Back to the future

[WesTheWalrus]

at the time, yes, I was fully behind the board in bringing in Ramos. but in retrospect I don't understand how anyone can still say it was a good move. if Jol was still in charge do you all really think we would be in the crap we are in now? yes he's no Mourinho but while in charge he got us to finish in the Top 5 twice! who's to say he wouldn't have kept us there, if not higher? but we wanted more, and now the thought of such heights seems like a distant memory and the club is in shambles. round of applause for Mr Daniel Levy for signing a manager who couldn't even communicate with his own squad.

having said that, it would be wrong to think of Jol as being an automatic saviour to all our problems. whats done is done, I can't see him being brought back, lets deal with what we have.

 

[Reg]

Please ban threads on this subject. I feel like vomiting!mg::bang::bang::rofl::bang::roll:

 

[gibb]

After ramos was sacked if we had of brougnt in jol at that stage we would have got relegated - redknapp has give us a fighting chance of staying up - think back to newcastle away last season & all wasn't rosy in the jol & tottenham days, seville was a great night & will always be remembered as will the liverpool at home lge game this season.

HR does not deserve this kind of critisism, he has inherited a small squad with a soft underbelly as we all know & he is trying his hardest to put things right in a stagnant transfer window.

Lets just get behind the manager & the team for the rest of the season, they need our support more than ever & posts like this do not help in any way.

THFC.....

 

[Coyboy]

Talk about rose-tinted, misty memories from the selective corners of our minds...

"Give Martin Jol FULL CHARGE of the running of the club"? Same Martin Jol who forced out Edgar Davids and Pedro Mendes in favour of Jenas, whom he never EVER substituted let alone drop when not injured; who stuck with players like Stalteri for over a season when it was clear to the majority of the fans that he just wasn't good enough - and then finally dropped him (so basically, it took him more than a year to come to the same conclusion as most fans'); who would stubbornly continue to play Robinson even when it was painfully clear that he sadly became a liability for the team; who relegated Defoe (arguably one of the very few truly committed to Spurs players) to the 3rd-4th choice role and time after time sent him on with 10-12 min left and then claiming Defoe played more or less the same number of games as Keane - and that started the spiral which eventually led to Defoe leaving the club; the same Jol who allowed the squad become so worryingly short of fitness and mental sharpness?...

I could go on, but as well as remembering a lot of good things that Jol brought to the club, we must not just close our eyes to the obvious deficiencies there.

There is so much wrong in that but I have only time to point out the bare facts. Mendes was moved on because we had Carrick, why would it be because of Jenas when they are not alike? Jol didn't want to let him go and called him 'world class' but he wanted first team football understandably.

And you know Jol forced out Davids do you? Isn't the more likely story that Davids was playing terribly, he was getting on and that he was a disruptive and disrespectful influence?

The generic and pervasive flaw in your argument is that everything that went badly at Spurs then was Jol's fault and everyhthing that went well was because of the players he had. Nothing to do with his tactical or motivational skills, he just got lucky didn't he and then found out? Nothing to do with the fact that he was instrumental in getting the likes of Berbatov to the club?

 

[Dibby]

I wholeheartedly agree. Sell Bentley and use the dough to bring the Jolly Giant back to where he belongs.

 

[Boaman]

If Martin Jol had half the transfer kitty Ramos did we could have really gone places. The summer we signed Kaboul, Bent & Boateng was his downfall and probably convinced Berbatov and Keane to go.

Martin Jol, for me is a legend and the sweet smell of success that I enjoyed after 2x 5th place finishes far out ways the Carling Cup last year, albeit a fantastic day for all.

I'm not sure coming back is the answer though, if he wins the league with Hamburg then it's worth considering or otherwise he'll just be the same old BMJ.

Respect.

 

[gaganelov]

I haven't posted for a long time, but have been reading the board. Glad to see that more and more Spurs supporters realize the damage Levy has done to the club.

 

[JoeT]

This sort of discussion is uneccessary and not fair to our current manager However if we MUST discuss it 'spurs_viola's' post says it all for me.

 

[paxton_soul]

Unfortunately spot on. People tend to look back on that time with rose coloured glasses, but the reality was somewhat different. Add 'an inability to EVER beat or come close to beating any of the top four' into your list. I'm not saying Harry is any better than Jol, believe me I have reservations, but Martin Jol, lovely guy though he was and a gentleman, was not in Levy's mind up to the task of taking Tottenham forward at the time and I actually agree with him. Of course the fact it went terribly wrong with Ramos makes it easy for people to say "we should'nt have sacked Jol blah blah blah" but people forget that Jol lost the dressing room and had run out of ideas by the time he got the bullet. Nice guy yes, tactically aware, most definitely not.

Sorry - :bs:

Levy and Kemsley made his position insecure by holding a loaded pistol to his head (4th or else) briefing against him and that screwed things long before your claim that he had "lost the dressing room". The things I quote are based on facts of Spurs press releases and proof of Spurs officials meeting Ramos behind Jol's back....yours are based on speculation.

Comolli was disaster - we all know that. Arnesen made canny signings that weeded out a generation of dollar-chasing underacheivers out of Spurs for two seasons. Now they are back in spades.

I am not claiming Jol was perfect but he is objectively, demonstrably, a million times better than what went before or has come since.

He attracted haters like you because of a series of poor substitution decisions. But to say he didn't have it tactically is deeply deeply naive and boneheaded. His teams played witha system, with verve and were well conditioned (we won games at the death rather than throw them away under Jol). I am sorry to disappoint Spurs_viola but this is what the elements a good manager does to make sure a team is well placed to take advantage of opportunities both in match situations but in the over all strengths and weaknesses of the league.

The FACTS speak for themselves in terms of what jol acheived versus his successors. Do please stop revising history to suggest that his driving out from our club was in any way a logical or correct decision at the time. It was not.

And every passing month only stacks up further evidence that I and those who think like me were right. I don't like being right....I wish we played football I could enjoy, with heart and confidence and had a manager I was proud of - but deep down you all know that just isn't true.

 

[JimmyG2]

The reasons why Jol was sacked still apply,even if I don't personally agree with them. But the man that sacked him is still there and under no circumstances will he admit that he made such a disastrous error.
This applies to the sacking of Jol and the appointment of Ramos.
There is no going back and I doubt that Jol would return anyway as a matter of principle.He's not doing badly where he is.

 

[TallBlokePH]

Interesting article and a difficult subject because of the intense feeling - whether positive or negative - that Martin Jol and especially his sacking seem to generate.

I also find it interesting that the blame for all this generally gets thrown at Levy, rather than the 3 people who had the biggest roles to play in all of this - yes Levy physically sacked Jol, but it is questionable whether it was entirely his decision to make...I'll try and explain why: Basically, Levy has the final say in terms of the decisions of the board of the club, unless he is overruled by the board of ENIC. And he doesn't have the final say on that board, Joe Lewis does.

At some point before that fateful summer, the club was arguably being prepared for sale by ENIC and in order to get the best possible price without having to actually get in the top 4 (Champs League revenue adding a nice bonus to the accounts) the club had to be presented as having a realistic chance of getting in the top 4 that season in order to get the right price without too much of a wait. With Jol not initially towing the line on aiming for the top 4, Lewis probably wasn't a happy boy as this could be used by a potential buyer to knock the price down. And that's when Kemsley was sent to talk to a potential replacement in case it went a bit wrong on the management front and Jol left, or to potentially take over at the end of the season.

Unfortunately, Kemsley being a bit of tit (based on what he did next) decided that instead of somewhere nice and private he'd meet the suggested candidate in public at a hotel...where photographers had a habit of hanging out...

...and the rest is history. Press went mental with the story, Jol lost the dressing room as a result and had to go when it looked like he wouldn't be able to recover.

So in my opinion, the 3 people who created this issue were Lewis, Kemsley and Jol himself. Jol didn't tow the line, Lewis got the hump and threw his toys out of the pram (that's billionaire businessmen for you I suppose!), and Kemsley was as subtle as a badger in a dress.

I like to think that if things had gone differently, maybe even just Kemsley having kept the meeting out of the press by doing it right, results would have been different at the start of that season and my trip to the Getafe game wouldn't have been as gutwrenching, sitting in the stands and hearing the news that the manager I hoped would turn it around and get us back to the form and football we'd played for the past two seasons was running the team for the last time.

Jol had his faults, that's for sure, but what I can't fault is the two 5th places we got under him and the way he made me feel again about the club I love - that maybe it was worth hoping we could be great again instead of expecting mid table drudgery every season.

We'll never know what would have happened if Jol had stayed, and I think at the point he went it probably was for the best. The players had the ability still, but weren't showing it for him any more - they needed the 'new manager effect' to remind them what they were there for. Ramos was decidedly a mistake though, unwilling to adapt his tactics to the EPL game, didn't appear to make the effort to learn the language he could communicate with his players properly in, and didn't seem to have that great a knack at motivating the squad. Unfortunately he'd done great at Seville so it didn't look like it would be a bad decision at the time...but sometimes you can't tell just by looking; players that are great at one club aren't always great at all clubs, and the same is true of managers.

I don't think instantly bringing back Jol would take us to the top, we got him raw in management terms and he still needs some rounding off - but what he's managed in Germany suggest he's a good'un and perhaps in the future if we're in need of a new manager his door would be worth knocking on if he carries on doing a good job of managing teams. Not only that though, we badly need some stability and with that in mind, let's give Harry a couple of years to get something going - with change, you don't get results overnight...or at least not long term results anyway. As has been pointed out many times by many people, the teams doing better have - in general - had their managers for at least a few years; not A year, not 18 months. Years.

Anywho that's my rant over...except for needing to give credit to one of the posters on the OS forum who takes a good deal of interest in the financial aspects and governance structures of the club for the info on the board structure and voting rights etc - some of the man's posts on the business side of things make me realise why there are rich people in the world, and why I'm not likely to be one. No idea whether he's ever on here but I wouldn't want to be accused of plagiarism!