‘It’s not that easy’ – Tottenham boss Frank urges calm ahead of transfer deadline | OneFootball

Thomas Frank insists he is feeling calm about Tottenham’s transfer window, with less than two weeks to go until the deadline.

Spurs were in talks to sign Ebere Eze from Crystal Palace but the England international instead looks set to be joining Arsenal.

James Maddison suffered an ACL injury against Arsenal in pre-season and Dejan Kulusevski has been out since May following knee surgery so Tottenham are especially light in the number ten position.

Frank says that Spurs are still in the market and is confident they will sign someone, but stressed that it is not easy to get people in.

“What I can see is that we are working very hard and also what I know is that it is not that easy in general when you want to sign a player,” he said.

“I can speak from experience in Brentford where we also wanted to sign players sometimes we succeeded, sometimes we didn’t.

“There’s a lot of moving parts. There’s the players, the families, the agents, there’s a club they want to sell in general terms, so, that makes it complicated.”

In Frank’s first two competitive games in charge of Spurs he has played in two very different styles. Against PSG in the Super Cup they set up in a 3-5-2 formation and looked to counter-attack but against Burnley, Tottenham were more offensive.

When asked about how he changes the team Frank said: “I try to believe in simple messages, and have maybe three key areas, and then try to create a narrative about each game.

“That cannot be too big because there are probably two or three key areas that will win us the game, or hopefully maximise our chances of winning. Then we know there’s a lot of other areas that will affect it.”

Frank explained what those key areas are in more detail: “For example, Burnley was big on crosses, getting enough numbers in the box.

“If you look through our games, you can probably analyse and find out, so that was a key thing. Obviously, you could see set-pieces against PSG was a big thing.”

Frank was manager of Brentford for seven years and over that period they had one of the smallest budgets in the Premier League.

The Dane overperformed at the Bees, taking them to two top-ten finishes in England’s top division.

“I definitely also hope we can overperform here,” he said. “That’s the aim.

“But the funny thing is that I was never thinking about over-performing. I just had such a big belief in the team.

“I know that we had one of the smallest budgets, so of course, when you see it afterwards, it makes you a little bit proud that you can do that, but I was just focusing on trying to develop the players, the team, winning, and then, in the end, it worked quite well.”