Tottenham Hotspur boss Thomas Frank says he and Johan Lange had a good conversation with Cristian Romero this morning after his Instagram post following last night's 3-2 loss against Bournemouth. In a now edited post, the Spurs defender called out 'lies' from the club's hierarchy.
It came after Antoine Semenyo's stoppage-time winner condemned Spurs to another loss. "Apologies to all fans of you who follow us everywhere, who are always there and will continue to be," Romero wrote in a post on Instagram to his 5.1 million followers.
"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 for 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.
"We'll stay here, working, sticking together and giving our all to turn things around. Especially at times like this, keeping quiet, working harder and moving forward all together, is part of football.
"All together, it will be easier." The unedited version included an accusation of telling lies.
It read: "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."
Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Frank has now responded to the message. He said: "I think after Cuti became the captain he's done a lot of good things right.
"I said it when I named him the captain that even though he's an experienced player, he's tried a lot, he's still a young leader. And I think a lot of the things he's done well on and off the pitch I'm happy with.
"I'm actually very happy with his performance last night, I think he was a true captain in many ways throughout the game. Speaking at half-time when we were 2-1 down, keep believing, keep doing the right things.
"But also when you're a young leader sometimes you make a mistake, of course it's good to keep it internally. Johan and I had a good conversation with him this morning about everything, which we of course keep internally."
Tottenham are next in action on Saturday at home to Aston Villa in the FA Cup (5:45pm) kick-off with Frank under huge pressure. They then host relegation strugglers West Ham United a week later.
Frank added: "I think the last five games we played, Liverpool, Crystal Palace, Brentford, Sunderland and Bournemouth, I think it's been consistent, good competitive performance through the roof? No, but good competitive, consistent performances and that's what you need in a long season. Those five games should have given us more than the five points we got, probably eight, nine, 10 points.
"And if you get that from those games, it's different. So that's what we're focusing on. Can we produce performances like that last night? Overall, like the performance, it's my job to deal with all the scrutiny. It's no problem, I can face all the questions, I'll take all the blame, I'll take all that.
"Also, my job is to look through everything and look through the defeat last night. Of course, it was very emotional and tough to take for everyone, but I think it was in many ways good and we deserve more from that. So we just need to keep doing that, especially the last two games, it's a minimum of four points we should have, if not more. So we just need to keep doing that. And the next thing is, it's almost the perfect storm.
"In a storm, some are building fences and hiding behind it, others are building windmills and getting stronger and getting more energy and learning from it."