FanSided World Football
·9 December 2024
FanSided World Football
·9 December 2024
On Sunday afternoon, we saw Tottenham Hotspur completely capitulate at home to Chelsea on match day fifteen of the 24/25 Premier League season, losing the game 4-3 despite being two goals up in the opening stages.
One of the surprise selections for the game was Cristian Romero, with many fans concerned that him and Micky van de Ven had been rushed back for the game. Lo and behold, both went off injured. The Argentine international particularly so, going off so early in the game that Spurs were still 2-0 up when he was replaced by Radu Dragusin.
In an interview after the game, Romero came out and defended Ange Postecoglu, saying: “He’s a great coach. We saw it in the [his] first season. In this second one we’ve suffered a lot of injuries. Players should be the first one to be criticised, then if we lose 10 games, the staff can be changed.
We are very happy with this staff, me and my colleagues. We love how they work, and the football they try to play.”
Pretty run of the mill, right? A player backs his manager in public, seen a million times before. 99 times out of 100, a player isn’t going to say anything different in the media.
However, what the player then did on social media – was not so run of the mill. Far from it in fact. The defender retweeted a tweet replying to his quotes, that said: “oh no, he clearly signal[ed] that he would leave if Levy sack[ed] Ange, unfortunately the only two [at the club] who has ambitions.”
Quite the statement, indeed. As you would expect, the 26-year old has undone this retweet, but those with his notifications on managed to get screenshots in in time. Safe to say that Romero really did mean those words he said about Ange, and they weren’t just media trained answers, that could have been far from what he actually thought.
For those that have questioned his commitment to the club, he was willing to risk playing through an injury today. His ball playing ability was a part of the reason Spurs were able to sustain attacks in the opening stages. We saw what then happened after that. Arguably in the defeat at home to Ipswich Town, he also played through injury, at least of some sort.
Still, this is quite the alarming development. Let’s see what happens.