Tottenham Hotspur’s season has unravelled within the space of five days. A feeble performance in the north London derby against Arsenal on Sunday was followed by inconceivable elimination from the Europa League by Dinamo Zagreb as a two-goal lead from the first leg at home was surrendered with barely a whimper mustered in riposte.
A shell-shocked Jose Mourinho, struggling to digest elimination, suggested his players had lacked professionalism. Yet, while it was easy to draw comparisons between the head coach’s words and the sense of “betrayal” he had revealed after a loss at Leicester at the end of his second stint as Chelsea manager a little over five years ago – an utterance that pre-empted his sacking – it was actually a brutally honest seven-minute post-match interview offered by the Spurs captain, Hugo Lloris, in Croatia which painted the more shocking picture of a squad horribly split.
