EPL: Why Tottenham lost 4-1 to Arsenal – Thomas Frank

Tottenham Hotspur endured a humbling 4-1 loss to Arsenal on Sunday, and manager Thomas Frank didn’t shy away from admitting his side’s shortcomings.

Eberechi Eze was the star of the show, netting a brilliant hat-trick to power the Gunners to victory at the Emirates. Spurs’ solitary goal came after Martin Zubimendi lost possession, allowing Richarlison to fire over David Raya from distance.

After the match, Frank opened up about the disappointment of watching his team concede so easily.

“I think it is extremely painful. I won’t talk away from that. It was a bad performance. It was completely the opposite of what the intention was when we came here,” he told Sky Sports.

He added: “We can only apologise to the fans for the performance. No matter how both teams wanted to play, they got more out of the game, and we couldn’t respond.

“When we went long, we didn’t win enough duels. You saw that on the 2-0 and 3-0 goals, where a player went through two or three of ours. It was a bad performance, and we lost.

“I’ve seen a lot of character and fight in this team before, but today we didn’t win enough duels. Call it what you want—we simply didn’t.”

Spurs will now need to regroup quickly as the Premier League keeps moving, but Frank’s candid post-match assessment underlines the work still needed to compete at the top.