No more Spurs jokes. Enough. Alright just one. “There have been reports of severe disruption to parts of the London underground due to a points failure in the Tottenham area”. These kinds of jokes may not make you laugh out loud, but they have a point (excuse the pun.) Just two points from eight games is relegation form from a side that won the Carling Cup only last season. Spurs couldn’t get any worse. Harry Redknapp knows things can only get better, and the potential for future success remains a real possibility with the funding at Spurs. But where did it all go wrong for Ramos?
We were all assured it would take time for the foreign players to click, and get used to the rigours of the Premier League. Pavlyuchenko thought he’d arrived in hell, or something resembling hell, (Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia perhaps?) He moaned, “I looked at my watch and saw that the training session had gone on for exactly two hours! Then another half an hour in the gym! Two and a half hours! Can you imagine that”? Poor bloke is only on about 60k per week. Was this guy really up for the challenge? Here was the man, along with Modric, who had the task of filling the boots of Defoe, Berbatov and importantly Robbie Keane. I say importantly Keane because Aaaron Lennon recently stated the side had lost a dressing room leader when the Irishman joined Liverpool. We were still assured that it wouldn’t take long for the new recruits to click.
There was still no clicking. Only bumps in defeat against Hull, bruises in the Stoke match (where half of Spurs’ defence ended up on a stretcher at some point), and goalkeeping howlers in Europe. There was no leader in the side, particularly during the prolonged absence of Ledley King. Ramos did not seem to know his best side, and players looked unsure of their individual roles in the team. Yet Ramos had the backing of his players, publicly anyway. Bentley was “100 per cent” behind the manager. Tremendous. But the midfielder was hardly going to say “no I don’t support him at all. He’s a mug”, was he? Well, not long after he nearly did. Bentley labelled Spurs’ poor start to the season as “a bit shit really” and was duly dropped for the next game.
Even Jonathan Woodgate realised the trouble his team were in, arguing they were “1 million per cent” in a relegation battle. No, I didn’t make up that quote, he did actually say that. I’m pretty sure he never studied maths and brain surgery at Cambridge either. Once Ramos lost the backing of his players and the private murmurs of discontent became public, the Spaniard’s time was up.
So Old ‘Arry has the chance to put right, what Ramos once made wrong; to end the silly Spurs jokes and stamp his authority on a young side. After missing out on the England job, Redknapp has a point to prove before retirement. He can make Tottenham click. Certainly. Definitely. I’m 1 million per cent sure.
At the time of going to press the Harry factor was in full flow, taking 4 points from a possible 6; including a dramatic 4-4 draw at arch-rivals Arsenal.
