The former Brentford head coach was sacked on Wednesday morning following a defeat to Newcastle United the previous evening, the culmination of two wins from the previous 17 Premier League matches. It is, by any reasonable measure, relegation form.
Tottenham are now 16th in the table, just five points above the drop zone. It is a slide that has been steepening even before Frank's arrival, and their record over the last 38 league fixtures (a full season's worth) reads eight wins, 10 draws and 20 losses for a total of 34 points.
The oft-quoted magic number for retaining top-flight status is 40 points.
This season, Tottenham sit on 29 points, so there's certainly work to be done over the next 12 matches to ensure they are not sucked even further towards the trap door. When they have previously opted to sack a manager mid-season, and there have been plenty examples, Tottenham have been in a position where they can make a stop-gap interim appointment while they figured out where to go next.
They do not have the luxury of chucking an academy coach into the first team dugout for a few weeks this time.
The great irony is that Frank was supposed to represent steadiness and stability following the departure of Ange Postecoglou. Nobody expected his team to be as expansive or unpredictable as big Ange, but the hope will have been that he could make them more consistent, less prone to wild swings in form and feeling.
His reputation at Brentford was hard-earned. He provided continuity and steady improvements, but as I wrote about here a few weeks ago, there is significant risk in plucking a coach from that environment - where the club itself is the star - and expecting the same results in a completely different one.
It always felt especially dangerous with Tottenham, a club who, for years and years, have been unable to decide what it is they want to be. Bouncing from Jose Mourinho, to Nuno Espirito Santo, to Antonio Conte, to Postecoglou, to Frank suggests boardroom thinking is not especially joined up.
In the ultra-competitive Premier League, where clubs have been able to punch far above their weight due to, in no small part, being extremely well run, you can only get away with making poor decisions for so long.
Tottenham are incredibly well-managed as a business, and in 2024 were ranked as the third most profitable sports team in the world. But that's an accolade no football club can publicly flaunt when the football itself falls so far short of what is required.
In hiring Frank only to sack him eight months later, Tottenham have shown they are no closer to solving this puzzle, and before they can even contemplate long-term steps, must scramble their way out of what looks increasingly like an emergency. But who do you bring in now to do that? It's not an easy call at this stage of a campaign.
What was abundantly clear last night, though, is that Frank had run out of road. He was booed before and after Tuesday's loss, and supporters alternated between singing for the return of Mauricio Pochettino and telling Frank he'd be receiving his P45 in the morning.
Such toxicity is near impossible for managers to recover from, and it clearly filters down to an already under-performing squad. The situation Tottenham find themselves has been brewing since before Frank made the trip over from the other side of London, and he is not completely to blame for how it is has turned out.
He joins an increasingly long line of coaches who could not find a way to win and brutally paid for it. In Postecoglou's case, he did win the Europa League, but his team's Premier League form was so bad even that could not save him.
Frank has been hampered by a similar level of injury problems that prompted Postecoglou to decide he had to choose between Europe and the league. But he was not without his flaws.
Tottenham were too risk-averse under his leadership, pragmatic to the point of being stylistically incoherent, and, simply put, lost far too many games. Frank may have traded the structured order of Brentford for something much more chaotic, but to be flirting with relegation as Tottenham manager is only going to yield one outcome.
The Dane has looked increasingly beleaguered, and the fact that a considerable chunk of the fanbase seemingly did not want him in the first place meant, fairly or not, he was always holding a short rope. Frank won his first two league matches, but that was to be as good as it got.
Given their league struggles last term, it was clear that Tottenham's ills were never going to be cured in short order, but any new manager must instil clear signs of life into his team, even amid the inevitable choppy waters. Despite faring more positively in the Champions League, Frank was unable to do that, and there was too much evidence that the players were not buying in to his methods.
Meek home defeats to city rivals Arsenal and Chelsea were especially damaging, and for many fans, hammered home the pre-conceived idea that he was never the man for the job.
And so it ends as a saga where no one emerges with much credit. Tottenham hired a manager without appearing to understand what had made him so successful elsewhere, and Frank himself did not extract enough from what he was given.
For the club, however, cutting ties with a doomed manager does not solve any problems. Their league position, long-term form, and the intricacies in appointing someone to deal with those in short order suggest they could now be in more danger than ever.