Frank delighted by positive energy from Spurs supporters in success over Borussia Dortmund

Tottenham Hotspur (2) 2 v Borussia Dortmund (0) 0

Champions League

MD7

Talking Points

By Kaz Mochlinski at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

“What I feel the whole time is that - I feel the staff is with us, I think the players are with us. The ownership, everyone wants the same thing. And we’re on the same page. We do a lot of things in the right direction, and today was a big performance and a big win.”

That is how Thomas Frank summarised the mood inside the club after Tottenham Hotspur beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0 to maintain their 100% record at home in the Champions League this season.

Four wins out of four in N17 with four clean sheets in the league phase have provided a platform to potentially qualify for the knock-out stages automatically, without the need to resort to the additional two-leg play-off round.

They are ahead in the table of Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Chelsea and Manchester City, among others, having extended to 24 their home sequence without defeat in European club competitions.

It is an impressive achievement for a head coach participating in his first ever season of European football, and very importantly the good run of results has brought some respite from the restlessness about their recurrent struggles in the Premier League.

Remarkably, Spurs had not won a home game since their last appearance on their own ground in the Champions League against Slavia Praha. The four subsequent domestic league and cup matches have been mostly miserable experiences.

Having lost three and drawn one when Liverpool, Sunderland, Aston Villa and West Ham United came to visit in the last four weeks, Tottenham were facing five consecutive winless games at home for the first time in almost two decades.

The previous manager to suffer such ignominy was Juande Ramos, but Frank was able to avoid equalling him - despite exceptionally difficult circumstances with 13 first team squad members unavailable, due to injury, suspension, or eligibility issues.

There was no Micky van de Ven, Mohammed Kudus, Dejan Kulusevski, James Maddison, João Palhinha, Pape Sarr, Rodrigo Bentancur, Conor Gallagher, Richarlison, Ben Davies, Radu Drăguşin, Mathys Tel, or Yves Bissouma.

In their absence, Frank could field only six of his first choice XI, with primarily unknown, younger players on the bench, and Jun’ai Byfield making his debut, as a substitute. A positive was the return from injury of Dominic Solanke and Destiny Udogie.

Among Premier League clubs, just Newcastle United have been more affected by injuries this season, and solely Bournemouth have a higher number of players out injured at the moment, but, overall, none have lost more team members than Spurs.

That has at no stage been accepted as any sort of mitigation by Tottenham fans, whose toxic negativity during the defeat by West Ham at the weekend was described by several neutrals present as akin to a public execution of the head coach.

Both before and after the Borussia match Frank underlined his belief that he retains the backing of key decision-makers within the hierarchy, aided by regular lunches together - and the dialogue that goes along with that.

A dominant display and a victory help, even if the two goals came from two major miss-kicks, by Wilson Odobert producing the assist for Cristian Romero, and then Solanke on his first start of the season with his first goal for eight months.

“I said it from the beginning, the players are giving everything” emphasised Frank. “I think that’s an extremely good sign about the culture. Extremely good sign that they want to do everything. That they are together, that we are together.

“Very impressive. And we were a little bit down to the bare bones with the available players. And Destiny, he was definitely one of the ones I was talking about yesterday, we were constantly talking about, should we swap him in or not?

“But he was sometimes bombarding forward. I was thinking ‘Oh no, Dest, please, come on, calm now. Be a little bit clever.’ But very nice. Dom is the one that is normally a physical beast, but he’s been out for so long.

“It means something. He gave everything, and I think he gave so much to the team. And of course also scored a great goal with a triple contact to get it over the line. But very good to have the two of them on the pitch.”

Possibly more notable than anything else was the feelgood response from the Spurs supporters, even though it was another Champions League night with a crowd well below capacity, at 52,713.

“I asked for the fans to help everyone, especially the team and the players, and they were exceptional, especially the first half” said a very appreciative Frank. “You felt it was that one of these, how can you say, a little bit special European nights.

“You felt the energy was quite unique.” And he added: “It was just extremely nice to experience. And, as I say, the way they pushed us forward, and that energy between the fans and the players was magic. And that’s what we need to create more of.”

Losing Lucas Bergvall to an ankle injury, just as Solanke gets back from the same problem, was a big blow. However, even with all the players out at the moment, Frank realises that his squad have to replicate their Champions League levels more often.

“I think the big thing is to build on this with a performance and a win against Burnley on Saturday. What I would say is that it’s a big skill to be able to produce Premier League, Champions League, Premier League, Champions League every week from the team and players.

“That we’re working very hard on, and I actually think - and I keep saying it because I mean it - this is the eighth game in a row where I think we consistently performed quite well. Not everything has been through the roof, but overall good in all games.

“But we haven’t been able to get over the line, get a little bit of the margins with us. Today you can say the little margins was maybe a red card that helped a little bit instead of the one we had against Liverpool go the other way.

“And of course the triple contact of Dom inside the post, goal, boom and done, where we didn’t get that against Sunderland, West Ham and Bournemouth, where all three we should have won with the performance we put in.

“So, we just need to do the same thing, keep believing, and then we just know that things will turn.” It was a theme that Frank kept returning to: “Now we need to build on this. And I just see a team that is running very, very hard.

“And I think that’s a very, very good sign. That’s a healthy sign of a culture and we are building something a little bit step by step. We can easily have got better results the last three games, we just didn’t, but we’re running hard.”

For now, as he put it “we all knew it was an important win to get, and especially at home, of course, where we haven’t been as confident.” Against the side second in the Bundesliga, this success seems significant.