continued.

“Oh what a load of shit,” said one Tottenham fan as he walked out after 82 minutes. It meant that at least he missed Callum Wilson’s 93rd-minute winner for West Ham. “Sacked in the morning,” sang Frank’s own fans.

Photograph by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images