No more Jol-lity at Spurs

So Martin Jol's reign at Spurs has ended at last - after a two month spell where he was effectively a dead man walking. The poor bloke - well, fairly rich actually after a pay-off rumoured at 4 million squids, - put on a terribly brave face during the whole thing, and every week on Match Of The Day, after Spurs had picked up yet another naff result, he still did a manful job of trying to convince the public that he still had a future, when in reality his job prospects were about as good as those of an Al Qaeda member trained as a nuclear technician.

His desperate cheeriness and wit endeared him to the public - Tottenham fans chanted his name to the very last during Thursday night's defeat by Getafe - and to the press, who have to a man criticized the Spurs board for their management of this. That is perhaps fair, but on the other hand Spurs have won only one of their first ten league games, and have been turgid at best, though injuries to key men, especially Ledley King and Aaron Lennon, have hardly helped.

Too often in his time at White Hart Lane, Jol also did his best to impersonate Rafa Benitez, spending extortionate sums on players who appeared all of ten times a season - last year there was Danny Murphy, Mido, Wayne Routledge and Ricardo Rocha. Ever heard of Kevin-Prince Boateng? Neither had I, but Spurs spent 5million on him this summer, and he's got about as close to the first team as I have. Moreover, big bucks have also been spent on men who simply didn't warrant that sort of cash - Darren Bent, Didier Zokora, Jermaine Jenas, Pascal Chimbonda. Is this Jol's fault? We don't know, but these are players with potential who Jol certainly hasn't been able to coax the best from them. His failure to convince the board to buy another wide player to supplant Aaron Lennon (in his absence, width has been provided by Jenas and Steed Malbranque - enough said) while stacking up on strikers, central midfielders and full-backs, seems just downright daft.

So, having already lost one fantastic character this season in Jose Mourinho, the Premier League bids farewell to another, though in this case, with Spurs 18th in the table, you can safely say that Martin Jol was, at least, sacked because of results. His successor-to-be, Juande Ramos, has a fantastic continental record and is known for attacking football, but I believe that the same was said about another Spurs manager of the mid-nineties. Surely, though Ramos can hardly do worse than Christian Gross...

L.