Cristian Romero appeared to criticise Tottenham’s travel arrangements with a repost on social media claiming his team were left at a disadvantage in the north London derby because Arsenal flew players home sooner from international duty.
Romero reposted — then deleted — a message from an Argentine journalist that claimed Spurs ‘gave an advantage’ to Arsenal because Ange Postecoglou’s side were ‘the only Premier League club that made their players come back from their national teams without their own logistics (organised by the club)’, meaning their ‘players arrived with less rest than the others’.
Travel responsibilities for international games lie with the national federations and Spurs were happy for Romero to return on the flights proposed by Argentina after they lost a World Cup qualifier in Colombia on Tuesday.
Postecoglou had designated Thursday as a day off and players were not expected for training until Friday.
Some clubs do provide private travel for their players to get them back quicker and Arsenal’s Brazilians were at the training ground on Thursday.
Cristian Romero appeared to criticise Tottenham’s travel arrangements via social media
Romero returned home on the flights proposed by Argentina after their loss to Colombia
Tottenham will supply travel for international players if they think it is necessary. On this occasion they did not, and Romero seems to have taken it personally, reposting the original post after Arsenal’s Brazilian defender Gabriel beat him in the air to score the only goal.
Postecoglou robustly defended his set-piece policy despite watching his team fall victim to another dead-ball delivery. The Aussie boss, who has refused to appoint a specialist set-piece coach since his arrival from Celtic last year, has been criticised due to his team’s struggles with defending dead ball situations.
Postecoglou said: ‘I know, for some reason people think I don’t care about set-pieces and it’s a narrative that you can keep going on for ages and ages. I understand that.
‘Like I said, we work on them all the time like we do for every other team. You know that they’re a threat. For the most part, we handled them really well today, but we switched off for one and we paid a price. You learn from that and you move on.’
Postecoglou absolved Romero of full blame for the goal, despite the Argentine appearing to lose Gabriel in the lead-up to the winner. ‘Arsenal are obviously a very big threat at set pieces. It only takes one,’ explained Postecoglou. ‘It wasn’t just Romero, a couple of others switched off as well.
‘The delivery was spot on and Gabriel is always a threat in those situations.’
Arsenal’s Brazilian defender Gabriel beat Romero in the air to score in the north London derby
Ange Postecoglou robustly defended his set-piece policy despite watching his team fall victim to another dead-ball delivery
Postecoglou believes his team’s biggest problem was not converting their dominance into goals.
‘We had some good opportunities but we created so many more, we just wasted some of our good play,’ he said. ‘Similar to our other games where we haven’t really had that conviction in the front third.’
