“If there’s a God, he is laughing at us and our football team.” Ben Folds, Effington, 2008

My club, the once glorious Tottenham Hotspur, are a laughing stock. I had the misfortune to watch our recent away trips to Stoke in the Premier League and to Udinese in the UEFA Cup and it was not a pleasant experience.  Of course, the coverage (this is, after all, a TV blog and not a sports one) was supremely impressive on Sky Sports 1HD with crystal clear pictures, great sound, good commentary and punditry, and a wow factor on the visuals. Over on the rebranded “five” (with the exception of Colin Murray, with whom I am regularly impressed) it was like a throwback to ITV’s Big Match of the 1980s.

But this is not a missive about TV, it’s about a club in decline. Before this season started and after the Martin Jol debacle of last season there was talk about Spurs breaking into the inner circle of the top four.  Not from me, I hasten to add, but I confess to being somewhat optimistic after the pre-season results. Now, well…. top four in the Championship, perhaps.

To find out what’s going (or gone) wrong one needs to trace the problems back to the cause (not the effect) because last season was remarkably similar to this one, if not quite as extreme. We had a good manager and plenty of pre-season confidence having finished 5th the year before. This season we have a good manager and plenty of pre-season optimism having won the Carling Cup the year before and outplaying Arsenal and Chelsea on the way. Last year’s bad start led to the overthrow of Jol who was almost harrassed out of his job. This year we are in an exponentially worse position, so you have to wonder how long Ramos has left.

However, these facts are just effects. Daniel Levy to a lesser extent and Damien Comolli to a greater one, seem to be the cause because it is them who sold the family jewels (Defoe, Keane and Berbatov) without any obvious plan for replacements and they are the ones who unceremoniously and unprofessionally got rid of Jol.  Having a Diretcor of Football simply does not work in the Premier League.  Do any of the top four have one?  No.  Do Newcastle have one?  Yes.  God help us.

On the pitch it is a horror story… lacklustre, rudderless and without a clue.  Even Ledley King, could not salvage anything from last night’s UEFA Cup adventure.  The strange thing is that we’re not losing by much.  No-one has scored more that two past us and we have gone through periods (ironically after Bale’s dismissal on Sunday and again for the first 20-minutes until Gomez’ howler yesterday) when we have looked like a good unit.  However, as soon as a goal goes in, head’s drop, no-one wants the ball, and it descends in to a disjointed mess. This is spiralling out of control.  Jonathan Woodgate has been talking this morning and has hit the nail on the head. Read it.  And weep.

Don’t get me wrong. There is plenty of criticism that Ramos has to answer too. His selection policy seems odd bordering on the random (even Benitez and Ranieri would raise an eyebrow) with players frequently out of position, and tactics that seem to vary at a whim.  Watch the players after a substitution and see puzzled looks and lots of shouting at one another. They do not know what is happening, so no wonder they can’t cope on the field. Someone once said “It takes a lot of practice to be this lucky”, for Spurs, it’ll take a helluva lot of practice to turn this around.

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Tags: Comolli, Gomez, Levy, Premier League, Ramos, Spurs, Tottenham, UEFA, Woodgate