Thomas Frank talked about trying to implement principles as Tottenham take on Newcastle United.
Spurs have struggled at home throughout the season, and now their results are catching up with them, having conceded 13 goals across four winless games against Man United, Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain and Fulham. Now, the team must attempt to return to winning ways against the Toon, whose record signing has started life well on English shores as part of an aggressive, intense outfit.
“For me, it's always the guiding principles that is the most important thing. How we build up. If it's, you know, what do we do when we split centre-backs? What do we do when we have a sitter or two sitters? What do we do with the position in front of that? How do we attack when playing the one on the side? How do we press?
“That will always more or less be the same, no matter if we play 4-2-3-1, 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 3-4-3, whatever, it's always the guiding principles. It's about how we can get the best players on the pitch that make the team's best way.
*“You can say the four goals we conceded against Man United and Fulham, some of the goals I would like to avoid a bit more. Also, those two games, if you can see the actual amount of shots we conceded, I think we conceded five shots and seven shots. It's very low.*
“If you can see at the XG, you can see those games are very low. So, the other stats behind it were good. Then there's two other results where we conceded too much against two, unfortunately, of the best teams in the world.
"They have been good for a long time"
“Newcastle are good. I think they've been good for a long time since Eddie Howe took over. I said that before. I admire Eddie and his coaching staff and everything they do, massively.
“ They're a very intense team, very aggressive and speaking about having a good home record - that's a difficult place to go to, everyone knows that. I think they've won the last six home games, so perfect timing. Good, but not unbeatable.”
“Nick Woltemade* has done very well. He's got the physicality, but also he offers something different. He's also good to drop down to link the game for them. That's why he offers something a little bit different. I think the way he attacks the box, he does that very well, finding good positions.”*