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Thomas Frank says he holds 'no hard feelings' towards Yves Bissouma after the Tottenham midfielder fell foul of his rules and failed to find a move this summer.
Spurs travel to Bissouma's former club Brighton this afternoon looking to maintain their strong start under the Dane, which has brought four wins in five matches with four clean sheets and just one goal conceded. Bissouma has played no part in that following a knee injury during a summer in which Tottenham tried to sell him with his contract coming to a close next year.
The 29-year-old has made 100 appearances for the north London club since arriving from Brighton for £25million in 2022 but the Mali international has never consistently impressed and has struggled with disciplinary issues both on and off the pitch.
Bissouma was filmed inhaling nitrous oxide last summer and the social media video brought a one-game Spurs suspension for the season opener and he soon fell foul of Frank after repeatedly turning up late. The new head coach duly left him out of his UEFA Super Cup squad and then his Champions League squad for the coming months.
A knee injury scuppered the midfielder's chance of a move and left Spurs with the risk of him running down his contract.
Frank said that despite everything that has happened, Bissouma will not be cast aside when he returns to fitness.
"There are no hard feelings at all. Not before, not now, not at all. Train well and everyone has an opportunity," said Frank.
"He has just started to run outside, so he is not part of the group but everything I've seen when I’ve said hello to him and every day with the players, he seems good."
Bissouma had already fallen down the pecking order behind 19-year-old Lucas Bergvall, who Frank admitted ahead of the game at the Amex Stadium is "going from strength to strength".
"The coaches and I have been working with him on a couple of things. He's got so much energy that sometimes you need to say, pause, stop, don't run when we have the ball and find the higher, more dangerous positions," said the Spurs boss.
"For example, the deep run where he scored against West Ham was a big thing. The deep run where he was involved in the own goal against Villarreal. Those deep runs and arriving in a higher position up the pitch are key."
Spurs remain without the injured Dominic Solanke, who has now returned to working on the grass alongside Japanese summer signing Kota Takai.
Frank is looking to build upon the attacking side of his Tottenham side after putting the structure in place for a stronger defensive unit, as evidenced by the early flurry of clean sheets. The Champions League win against Villarreal and the defeat in the Premier League to Bournemouth showed that the Dane's system is yet to fully click among a group of new attacking players like Mohammed Kudus and recently Xavi Simons.
"I think it's extremely important that we are brave and we are offensive and we play forward. I think that’s crucial," said the head coach. "Over the years all the teams I’ve been part of, we’ve scored a lot of goals and I’m convinced we will continue that way because that’s the way Tottenham should play and will play.
"I think playing offensively, bravely and forward is extremely important but if you want to achieve something big and consistently over the years, you also need to be pretty good at defending. I haven’t seen one team achieve something fantastic without being good at defending.
"You can just see the Europa League final, I think that Tottenham did fantastic in that game, defended very well for a long time in the game. The best teams in world are very good in almost all phases."
Frank admits that the process for Spurs to be free-scoring will naturally take a little while longer than it did to improve the defensive aspects.
"I think the most difficult thing in football is to try to score a goal. It's a low-scoring game compared to a lot of other sports or a lot of other games. To get that free-floating type of play, that relationship between people, try to put structures in [takes time]," said the 51-year-old.
"Unfortunately, sometimes the opponent wants to interrupt it or disrupt it. So the offensive is definitely more difficult, but absolutely not impossible.
"And I also think that I've seen very promising, positive signs of the offensive part of the game as well. I think that the second half against Burnley was extremely good, how much we created. I like the way we went about it against West Ham, took a little bit of time to get into the game to create."
One option in the attacking areas is last season's top scorer Brennan Johnson and Frank likes the Wales international's skill-set even if the 24-year-old has had to settle for either a bench role or starting from the left under the new head coach in the early games of the season.
"I think Brennan is a very good player. He can play both sides. I agree he played mostly on the right [last season], but I definitely think he can play on the left," said the Dane. "He played on the left in two games and scored two goals so that is a decent output. He is a very important player for us, he came on and helped the team the last couple of games, so very happy with him.
"I think it is also that Mo has come in and is doing very well on the right, with his left foot and coming inside, so he can produce outside and inswinging crosses as well, but I like Brennan.
"What I like about Brennan is that both right or left, he is very good to arrive in the box, very good to run in behind and I think they are his key strengths. I think that is not the main reason, because there are a lot of other bits, but whereas Wilson [Odobert] and Xavi are a bit more tricky, they are not as consistent to arrive in the box, which is important if you want to score goals and we would like to score goals."
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