Tottenham Hotspur appeared to be on the brink of disintegration last night, their disarray fuelled from within their own ranks. David Bentley was dropped for the 2-0 Uefa Cup defeat to Udinese in Italy after branding their start to the season “shocking” and “s**t”, and after the match Jonathan Woodgate claimed that Spurs were worse than the Leeds United side who spiralled out of the Premier League four years ago, a season after he had left Elland Road.

Juande Ramos’s future as head coach is hanging by a thread after his team, bottom of the table with only two draws from eight league games, had Jamie O’Hara sent off in a crushingly disappointing start to their European campaign. After their two dismissals against Stoke City on Sunday they have accrued more red cards than points.

“We have to start learning quickly,” Woodgate, Tottenham’s England defender, said. “A goal goes in and you think, ‘Oh, here we go again.’ We have to stand up. People say you are too good to go down — you are never too good to go down. I have seen it before at Leeds. We had a better team at Leeds than we have now and they went down eventually.

“We have been saying it is a must-win game, it is a must-win game, but we are not doing it. We have to really roll our sleeves up now and start grafting because it is going to be hard.”

Asked if Spurs were in a relegation battle, Woodgate said: “One million per cent. Are we good enough to get out of it? If we start playing and start concentrating, without a shadow of a doubt. But if we don’t, we will go down. If you don’t have the winning mentality, you get the losing mentality we have.”

Woodgate added that it was the players’ fault, not Ramos’s. “The pressure is going to be on the manager, the chairman [Daniel Levy] and the sporting director [Damien Comolli], but it is the players who shoulder the blame because we are not pulling our weight on the pitch,” he said.

Bentley paid the price for his honest assessment of Spurs’ difficulties. The winger was not injured and is understood to be furious with Ramos’s decision to omit him. In several interviews in the past week, Bentley admitted that his form had not been good enough to warrant inclusion in the last national squad and Fabio Capello, the England manager, was in Udine last night to see Bentley sit disconsolately on the substitutes’ bench.

Bentley believes he lost his England place because he is being played out of position for his club. He was asked to play at right back when he came on as a substitute during the 1-0 defeat by Hull City this month and has been employed in several positions by Ramos this season. However, the Spaniard denied that he had dropped Bentley because of his outspoken remarks. “I just had to choose 18 players from out of 20,” Ramos said. “I don’t know about his comments.”

Much of the blame for Tottenham’s defeat last night will be directed at Heurelho Gomes, the goalkeeper, who conceded a first-half penalty after trying to dribble past Fabio Quagliarella, the Udinese forward, then bringing him down. “I am very angry,” Ramos said. “The mistake changed the game totally in the wrong direction for us. But I am still supportive of my players. I have to defend them.”

Tottenham have won only six out of 25 competitive matches since lifting the Carling Cup in February and Martin Jol, Ramos’s predecessor, lost his job immediately after the corresponding Uefa Cup fixture a year ago. “It is not a comfortable situation,” the Spaniard conceded.