• Tottenham manager ‘1,000% sure’ he should carry on

• Fans booed and jeered the Dane once again during defeat

Thomas Frank remains convinced he has the support of the Tottenham board and will continue in his job as manager, arguing that the club’s problems run deeper than him. The Dane watched his team lose 2-1 at home to Newcastle on Monday night; they have won just twice in 17 Premier League games and lag 16th in the table, five points above the relegation zone.

It was another night when the Spurs fans booed and jeered him. At one point, they sang for Mauricio Pochettino, their former manager, who is now in charge of the USA national side, while they also told Frank towards the end of the game that he should be “sacked in the morning”.

To his extensive list of problems at Tottenham, Thomas Frank can add another. The manager is dealing with a ghost from the club’s more successful recent past. There were 49 minutes on the clock when the South Stand choir took up the song. “He’s magic, you know. Mauricio Poch-e-ttino.” The message was clear. They want their former idol back. They cannot persist any longer with Frank.

The only wonder here was that Newcastle, who had arrived on the back of three successive Premier League defeats and with numerous issues of their own, were not out of sight at the interval. If they were bright in the first half, Spurs were impossibly awful. Frank’s injury list numbered 10 players and he lost another one – Wilson Odobert – in the 34th minute. The captain, Cristian Romero, is suspended, of course. Nobody wants to hear excuses.

It was a contender for shock result of the season. Nobody had given Tottenham any hope after the Premier League disaster here against West Ham on Saturday, one which came coated in vitriol for Thomas Frank. The fans had demanded his immediate removal as the manager, only for him to stagger on.

The execution was stayed. But here were Borussia Dortmund, the Bundesliga’s second-placed team, who had lost only three games all season, to apply the final cut.