A Tottenham source said it was “insane” that two players were ignored after Thomas Frank made important decisions about the squad recently.
Frank immediately turned Spurs’ fortunes around. Former manager Ange Postecoglou was sacked last season after leading the team to 17th place in the Premier League.
After seven games, Frank led his team to third place with four wins and 13 points. Only Arsenal and Manchester City have scored more goals.
His Tottenham team has a good mix of existing players and new players.
It’s important that the players already in the team understand what he’s doing, and that’s obviously true, but Frank also has his doubts.
In fact, his leadership group was recently announced and included five players: Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven, Guglielmo Vicario, Ben Davis and James Maddison.
The inclusion of two centre-backs and a goalkeeper makes sense, but Davies has been at the club for 11 years and Maddison was named vice-captain last season and has worn the armband before.
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However, right-back Pedro Polo has been wearing the armband this season, and his absence from the list alongside another of Tottenham’s most experienced players has been noted by Spurs insider John Wenham.
Wenham told the Tottenham News: “I was a bit surprised that Polo was left out of the leadership team.
“He was captaining Tottenham, I think it was against Doncaster, and the announcement was literally a week later when he wasn’t in the group of five.
“Joao Parinha is obviously the leader and he’s only been out on loan so if he came in and was part of it right away it would probably be a bit of a shame for the other players who are here permanently. But I think he knows he’s already the leader.”
“The other one who is probably quite disappointed is Rodrigo Bentancur. Given his age and where he is in his career, he can’t do it. Otherwise, you’d just say we have a leadership team and it’s made up of nine players or something. That’s crazy.”
In fact, Polo captained Spurs and played the full 90 minutes in their 3-0 League Cup win over League One side Doncaster Rovers.
Although not the toughest test, his team easily won the match and kept a clean sheet, so he can’t have done a bad job.
However, perhaps a longer leadership group would have been too much for some groups to participate.
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