Tottenham Hotspur are back on another losing streak, and as they sit buried 14th in the Premier League table heading into Christmas, Spurs supporters can only help but wonder if the club are somehow in an even worse position now this season under Thomas Frank than they were last season despite a surprising flurry of summer activity.
The injury woes have not helped matters, though, and it is easy to forget that Tottenham are still without three key attacking players. James Maddison is out with a torn ACL that will keep him on the sidelines until the very end of the 2025/26 Premier League campaign.
Meanwhile, the prolonged absences of right winger Dejan Kulusevski and striker Dominic Solanke are even bigger sources of frustration. Spurs would have expected to have both star players back by now. Kulu is out with a lingering knee injury he sustained at the end of the last season, and there is no clarity on his return time table.
Thomas Frank is being annoying again
Solanke's injury news is even more difficult to come by. The man has only appeared in three games off the bench this entire campaign due to a recurring foot injury that required surgery, but since the operation, Frank has been tight lipped with zero concrete updates for fans to sink their teeth into.
At a mid week press conference with local rivals Crystal Palace on the horizon after Christmas, Thomas Frank told Tottenham Hotspur supporters that he still has no time table for a return for either Dominic Solanke and Dejan Kulusevski when specifically asked by reporters if there were any fresh updates on the pair.
Frank doubled down on his spree non updates by saying, via The Spurs Web, "Same as I said before. Both of them, I will be very happy when I can announce now they are part of the squad. That’s where it is."
"That's where it is" basically is a whole lot of nothing, but that figures. Frank has offered a lot of condescension and general unhelpfulness in press conferences, and the Solanke and Kulusevski injury news updates are a running gag at this point. And it's all only funny when the coach doing this sort of thing is someone like Bill Belichick back in the day for the NFL's New England Patriots. But if your coach is not winning like Belichick, it is annoying, because, let's face it, Frank being this tight lipped is not proferring any sort of competitive advantage to Spurs.