“There’s a reason” – Thomas Frank explains why summer signing is struggling at Spurs

Tottenham manager Thomas Frank has discussed the slow start to life at the club from summer signing Xavi Simons in his latest press conference.

Spurs are on a poor run of form at the moment, having won just one of their last seven games, while they’ve lost three in the space of just one week, 4-1 to Arsenal, 5-3 to Paris Saint-Germain, and 2-1 to Fulham.

Frank will be feeling the pressure, but it’s also fair to say that some of the players have been pretty underwhelming as well.

Fans who are making plans and looking into how to buy Newcastle vs Tottenham tickets will likely be wondering if they can expect a bit more from Simons in the game at St James’ Park, and Frank has moved to defend the player.

Speaking ahead of the game, Frank was asked about why we haven’t seen the best of Simons yet since his summer transfer from RB Leipzig.

The former Brentford boss explained: “There’s a reason why we’ve got Xavi here. He’s a very good player in every aspect, he has trained well in the last couple of days, in general he’s training well.

“It’s not the first time a player has stepped into the Premier League and needs a bit of adaptation to hit the ground running. Then there is one thing in a physical league but to play games every third or fourth day.”

In fairness to Simons, this has also been true of a fair few other big signings by Premier League clubs this summer, so Frank is not alone in facing these struggles as a manager.

As well as Simons, it’s fair to say other new arrivals like Florian Wirtz, Viktor Gyokeres, Benjamin Sesko and Jamie Gittens are just a few others who have been slow to get going since arriving in England from abroad.

In the past, even legendary figures like Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Luka Modric took time to find their feet, so perhaps we’ll see that with Simons as well.

The Netherlands international was superb at former club RB Leipzig, and his form in the Bundesliga led to interest from big clubs like Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Chelsea this summer.

In the end, Tottenham won the race for Simons’ signature and they’ll surely still have hope that he can prove to be a smart purchase.

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