Today was not a good day if you are a Tottenham Hotspur fan. Today’s 3-2 loss at Bournemouth — the Cherries’ first win since October — was disheartening, even though Spurs put in one of their better performances of the past few weeks. After the match, cameras caught Micky van de Ven and other Spurs players getting involved in heated arguments with the visiting Tottenham fans. I don’t know exactly what was said, but to provoke that kind of reaction from Spurs players towards their own apparent support
is not a good sign.
Following the match, however, Tottenham club captain Cuti Romero took to social media, and implicitly seemed to put the entire Tottenham club hierarchy on blast.
Here’s what he wrote.
Apologies to all fans of you who follow us everywhere, who are always there and will continue to be. We are responsible, there’s no doubt about that. I am the first.
But we will keep facing up to it and trying to turn the situation around, for ourselves and the club.
At times like this, it should be other people coming out to speak, but they don’t — as has been happening for several years now. They only show up when things are going well, to tell a few lies.
We’ll stay here, working, sticking together and giving our all to turn things around. Especially at times like this, keepingn quiet, working harder and moving forward all together, is part of football.
All together, it will be easier @Spursofficial
OK, so look — there’s clearly a lot of blame to go around for Tottenham’s struggles this season. The players have under-performed, and they know it. The manager, Thomas Frank, has not shown many signs that he is working towards a style of football, even an aspirational one that Spurs are not at the moment meeting. The squad is appallingly constructed by Johan Lange and Fabio Paratici, with clear and obvious holes in the side and significant injures that are clearly hindering the club’s performance.
It’s not entirely clear who exactly Cuti is referring to when he talks about “other people coming out to speak, but they don’t.” We could probably make a guess — Lange, Paratici, CEO Vinai Venkatesham, the Lewis Family — it could be any or all of them. It probably is NOT Thomas Frank, who has the unenviable job of having to speak to the press before and after every match. (This is not a defense of Frank who has also not done himself any favors with some incredibly tone-deaf gaffes that have not endeared himself to the Spurs fanbase.)
At one level I strongly suspect that, to professional footballers, the “club hierarchy” is just an amorphous group of people above them that they don’t interact much with on a daily basis. It’s also remains absolutely WILD to me that English football culture and media continues to put managers and players in front of a microphone and demand that they answer for what are often systemic failures that come from the very top levels of the organization.
Wanna be mad at the players? Fine. You’ve earned that, they’re not playing well. They’d almost certainly agree they deserve collective criticism. But it’s not on them, and it shouldn’t be on them, to have to explain to the media why the entire club is a hot mess. It shouldn’t be on Thomas Frank, either — he’s responsible for the team’s training and performance on the pitch, but the buck doesn’t, and shouldn’t, stop fully with him. There’s a whole host of executives, board members, and directors who hold immense power at this club and seem to always escape public scrutiny.
Vinai Venkatesham is considered an excellent football administrator and a great communicator, but he has been entirely silent this season. Johan Lange and Fabio Paratici haven’t been heard from since their weird video after the summer transfer window when they talked about how they’re working together and that everything’s going great. The Lewis Family has not publicly spoken either, apart from briefing Spurs beat journalists on background.
It sucks. And it’s not fair to Cuti Romero, or Micky van de Ven, Pedro Porro, Thomas Frank, or any single individual player or coach to have to explain all of this.
One thing I think I’m taking away from the past few weeks, however, is that there still does not seem to be any evidence that the players have lost faith in Thomas Frank or his tactics. Or if they have, they’re not talking about it, nor are they briefing agents or journalists like what frequently happens in these circumstances at other clubs. That’s not to say they’re happy, and a lot can change in a short time, but if we’re looking to the players to explain what’s going on, as of yet they have not taken any of the many, many opportunities to throw Frank under the bus. That’s pretty telling.
That also doesn’t let the Spurs brass off the hook. This is their club. Everything they’ve done so far after sacking Ange Postecoglou for finishing 17th and winning the Europa League has seemingly backfired, and their silence is deafening. So on this point, I’m fully in Cuti Romero’s corner. The players own the play on the field, but the fish rots from the head, and it should not be on the club captain to have to defend systemic failures at this club.
