Huge win for under-fire Thomas Frank as Tottenham dominate Dortmund in Champions League

Good evening and welcome to live coverage of Tottenham Hotspur vs Borussia Dortmund in the seventh round of Champions League 36-team-stage fixtures, or technically Champions League league fixtures which is even uglier to type than it is to read. Thanks Aleksander Ceferin and the gnomes of Nyon. Tonight is widely expected to be judgment day for Thomas Frank and his time as Tottenham’s head coach but that seems to this observer to be a simplistic construct. Tottenham fans have already judged Frank, they don’t like him and a victory today will only buy him time rather than being a turning point. When a club is as unhappy as Spurs have been for so long, when fans hate the board, the manager, tactics, the palpable lack of enjoyment and are exasperated by the players, it’s a kind of purgatory from which there is no easy escape. Perhaps only Mauricio Pochettino can heal some of these wounds. But it’s been a long time since any of his teams – PSG, Chelsea, USA – have played with genuine flair.

To be fair to the former Brentford manager, their Champions League record, at least in terms of results if not performances, is pretty sound. They are in 11th after three wins, two draws and a defeat, only one point off eighth and automatic qualification, four points above the elimination zone, and a winnable final match against Eintracht Frankfurt, who sacked their manager two days ago, to come in eight days. They have won all three at home, kept three clean sheets and have defeated Borussia Dortmund in each of their past four meetings but sustaining that is going to be tricky given their recent domestic form – W1, D2, L5 since their last outing in Europe – as well as the fact that tonight’s opponents are tied with PSG as the leading goalscorers with 19 in this phase to date.

BVB are second in the Bundesliga, having lost only one game all season in the league, to you know who, but are still 11 points behind FC Hollywood who have won five more games. In this competition they are one place above Spurs on goal difference, having also beaten Villarreal and Copenhagen and play Inter at the Westfalenstadion next week.

By contrast with Spurs, Niko Kovac has only one absentee, the veteran midfielder Marcel Sabitzer who sat out the 3-2 victory over St Pauli with a calf strain. Poor old Frank cannot call on Micky van de Ven (suspended), Conor Gallagher (not registered), Yves Bissouma (not registered) and the injured sextet: James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski, Mohammed Kudus, Rodrigo Bentancur, Richarlison and Ben Davies. Joao Palhinha has an outside chance of playing while Pape Mate Sarr is technically available but was in the victorious Senegal squad in Sunday’s madcap Afcon final, fell ill when warming up as a substitute and couldn’t come off the bench. He may not even be in the country… It never rains…