It is all but official that Tottenham Hotspur will move on from Thomas Frank, and fans will riot if the club's already under fire brass decides anything else other than parting ways with a coach who has probably been the worst in the entire Premier League this season.
Frank's reign should have already ended weeks ago, but things simply became untenable - or maybe even moved past those terms - on Saturday afternoon with a 2-1 loss to lowly, relegation candidates West Ham United in yet another woeful performance in a London rivalry matchup.
It is, as even David Ornstein reported on the NBC Sports broadcast, simply a matter of when and not if Frank gets the sack at Tottenham. No matter how cautious Spurs management was or how much goodwill they gave to the former Brentford manager, Frank turned in worse and worse results, frustrating fans and even players with a cowardly brand of football that even the current iteration of Brentford would roundly reject.
Tottenham's dream candidate's mind is elsewhere
Tottenham Hotspur supporters already have a dream candidate in mind well above the rest of the rather underwhelming field of possible Thomas Frank replacements, and while there were early indications that Spurs would try to go after him, it appears he is already off the table before Frank was even fired and the chase could officially begin.
That manager would be recently fired Real Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, who became a legend at Bayer Leverkusen by winning their first ever title in a wild undefeated season but could not quite handle the pressure at Real Madrid or that environment with his lack of experience.
According to a report from Tom Allnutt of the Sunday Times, after the unruly events of his tenure at the Santiago Bernabeu, the former Liverpool, Real Madrid, and Bayern Munich midfielder wants to wait until June to mull over job offers before committing somewhere. He wants a break. The one positive of that for Tottenham is Alonso is intersted in the Premier League, though that does not necessarily mean he favors Spurs, given one of his old clubs, the Reds, could have an opening if Arne Slot continues to flop in year two.
Basically, if Tottenham want Alonso, they would either have to hire an interim manager like John Heitinga, but that is not an exciting option. Spurs could get relegated if they hire anyone worse than Frank, and given Heitinga's track record and the fact that he was literally just hired to help Frank as an assistant, that is possible.
So Alonso might as well be off the table because of his own, again understandable, desire to wait things out. Maybe Spurs will be back in the hunt for a manager by then, and the wait and see approach would actualy make sense if Spurs were not so bad they were under threat of relegation. Because Alonso is worth waiting for when the alternative options are people like Oliver Glasner.