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Here is every single word the Tottenham Hotspur head coach said after the 2-2 draw with Manchester City on Sunday night in the Premier League
Thomas Frank was a proud man at his press conference after Tottenham fought back from two goals down to grab a point with a 2-2 draw against Premier League title-chasers Manchester City on Sunday.
A makeshift Spurs team, with midfielders Joao Palhinha and Archie Gray at centre-back and right-back respectively and defender Radu Dragusin making his first start in a year, found themselves a goal down just 11 minutes into the contest when Yves Bissouma lost the ball in midfield and Erling Haaland picked out Rayan Cherki's run and the Frenchman struck a low shot that took a little touch off Dragusin's toe and arrowed into the far corner.
City netted a second just before the break after Dragusin struck an aimless clearance upfield straight to Rodri. The midfielder played the ball quickly to Bernardo Silva and he poked the ball to winter signing Antoine Semenyo to curl a shot past Guglielmo Vicario.
The hosts did grab a goal back eight minutes into the second half. Xavi Simons hit a lovely pass with the outside of his foot into Dominic Solanke's path and and the striker cut inside and appeared to kick Marc Guehi's leg into the ball which bounced over the line. A VAR check ruled out an offside and the foul and said that Solanke got a touch and credited him with goal.
There was no doubt though about a spectacular second goal for Solanke as he flung a flying heel to Conor Gallagher's cross and looped the ball up and into the net with Gianluigi Donnarumma only able to help it on its way in. Both sides had chances in the final moments of the encounter but neither could take them and Spurs took a much-needed point to make it a run of just three defeats in 10 games.
Our Spurs correspondent Alasdair Gold was among those asking Frank the questions after the game. Here's the full transcript from the press conference at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Two questions on Dominic Solanke, firstly what did you make of his goals and secondly he said he rolled his ankle, is he ok and is it the same one as before?
That I don't know. The last bit I don't know. But he clearly also struggled to run. So he knew, he struggled to run fitness-wise. We knew before the game again it would be a big push to play 90. He's not there fitness-wise where he should be, because he's been out for so long. And we've been, in a way, a little bit forced to play him.
And I think it's pretty evident that he's relatively important for us. Four goals in four games, with him being on his 70-80% of fitness and top sharpness. But imagine City playing without Haaland for six months. So I think we've been quite hard-hit with injuries. Yeah, in general, but Dom was excellent.
What did you make of his two goals, the first maybe a bit controversial and the second one spectacular?
Yeah, first one, I think there's clear contact from him on it. We want, in general, a higher threshold. I understand it's in the grey area. I think if the Liverpool goal, Ekitike, was in my opinion still, two clear hands in the back of Romeo. So I think it's no grey areas.
Very happy it finally dropped to us, which I think was more than fair. And the second one was something we, of course, trained yesterday, so it went well.
Why did Cristian Romero come off at half-time?
Illness. So we are assessing him. Hopefully he's fine.
Has he been ill before this game, in Frankfurt?
Yeah, he struggled for the Frankfurt game as well and pushed through that with a fantastic captain's performance. And struggled a little bit, but we hope it's nothing.
It felt like the team showed some balls tonight?
Yeah, agree. I think I'm extremely happy that we finally got a point out of a big second half. And it felt like a big point, of course. Because we're playing against the best team in the Premier League in the last seven years, eight years. They're playing to compete for the title.
And I said it before, this team's ability to respond to setbacks and show resilience, I think we are growing it bit by bit. And I think, and now it's game 11 since Nottingham Forest, where I think we are showing more consistency. We are more competitive. It's just going in the right direction.
Not all the results have gone with us. But, for example, I think it's been some good, top performances and mentality against Bournemouth, West Ham and Villa. But we just didn't get at least a point or something out of it. So now we get the point as well. On top of a good performance against Dortmund. More good than bad against Burnley. I know it looks bad because we only get a point. But a game we could and should easily have won with the chances we created. And a big performance against Frankfurt.
So now we are building some of that. And we are, by the way, building it with, I don't know, players dropping left, right and centre to injury. So we're ending a game without three normal centre-backs, two normal full-backs.
We play Archie and Joao in the back four. Dragusin played his first game in 12 months. And Jun'ai is coming on as the right midfielder. I think that shows everything about the team and what they are building. The players, very proud of the players.
The transfer window is open for one more day, will you be active?We are active, no doubt about that. If something happens, let’s see. (Romero) I hope is minor nothing. Micky we hope is back for Man United and Djed is hopefully not too long.
Why can you not play like that for 90 minutes?
I wish I could (clicks fingers) do it like that. Then it would be easy. It’s not. I need to look at the game back. I think we did still some okay things in the first half and just made two mistakes. They punished the first one so hard after 12 minutes which makes things more difficult to come into a football game but what I liked of the second half is we were even more aggressive in the high pressure and finally the 50/50s landed a little bit more for us. It felt like everything landed for them in the first half.
Mid pressure was good so not too much through us and then we played more behind them and hurt them more in that way. How united the fans and the players were second half. That’s what we need to build. The fans helped us massively and pushed us towards a big point and they were fantastic against Dortmund so can we do that more and more consistently together we can create some magic.
Some people might argue that we only see Spurs play front-footed football when they are chasing a game?
I think it’s fair to say that we tried to be front footed in the first half as well but we just didn’t land in all the high pressure situations. We didn’t win them and we were playing against City who are pretty good at keeping the ball. But I think we showed a lot of intention in the first half but just didn’t land on it.
Was that Xavi Simons' best performance in a Spurs shirt?
I think Xavi was exceptional today. He's a very good footballer. But he's probably an even bigger winner and fighter. So the way he fights with the team is exceptional. And how he's part of driving the team forward I think is very impressive.
Do you think that for players like Xavi, it takes a lot of time to get used to the physicality and get up to speed?
Yeah, I think it's fair to say that the Premier League is the best league in the world. It's also the most physical, not only in the duels, but physical in the pace of the game.It's so quick. And to adapt to that takes a little bit of time. And then I think some players, for whatever reason, just adapt a little bit quicker. For whatever reason, if they're coming into a team that's in flow, they may adapt a little bit quicker. There can be a lot of things. And it's humans we're dealing with.The most important thing is their intentions and their work ethic and all that. And then it'll be step by step. And I think Xavi has taken some big steps, especially in recent weeks.
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