Tottenham Hotspur ended 2024-25 with their first trophy in 17 years. But the season also had very low moments.
The Europa League title was the first piece of silverware for Tottenham since the 2008 Carling Cup. But it was not enough for Ange Postecoglou to keep his job. Daniel Levy fired the Aussie and hired Brentford’s Thomas Frank to take over ahead of the 2025-26 season.
Trophy aside, the campaign as a whole was a tough one for Spurs. A weak defensive system and heaps of injuries dictated the pace as they finished 17th in the Premier League – their lowest position in the competition’s history.
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This was obviously an outlier season and things would’ve probably fared much better with Ange had Spurs kept him at the helm. But there is one part of their playing style that could flourish under Thomas Frank and make Tottenham better overall.
Verticality and directness
Towards the end of last season, Tottenham were performing better when giving up possession to defend with a low block, trying to hit opponents with fast breaks and counter attacks. They had less than 50% possession in each of their last eight matches. Postecoglou switched things up — especially in the latter stages of the Europa League — and it paid off. They won the final against Manchester United with 27% possession and being outshot 16 to three.
A lot of this can be explained by the context of each club, but Thomas Frank comes from a Brentford team that had this vertical side as their main trait and threat. They did not always defend well and conceded a lot of goals, but were really good at getting from the defence to offense in quick fashion.
In the 2024-25 Premier League, Brentford recorded the second-highest average distance in passes (19.1m) while Tottenham ranked 18th (16.7m). The Bees also had the fifth-highest long ball percentage relative to their total amount of passes attempted (13.1%), while Spurs ranked 19th (7.3%).
With a new squad with higher quality players overall, the Dane can lean into his strengths to turn Tottenham into a deadly direct team next season right from the start.
Sign of what’s to come?
We mentioned before that Postecoglou basically gave up on his ‘footballing ideals’ for a while and led Tottenham to the Europa League trophy doing so, allowing opponents to keep possession even playing at home.
Opta track direct speed, which measures on average how many metres per second the ball advances towards goal. Tottenham won seven of their 10 game with at least 1.60 in this metric across all competitions, losing the other three. In other words, when prioritising fast and direct football, they mainly succeeded. Their highest tally in a game actually came in the final against Man Utd (2.31). Meanwhile, out of their 10 games with the lowest direct speed, they won four, lost four and drew twice.
Looking at Brentford, their top-10 games in direct speed came with six wins, one draw and three losses, while the bottom-10 includes five wins, one draw and four losses. There is a chance that Frank mixes things up and adapts to the Spurs squad as the squad adapts to him. But he did coach a much less elaborate style at Brentford than Postecoglou did basically in any club of his career.
Like any other stat, all of this comes with context. There are caveats of different opponents, results, injuries, red cards and other things that can condition how the game is played. But it looked like Postecoglou was onto something with Tottenham in terms of overall footballing philosophy down the stretch of last season. Thomas Frank could be just the man to carry this forward and perfect it.