Frank takes positives from Man Utd draw despite 'painful' setback

Tottenham head coach Thomas Frank wanted to focus on the positives despite his side conceding an injury-time equaliser in their 2-2 draw with Manchester United.

Frank watched on as Bryan Mbeumo's strike in the 32nd minute put United in front at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but Spurs were able to produce a quickfire turnaround. 

Two goals in the space of seven second-half minutes from Mathys Tel and Richarlison looked set to clinch a fifth straight victory over their opponents in all competitions.

However, a second successive home win for Frank was snatched away in the 96th minute after Matthijs de Ligt's header found its way past Guglielmo Vicario from a corner. 

Indeed, this match was the first time Spurs have gone ahead in the 90th minute of a Premier League game and not gone on to win.

Despite Frank's frustration at conceding such a late goal, he felt his side were much improved from their 1-0 loss to Chelsea at home a week earlier.

"Of course it's tough, of course it is painful, but for me there’s a difference compared to Chelsea is it was a much better performance. Also, we didn't lose," Frank said. 

"I know I'll take the positives out of it. The second half, the way the players kept going, no matter what, staying in the game, kept doing the right thing, I liked that a lot.

"Then we got the equaliser, which you know is a fantastic thing. Then we got the winner – we thought it was the winner – then we conceded."

One of those positives was that Spurs are unbeaten in six successive league games against United (W3 D3); their joint-longest run in the top-flight along with October 1921.

However, Frank was on hand to defend his substitutes, with fans booing the decision to take off summer signing Xavi Simons when his side were still trailing late on. 

His replacement Tel would equalise after swivelling past De Ligt and beating goalkeeper Semme Lammens with a deflected strike.

Tel scored four minutes and 45 seconds after coming on as a substitute, equalling his goal tally in the Premier League this season (two goals in eight games) as last season (two goals in 13 games).

The Tottenham boss lauded the Frenchman's impact, and believed the changes in personnel were necessary in getting something from the match.

He said: "Mathys did well, great goal, great involvement and in general I think we played a fine game, positive, but also you need a little bit of freshness.

"One aim: try to win the game."

Nevertheless, Frank is aware that his side need to improve in various aspects if they are to achieve their goals at the end of the campaign.

"I'm very aware there's a lot we can do better, very aware," he said.

"We are trying to build something here that we want to be unbelievably good and we want all the fans to be extremely happy, but in a tricky moment in the second half against a good team that started well, we kept going."