Of the positives Tottenham boss Thomas Frank tried to salvage from defeat against Liverpool perhaps the key was the reaction of fans to their efforts in adversity.
The relationship between an ailing Spurs team and its home crowd has been strained through 2025, a year in which they delivered the Europa League trophy but won only four games in the Premier League and lost a club record 11.
Dissatisfaction has been clear, and Saturday’s defeat left them languishing again in the bottom half of the table with Frank under pressure from those who are not convinced he is the right man for the job.
But the team did battle for an hour with 10 men and finished the game with nine after first Xavi Simons and then Cristian Romero were sent off, and still they summoned a strong finish, rattled Liverpool and roused their supporters.
There is an irony that they generated this mood with the sort of direct football and aerial assault that offends some of the Spurs purists, but they found a way to unite the crowd behind them by refusing to give in. And it felt like progress.
‘We felt the fans really pushed us forward,’ said defender Micky van de Ven. ‘It was really tough, we made 2-1 and you saw that we kept pushing forward even when we were with nine men.
Thomas Frank has been subject to increasing disapproval from fans but must harness the fighting spirit in his team that supporters responded to
Micky van de Ven was disappointed he was with the decisions which went against Tottenham
‘On the pitch, we knew maybe we can get something here, we can get the result. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. What can I say? I’m proud of the boys. How we kept pushing the whole time and how hard we worked for the whole game.
‘It’s a lot of emotions going through my head. I’m proud of the team and of course I’m gutted, disappointed. I’m angry how some things were going in the game. But we can get nothing changed about it anymore. And that’s it.’
Nothing galvanises a team and their fans like a collective feeling of injustice and Frank raged accordingly about the key decisions that went against his team, the two red cards and what he claimed was a foul on Romero by Hugo Ekitike as he scored Liverpool’s second.
Romero’s furious protests earned him a yellow card from referee John Brookes.
‘Cuti is a strong defender so I know he’s not going to go down easy,’ said Van de Ven. ‘If Cuti is this convinced that he’s getting pushed then probably there should be something wrong with it.’
Even so, it is impossible to excuse Romero for retaliating to a foul by Ibrahima Konate in stoppage time. Spurs were on the charge at the time. Liverpool were rattled and an equaliser did not seem out of the question.
But the Spurs captain kicked out at Konate as they lay on the floor on in a heap and now misses the game at Crystal Palace on Sunday through suspension. It will be his second suspension of the season.
He was ruled out of the home defeat by Fulham, banned after five yellow cards and his despite improvements in the last two years, his indiscipline remains a liability.
Simons will serve a three-match ban for his red card, awarded after a VAR intervention for catching Virgil van Dijk mid-calf with his studs.
Xavi Simons was given his marching orders when VAR reviewed his challenge on Virgil van Dijk
Frank claimed it was not a red card and Arne Slot said he had seen similar fouls committed without the culprits sent off, but the reality of the situation is that it leaves him without his most creative force for key games, trips across London to Palace and Brentford and at home against Sunderland.
Despite their misfiring form, these are fixtures Spurs are expected to win. Six or seven points would certainly ease some of the pressure on Frank and lift them up the Premier League.
Then come fixtures against Bournemouth, West Ham and Burnley, three teams all below Spurs as it stands.
This is six-match midwinter sequence appears crucial if Frank is to persuade the doubters that he can halt the slide and turn around his first season at the helm. It will help if they can harness the positive energy from the way they finished the game against Liverpool. If not, there may be trouble ahead.
