Another Saturday, another capitulation, another raft of excuses on internet messageboards about why Spurs fans should sit tight and just suck it up after another game of missed chances and broken dreams.

Liverpool at Anfield hasn’t ever been an easy game and there were no Tottenham fans going into this one today thinking anything otherwise. Personally I shocked Liverpool fans on the forum by offering my objections pre-match to Martin Jol and his long term tenure as Spurs head coach and with every game that passes I feel my opinion being vindicated. Not that this makes me smug or happy I might add, the crisis (and it is now a crisis) at Spurs this season has been heartbreaking after the moves we made to regain some semblance of respect last season and shows no sign of being broken.

The Jol supporters only have the old story of “there’s no one to replace him” left as their only defence of his start this season and in that they do have a point. Chris Hughton would be the caretaker until a new manager was found and as I feel he is as much of the problem as Jol’s inability to put together a workable system then he’s of no use to us either.

We need a manager / head coach who can identify the strengths and weaknesses of his players and build an effective system around what he has. Martin Jol just doesn’t seem capable of doing it and once his legendary luck wears off we are left with the same long ball to Defoe or Keane rubbish that we’ve bemoaned since the start.

To really steady the ship I would have voted for Martin O’Neill but Aston Villa have leapt in there and are making great strides at doing the very same things Spurs seem incapable of this season, they look organized, tight and work in a manageable system. Strike Martin off the list.

I would rather we went completely rudderless for ever rather than appoint Sven Goran Eriksson, regardless of his exemplorary record as a club coach in Italy I just feel that his reputation has taken such a battering in England that he will never be able to recover any semblance of respect. Sven’s out too then.

Alan Curbishley is the English Martin Jol, a likeable enough character who worked minor miracles with a small club and earned a reputation as something of a decent coach. Not of the required standard to work with the big money prima donnas at the Lane though, I really can’t see Curbs being able to turn us around and move us once and for all into the Promised Land of the top four and back into domestic cup contention.

Who does it leave? The old stagers of Terry Venables, David Pleat and Ron Atkinson might be busy with bit parts elsewhere but this is 2006, not 1986 and times have changed. 666 aka George Graham? Been there, done that. Do we look abroad again after these last two foreign coaches (Santini and Jol) have turned out to be as much use as dear old Tube Ticket Christian Gross? Marcello Lippi perhaps? Keep dreaming Yiddos.

I see one possibility that a lot of people won’t agree with. He’s a master of the beautiful game, both on the pitch and off it, the creator of the much dreamed about “Sunshine Football” that we’ve missed for so long, he knows the Spurs way, in fact in many ways he IS the Spurs way and just as religious types wait on their second coming Tottenham fans could be ready to accept theirs, lessons learnt and a new challenge to finish the job he started and was interrupted from completing by the backbiting of Pleat - ladies and gentlemen, I give you the lord, our GHod:

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Tottenham Hotspur. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.