How Thomas Frank must be privately feeling about Cristian Romero and that Souza debut

Here are our Tottenham talking points after the 2-0 defeat at Manchester United in the Premier League on Saturday afternoon

You could say that the Tottenham scriptwriter had decided that Cristian Romero's week was going to take another dramatic turn but the problem is that the Argentine writes his own story.

Just days after the Spurs captain had called out the situation at Tottenham and the lack of players available as "unbelievable but true and disgraceful", he then went and ensured he would also not be available for the next four matches to further compound the problems.

The World Cup winner had spoken for his team-mates just days earlier but on Saturday afternoon at Old Trafford he went from hero to villain. He let them down and he knew it. Romero stood in the dressing room and apologised to the Spurs players after they had to battle for an hour without their leader and their most decorated player.

Romero currently splits the Tottenham fanbase. There is no doubting his quality or the fact that his heart is in the right place with his repeated outbursts against the hierarchy, but he is as reckless as he is brilliant and this season the line between the two is starting to fade.

One rather inebriated Tottenham fan on one of the few running trains back from Manchester to Euston after the game was letting everyone know his thoughts on the Spurs captain. "He's brilliant, name me a better player at the club, I love his aggression," he bellowed at anyone who would listen.

He would shout it at any passenger trying to get past to the nearby toilet and if they dared call the Argentine a "liability" in response so would begin the loudest discussion possible, on a loop about the Spurs skipper. With the train delayed and a two hours journey becoming a three-and-a-half hour one, you can imagine how tedious this full volume discussion eventually became and the subsequent cheers every time he went to the toilet.

"I don't know who this Romero person is but I hope I never hear his name again," said one elderly lady to her husband as the train finally pulled back into London.

Thomas Frank is probably feeling exactly the same way right now for it has been a week in which Romero has been front and centre, for reasons good and bad, depending on who you speak to and almost every question the Dane has had to answer has been about his captain.

The 27-year-old is a powerful figure within the north London club. He doesn't say much but what he says invariably goes. That's fine when his actions back up those words but this was a day when he did anything but.

We've all seen this kind of challenge from Romero before. He might catch the ball but he will also take a chunk of the player's leg with it. There are likely various players, some of them Brazilian, across the Premier League who carry marks to this day that match the shape of the centre-back's studs.

Frank had no real issues with the red card other than saying the Tottenham skipper didn't mean to catch Casemiro's ankle with those aforementioned studs. That could well be the case. You get the sense that Romero just sees the ball and anything else around it or in front of it is merely an obstacle he must smash through. It's like taking a bazooka to open a front door.

The problem for Romero is maintaining the balance between inspiring leader and liability. This season has seen the needle shift all over the place.

He has contributed six goals and four assists at the attacking end of the pitch, not least the match-saving performance at Newcastle and the recent goals against Dortmund, West Ham and Burnley and the assist in Frankfurt for Randal Kolo Muani's effort.

That's on top of big performances over the years for the club, not least the European exploits last season and that night in Bilbao. As the inebriated fan repeatedly said, there's a case to be made that Romero is Tottenham's most talented player with his all-round ability, but you need to be on a pitch to show that.

This latest red card brings with it the centre-back's fourth suspension of the season so far and he's hovering just two off the 10-yellow card mark that will bring a fifth and another two-game suspension.

That's not to mention the fact that the Key Match Incident panel also adjudged that Romero should have been sent off in both of Tottenham's games against Brentford. Four suspensions in a season is bad enough, for the club captain it's inexcusable.

Last season Romero missed 25 games for Tottenham through injury and now this campaign he could potentially miss a minimum of 12 matches through suspension and injury combined if he reaches that 10 yellow card mark, barring any further injuries or red cards.

"He is disappointed because he knows this red card could have been avoided so he apologised," said Guglielmo Vicario. "He is our captain and today he made a mistake but we know the player he is and he is going to come back stronger and help us massively throughout the season."

The problem is that when Romero returns there won't be too much of that season left.

The argument often stated with the Tottenham captain is that if you take away his aggression then you take away his essence. That's just not true though and it doesn't really make any sense. There are plenty of aggressive defenders who are not reckless.

The Argentine was told by Antonio Conte - who watched Romero get sent off in his very first game in the dugout - to play with "a hot heart and a cold mind" and the Italian has seen his fair share of aggressive Serie A defenders.

There have been seasons in which Romero has restrained his reckless side for months on end. He was 'only' sent off once in Ange Postecoglou's first campaign at the club and went for long periods without even getting booked when the media focused on his ill discipline.

So surely you can separate recklessness from aggression, football.london asked Frank.

"I think if you look at how many red cards he has had, it's not like he had that many throughout his career," he replied. "You know, you play with passion and you play with aggression, and there's a fine line when you do that."

football.london pointed out that since arriving in the country in August 2021, Romero has been sent off six times in all competitions which is more than any other Premier League player across those four and a half years.

"At the club? Yeah, but not in the Premier League," said Frank.

No, Thomas of all the players in the English top flight...

"Of Premier League players? OK, I didn't know that."

Frank will now have to do without his captain for the north London derby and also the games around that against Newcastle, Fulham and Crystal Palace. The Argentine will not return to the Premier League until mid-March.

Privately Frank must be seething with Romero. He has likely bent over backwards for the Argentine this season and probably backed him amid his repeated outbursts against the club while trying to balance keeping the squad onside and his employers. Yes, he owes the captain for his positive interventions this season but this was a moment that did not need to happen.

On Saturday, Romero removed any real hope Spurs had of turning a decent first half hour away from home into anything resembling a positive result.

"I think we started the 30 minutes well. I think it was a good away performance. Very even against a Man United team in flow and playing with confidence. So happy with that. Of course, the red card changed the momentum," said Frank.

"Very proud of the players in general, but proud of them in the last 60 plus, whatever, 10 injury minutes, how they showed resilience, stayed in the game, didn't crumble, kept fighting, and still created some moments where we could maybe have created that goal."

The remaining Spurs players were left in the lurch and Wilson Odobert found his afternoon also brought to a premature end as Radu Dragusin had to come on, but the remaining players battled away.

Vicario made a string of flying saves, denying Casemiro, Amad Diallo, Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot with acrobatics aplenty.

He could not stop Bryan Mbeumo's clinical low effort just nine minutes after Romero's red card though. For all of their attention to detail on set pieces in training sessions, Tottenham have a worrying tendency to leave a man on the edge of the box completely unmarked.

Whether it's playing the percentages or just poor concentration from the players, Frank will know better than anyone else just how ridiculous it is to allow his former Brentford man Mbeumo all the time and space in the world to take a shot at goal.

After that Tottenham had to try to simply survive. They couldn't commit too much going forward for fear of conceding again but that also meant the likelihood of rescuing a point was reduced.

Pape Matar Sarr and Conor Gallagher were willing runners while Xavi Simons tried to create something out of nothing, with a couple of shots that raised hopes ever so slightly, on top of a great ball into the path of Gallagher before the red card.

Spurs then lost Destiny Udogie to yet another injury in his relatively short career just 10 minutes into the second half. The Tottenham players gathered around the frustrated Italian as he realised that another absence beckons.

"We will assess him tomorrow. So, of course, I will probably see you guys in, what, two days' time or less, and then we'll know more," Frank told football.london.

There's something about Tottenham and left-backs. The fear will be Udogie goes the way of Ryan Sessegnon and ends up being out of action more than he's on the pitch in a Spurs shirt. The Italian has missed 38 games through injury for club and country since arriving in 2023, many of them with hamstring issues.

With Djed Spence not deemed fit enough yet, Udogie's departure did at least hand Souza his debut.

The 19-year-old was thrown into a difficult situation without much experience of the team's defensive set-up, but gave a good account of himself with a couple of driving runs down the left flank and most of what he did defensively was tidy enough.

"That was a big positive. Very happy that he got on the pitch," Frank said of the teenager. "It's a big thing to get a debut in a club like Tottenham but for Souza, coming from Brazil, to a big stage like this and then getting his debut that's a big thing."

On the other flank, without Romero alongside him, another 19-year-old in Archie Gray showed maturity beyond his years, with tackles and interceptions galore.

It was unfortunate for him that he was involved in United's second goal that finally killed off the game.

Frank could see the players were tiring and that he needed to put on some fresh legs, especially in the attacking areas with Dominic Solanke and Gallagher having chased everything with no reward.

So in the 80th minute, on came Randal Kolo Muani and Mathys Tel as well as Yves Bissouma to add some midfield legs. The problem is any defensive shape left in the team duly disappeared with the removal of Joao Palhinha and Gallagher.

So when Micky van de Ven, who hadn't looked himself for much of the game, went wandering out of the box to help Souza on the left, that left a big space for Diogo Dalot to hit a cross into and Dragusin and Bissouma both failed to get near the leaping Benjamin Sesko, although had the Slovenian touched the ball then Bruno Fernandes behind him would have been offside.

Unfortunately for Tottenham Sesko didn't make contact and Gray marked the only blot on his copybook by losing the Portuguese for his low finish into the bottom right corner of the net to record United's first victory over Spurs at their ninth attempt. This time they had an appointment with Dr Tottenham or maybe Dr Romero.

"Of course, when we then did the three positive subs with 15-20 minutes to go, they scored straight after," said Frank.

It was game over by that point but in truth it was over in the 29th minute. For all the discussion around Frank, this was not a day when he was at fault. The team, set up in a 4-2-3-1, had looked bright in the opening half hour and even his triple change before the second goal had to be made, if not earlier. It was the red card that killed Tottenham on this occasion.

At the end of the game, the travelling Spurs fans, who were noisy throughout, gave the players, led over by Vicario, a big ovation, recognising their efforts with just 10 men for almost 70 minutes including added time.

The irony is that Spurs' football has been gradually improving and they were unbeaten in four going into this game. The supporters are tired though of Frank looking for the positives and that's understandable within a wretched run of just two wins in 16 Premier League games, with no victories in either November or January.

Yet if Tottenham could just keep their players on the pitch and out of the treatment room and suspension list they might start turning things around with Xavi pulling the strings. Availability is their biggest problem yet again.

West Ham's victory at Burnley means just six points separate 14th-placed Spurs from the drop zone. They need to start winning again and they must do so without any transfer help from the club and now also without their captain.

Romero will continue to be a talking point when he returns and his future at the club remains in doubt beyond this season. It will be interesting to see what he posts on social media after this very different first half exit.

Thankfully for that old lady in carriage B of the 4.54pm train to Euston, she shouldn't be hearing his name much until later next month or ever if she has her way. Unfortunately for Tottenham, they have lost their captain and leader when they needed him the most.