By Shivli Singh
After the 3–2 loss to Bournemouth, Cristian Romero apologised for leaving supporters disappointed and urged his team not to blame. Romero thanked stadium goers who watched the match after the match and apologised for the poor outcome. “You out here in the stands that follow us, you don’t deserve this,” the Argentine international said on a widely shared Twitter page and hinted at how people had reacted after the team’s poor second half.
Besides reacting to a loss that he had felt hurt by early on, Romero added, he was also concerned about how the club was managing losses behind closed doors. When it’s bad, the responsibility isn’t shared well, and the players have to go through that alone, he said. “If things go wrong like this, other people should be standing up and coming forward, but they don’t, and that’s a problem for years now,” he said. “Well, as far as it should be, people aren’t taking this seriously yet.” Romero scolded leaders for ignoring crises in favour of letting situations slide. Those who have leadership don’t speak out unless it’s best made available for it, Romero said. “They step forward when they know it’s going well,” he said, regarding leadership and communication more broadly within the organisation.
But the pressure was mounting for Tottenham, who took advantage of Bournemouth’s successful exploitation of their weaknesses in match tactics; they couldn’t escape being played against Tottenham. And frequent defensive errors and lack of vision have resulted in the team losing an inescapable series of important points, and some players and fans have fallen out of tune as well. Some quarters of the fan base (some who were in on the attack for a while) found those comments to resonate; Romero was blaming the club’s coaches’ failure to give honest information, a lack of accountability and a lack of integrity. And fans’ persistent doubts about long-term investment in the club and whether or not they would do their best to see it realised on and off the pitch have an echo that dates to another time.
Tottenham hasn’t said anything official since Romero’s comments came out yet, but for Romero, who hasn’t previously spoken out, to highlight the scrutiny of their managerial scheming within soccer, rather than a scrupulous look at the club, and the pressure didn’t stop when the games finished. Spurs also want their grasp to firm up to stand firmly before going back to negotiate with their friends at the table.