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Spurs suffered a nightmare afternoon at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday, as rivals Arsenal thrashed Thomas Frank's side 4-1
Tottenham had an afternoon to forget on Sunday, after suffering a morale-sapping 4-1 loss at the hands of north London rivals Arsenal. And the fall-out of the result extends beyond a damaging defeat.
Thomas Frank's side could have moved into the top four with a win at the Emirates Stadium, but instead they remain in ninth position, behind the likes of Brighton, Sunderland and Bournemouth.
Spurs were dealt a further blow when key defender Cristian Romero picked up his fifth yellow card of the season for dissent, 20 minutes from time. The booking activates an automatic one-match suspension for the Argentine, ruling him out of Tottenham's Premier League fixture against Fulham next Saturday evening.
The experienced 27-year-old, who was also booked whilst on international duty in September, has made 10 Premier League appearances for Spurs so far this season.
His pending absence will force Frank into a reshuffle for the visit of Fulham next weekend. Having deployed a back five against Arsenal, the German could revert to a flat back four with Kevin Danso and Micky van de Ven as his two centre-backs.
Long-term absentee Radu Dragusin is closing in on a return and played in a practice match behind-closed-doors during the international break. The Romanian has been out of action with an ACL injury since January, however, and is unlikely to be rushed back into first-team action.
Romero is the first Tottenham player to be handed an automatic suspension for accumulating too many yellow cards this season, but three others are sailing close to the wind. Fellow defender Danso is currently on three cautions, as is midfielder Joao Palhinha and forward Mohammed Kudus.
Tottenham's North London Derby woes were largely inflicted by Eberechi Eze, who followed up on Leandro Trossard's opener by scoring a hat-trick. Richarlison's 40-yard lob over David Raya at 3-0 proved to be merely a consolation.
After the match, Frank apologised to the travelling supporters. He said: "This is of course hugely disappointing that we didn’t perform better in the game against Arsenal our biggest rivals.
"I can only apologise to the fans for that. I was very confident on Friday when we spoke that we would be competitive today and weren't over the 90 minutes. We tried to come here and be aggressive and press high and in spells go after them. We didn’t succeed with that bit. We didn’t manage to get near enough them in the situations we could."
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