The fault remains with our midfield's inability to either screen the back line or control the game, meaning our back line is doing far more work than they actually should
A large part of a manager's job is to reduce the amount of work their defence and keeper have to do per match to as short a time as possible, preferably ten minutes or less over the 90, so (to use our CBs as examples) Romero can make that one crunching tackle or Mickey Van close down an opponent he had no business closing the distance at most 3-4 times per game, and the rest of the time their job is to shepherd loose balls out of play or back into the keeper's waiting hands
Our issues for the past couple of seasons is our defence is having to play at least half an hour per 90 due to how easily and often our midfield is overrun or bypassed by opponents one way, or fails to relieve pressure due to being unable to string three passes together the other way, so instead of playing to their strengths the handful of times they are called upon instead their weaknesses get exposed due to having far less control of the match
For the obvious non-Spurs example, just look at John Terry under different managers: at club level he had Mourinho or Conte building a wall in midfield so he basically had to tackle maybe 2-3 times per match, probably less against teams their midfield sat on, but then when you stuck an England shirt on him his lack of pace and his shoddy passing regularly came a cropper
