Jim Duggan on Ramos / Jol

Gary Stevens Age : 30 Joined : 24 Jul 2007 Posts : 1798

http://www.topspurs.com/jmdview.htm

As ever, a good read and one that I'm sure at least Spur'don and I agree with.

Edgar Davids Joined : 06 Jun 2007 Posts : 3552

I agree with his comments about Jol.

With regard to Levy, yes his stock has gone down with his handling of the Jol saga ,but unlike many fans I accept football has to be run as a business to succeed. It it isn't , we don't get to spend 40m in the summer ! Levy has done quite well managing the financially affairs of Spurs. He has secured some pretty decent sponsorship deals etc, amounts that far exceed what other clubs outside the CL get. He has ploughed a lot of money back into transfers and aside from Carrick, I don't recall having to sell another top class player.

I have vivid memories of the whole Scholar era which nearly ended in bankruptcy.

I sometimes wonder how I would do things differently if I was managing the club. I'd probably remove the Director of Sport role, as I'm not keen on this structure or perhaps it's just Comolli.

I'd have wanted to remove Jol end of season, though that 5th spot did made it difficult with the fans. I'm not sure how much of the love affair Spurs fans had with Jol was for respect of his management or more to do with his almost 'cult' personalty. I'd have tried to secure Ramos too. Great coach, a sort of Wenger style management about him so why not try to secure the service of someone who could take us forward to the next level if the opportunity arose. No way, absolutely no way would Jol have taken us to top 4. I appreciate he wasn't given power to buy who he wanted but given the way he plays people out of position I'm not so confident how much success he'd have been.

I don't rate Jol as a coach. He hasn't brought people on. Perhaps a better coach can switch on the hidden talent of Lennon, Zokora, Kaboul etc. Time will tell.

The only player who stepped up a gear under Jol's reign was Carrick.

Let's see where we are two years from now.