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 straight Premier League defeats, 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 was in double figures and he would lose another player – Wilson Odobert – in the 34th minute. No one wants to hear the mitigation.

There was a period at the start of the second half when Spurs threatened an improbable comeback. Trailing to Malick Thiaw’s goal just before half-time, they re-emerged with a bit of purpose and Archie Gray found the equaliser following a set piece.

Newcastle simply went again. There was an inevitability about Jacob Ramsey’s winner; it was entirely deserved from a...