Tottenham Hotspur had the opportunity to make a statement by defeating another Premier League giant that has been playing considerably below its standards in Liverpool, the defending champions who sealed their title in 2024/25 by embarrassing Spurs.
Instead of taking advantage of a reeling Liverpool and bouncing back from their own embarrassing 3-0 defeat to lowly Nottingham Forest last weekend, Tottenham could not help but rack up another "L" in the column, falling 2-1 to the Reds in a game in which they doomed themselves.
Spurs were red carded twice and genuinely were mediocre until the final 20 minutes, when their frenzy was too little, too late to salvage the game. The red cards may have been harsh, but any self respecting Spurs supporter will not wallow in the depravity of making soft excuses for what has truly been a bad football team in 2025/26.
Thomas Frank is not the scapegoat this time
That said, in most weeks, Thomas Frank is the main scapegoat for Spurs fans, but, this week, the players themselves have to bear the brunt of the criticism. Frank can't help the team if they get themselves down to nine men, and, if anything, he actually did help the team by making the right adjustments to get them in a respectable range in the final minutes.
But he was ultimately undone by the worst performance of the season from his best player, superstar center back and team captain Cristian Romero. The Argentine World Cup hero was a zero on Saturday afternoon against the Reds, producing several basic defensive errors mentally and positionally while genuinely looking erratic and inaccurate with his passing.
It was a performance in complete juxtaposition to what Romero usually does for Spurs, and the rotten cherry on top of the craptastic sundae was his red card. Again, it can be fairly argued that the referee was being very soft by giving a second yellow for arguing to a captain for wanting to talk about a call, but Romero has to be criticized for rashly putting himself in the jeopardizing position of picking up a second yellow in a tight game with his team already without Xavi Simons, knowing who that ref is, too.
But it's the football stuff purely that Tottenham fans are critical of Romero for. He was out of sorts in his marking against the Liverpool strikers. He looked a step too slow mentally all game long, could not read the game correctly, barely intervened defensively, and was very poor in terms of his progression on the ball. His performance makes it hard to evaluate Frank fairly, because he played a big role in screwing his team over.