Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Tottenham Hotspur's PR Disaster

Another photograph of Ramos in a hotel with a shark and two boobs

The Coup De Etat That Never Was

In a scene more reminiscent of 'Spring Time For Hitler' than either the Night Of The Long Knives or The Beer Hall Putsch, Levy & Co have achieved a PR standing somewhere between Idi Amin and Chris Langham.

After days of back page jounalists and (used to be) ITK's writing in absolutes here's some facts.

The statement from Levy requires no reading between the lines. It's language is that of any death warrant. Weighted in the favour of the expectant executioner... There is but one phrase worth reading because it tells you everything...

Levy: "We have discussed all of these expectations with Martin and he has confirmed to me today that he feels he is equipped with a squad and a determination to take on that challenge.”

Let's read that again.

Levy: "We have discussed all of these expectations with Martin and he has confirmed to me today that he feels he is equipped with a squad and a determination to take on that challenge.”

After failing to depose him by crook, it's now out with the hook.

Of course, Jol is not owed his position. He is obligated to deliver minimum levels of acceptable achievement. Or rather to say, this is football and Levy has expectations. Who wouldn't? The wrong end of £40 million invested so far and the possible threat of a little more........ the paymaster doesn't want to hear that a top five finish 'is wishing'.

Alas dear fans, there is more to come. Every game will now degenerate into an autopsy of the undead Martin Jol. The hysteria surrounding the first three games will seem small potatoes to what we will now have to endure.

The uninformed pap we can guarantee to spew freely from the swinging gate gob of Richard Keyes... for example.


How Jol can continue is beyond me.

I asked him to be brave last week.
I had obviously had no idea quite how courageous he actually was.

COYS.

44 comments:

Unknown said...

i really cant believe the way BMJ has been treated, yes the guys got some faults but you cant dismiss what hes done for us, this week has been a disaster im surprised he hasn't walked, if he does in the future i wouldn't blame him, how can he work for people who obviously don't want him. ive always backed Levy and realy see this out of character, but i guess money talks, its a real shame, would love to see spurs and BMJ now go to old trafford and smash united and hold there middle fingers up to the board

Anonymous said...

I absolutely agree that this is a PR disaster and once again THFC is being ridiculed by all & sundry.

Just one question, why are we all surprised? Just when it looks as if things are on the up, we manage (as usual)to shoot ourselves in both feet.

Great timing (not) when Man U are there for the taking.

Richard said...

Jol is legend. What's the betting he walks out after a week of this crap and we get David Pleat back? What a nightmare.

Anonymous said...

I'm really enjoying this at the moment.

We all know just how mentally challenged you tiny totts are but how comically refreshing is it to know that this ground level self-delusion is present at all levels of your club.

Levy, Comolli, Jol and the Spurs fans deserve each other.

£255m spent since 1992 and only one League Cup to show for it.


Forever in Arsenal's shadow.

Anonymous said...

Unless you are writing about "Soccer", can I humbly suggest that the word is "obliged" and not the horrible Americanization of "obligated".
Thanks you!

Anonymous said...

I can't believe either how Jol has been treated. Levy is a total W*anker and that twat klemsey is a right ar*e you only have to watch the fat prick on The Aprrentice to know what his like.

If Jol was sacked he would be snapped up in minutes, I only question sometimes his subs i.e. berba off during the 3-1 up at Stamford Bridge in the FA Cup etc, bar that the man has done us proud... do you really think a spanish non english speaking coach would of done better would of probably ended up a Santini affair?

Please Please lets all sing at the next home match "levy levy your a c*nt, levy levy your a c*nt"

COYS

Anonymous said...

Do they have faith in Jol?, does Commolli do the buying?, were they just waiting for the right man to come along, Jol will do until then?, i'd agree that Jol is a dead man walking, however it's still rather difficult to extract the truth from any newspaper, i'm getting rather tired of Spurs being in the news for the wrong reasons, why can't we let our football do the talking...

Unknown said...

i agree with 8.39 lets chant Levys a wanker!

Anonymous said...

If I was Martin Jol I would have walked after this shit-storm. Disgraceful treatment of our most successful manager in years. I agree he is not owed the job but he does deserve his dignity. I hope we qualifies for the champions league then tells Levy to "F*ck off" and walks...

Anonymous said...

This whole thing is a f**king mess and I am outraged, I hope I am wrong but I feel it can only be detrimental to the squad.

When will these boardroom monkeys realise that teams need to be built over time? Chopping and changing managers does NOT work, surely the last 15 years is evidence of that?
They need to back BMJ due to what he has already done for the club. I would not be suprised if he walked at the end of the season after making CL, just to say f**K you to the board. .
I promise to sing my heart out for you at every game I am at from here on in Martin, please know that WE ARE BEHIND YOU!!

Anonymous said...

It has been all paper talk - actually read the few quotes that have been included and ignore the purposely inaccurate paraphrasing - remember if it's not in quotes they did NOT say it.

Anyway it's all over see the two stories on the Offical Site.

"The Club wishes to thank all those fans who wrote to the Board, the Manager and the Club with their views and support.
To further clarify the situation - the Club wishes to make it clear and unequivocal that no individual was or has been offered the position of manager/coach at this Club whilst that position has been held by Martin Jol. It is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate to suggest otherwise."

Anonymous said...

I have been viewing the recent developments with increasing disquiet. Whilst I am not an out and out Jol fan I do feel that his has been treated so badly that his position now is impossible. I can understand Levy seking Ramos as a replacement, particularly since his style of play (attacking wingers backed by aggressive wing backs) provides exactly the style of football that all Spurs fans enjoy. Jol is, I am sure, a very decent, honest chap but, frankly, his tactics and team selections are very questionable. One could almost compare him with another "nearly man" Sven, who, when managing England, had the players at his disposal to deliver us the world cup but failed to utilise them and also fielded players in unfamiliar positions. MJ has a defenders mentality (as the much quoted matches against Chelsea and the Arse last season illustrated) which simply does not work for a club who has a history of out and out attacking football, scoring freely but accepting that a few goals may be conceeded in the process. We have spent lavishly and reasonably well but still lack a class left winger and a "terrier" central midfielder. Jenas will never fulfill this role and this absence of a real ball winner in midfield only heaps more pressure on an insecure defence, albeit plauged by injury. AG is hard working but simply not premiership quality and prone to gaffs yet he is played even when Rocha is available who in my view is a more reliable alternative. If we are to gatecrash the top four (which I still believe is possible) all of the above problems must be addressed and with hand on heart I do not think MJ is the man to do it. The thing I do not understand is why Levy did not conduct his negotiations with Ramos more covertly and kept his powder dry until he was absolutely sure that the deal was done. End of rant!

JonA said...

Its now a no win situation; Jol's sacked without CL and probably before if results dont improve OR we're left with a succesful manager (if CL qualified) with no loyalty to his employers.

I'm a big fan of Jol and wish this whole sorry matter hadn't happened, but after the board made their stance, keeping him wasn't a realistic option.

Unknown said...

What a nightmare! First we unsettle the club with all this speculation, next we reverse our decision and look like a bunch of idiots.
Regardless of whether the decision to replace Jol was right or wrong I think we have taken a step back today.
Even if Ramos wasn't the man who was to lead us to 4th, once his name was on the list we should have progressed forward regardless. Now we have a club of unsettled players and a manager who knows there is no board confidence in him, on top of that the media speculation will be even greater than it was once we'd lost to sunderland.
I like Jol, however I am not sure if he is the man to take us to 4th, I like the board as they spend a lot of money, but when they produce weeks like this one, its hard to side with them.
Nightmare.

Incidentally hh, whats your take on my view that the reason we aren't consistent might be because we have no 'old heads' in the team?
IMO if we get riquelme with his experience and creativity, we might be able to challenge for a CL spot this season. If we continue with Jermain-I-am-good-once-in-a-blue-moon-jenas I fear that we will be lucky to challenge for a UEFA position especially as so many other teams have strengthened.
Last but not least, to the fans that say that Jol should not be sacked after two games, I agree, however I can't feel but disappointed that for the first 2 games we look EXACTLY the same team that struggled with consistency last season. Yeah I know we have injuries at the back and I expected us to concede goals against everton, however with 1 of the best strike forces in the prem, I did not expect us to find it hard to score goals. Then I noticed that we are playing with the same lightweight midfield, a child could tell you that the like of malbranque, jenas, tanio and keane will never dominate clubs like everton much less the big 4.
just my 2 cents.

Lama

Anonymous said...

I'm looking forward to the fall out after Man Utd give you a good pasting.

Know your place, Spurs.

Harry Hotspur said...

Decent comment, Lama. The closest we had to an older head was Davids. All he appeared to do was bully. What a pity...

Anonymous said...

James Cutmore: This reminds me of the Ranieri/Mourinho stuation at Chelsea a couple of seasons back, and look at them now.
Now im not saying that i think this is being handled well by the board, in fact i think it is piss poor. I personally really like Jol as a bloke and was gutted to see all of the stories about Ramos. BUT when you remove the emotion you have to ask yourself that if you had just spent £40 million would you just think, oh well, Jols a nice bloke, he's still learning but the fans like him so we will keep him. No you would'nt, you'd think, right lets get someone with proven pedigree that i can trust to manage my team at the highest level without making any mistakes. Large investment means more pressure, not just on managers, on boards as well.

Its just a shame that our board have shit their pants two games in to the season. If they didnt rate Jol, they should'nt have given him pre-season etc, and had someone else in place at the end of last season. This just smacks of a knee jerk reaction, and makes the entire club a laughing stock, except Jol....ala Ranieri.

I think maybee the board were doing the right thing in the long run, just in a very wrong way.

Harry Hotspur said...

Spot on James, thankyou.

Anonymous said...

I think personally this is just to stop the media talk so we can concentrate on the next few games.

I think Jol would have been given a review date at this meeting where if things haven't changed by a certain time then he will go.

If not then lets give it a few more years until we realise he won't take us further.

If thats the case then I'd love for him to prove me wrong.

Anonymous said...

What's Spurs' net expenditure under Jol?

Anonymous said...

Levy has no balls. He should fire Jol.
Jol has no balls. He should quit.
Berba has no balls. He should go.

I bet they are all gay, at least in thought.

Anonymous said...

Given that BMJ will not find another job difficult to come by he will surely walk and that must be plan B as drafted by the group of callous bastards collectively known as our Board.

I am not a BMJ fan. For me he will never get better than 5th and his team selections and tactics lack courage. However he does not deserve this and we as a club do not deserve him. The conduct of the Board has put the club in disrepute.

Anonymous said...

My God!! Spot on with the comment about Mourinho setting us up for a fall by saying we're challengers!! And there's me in the last few seasons saying its all about chelsea and Man U, why don't the media talk about tottenham!?! The attacks are coming left right and centre and the pressure must be mounting on the players and especially Martin!

Good luck boys!! Lets hope we can grab a decent result or two and see the stories dry up and the ship steady. Mind you maybe this is the kick up the backside our midfielders need!

COYS!!

cockspur

Anonymous said...

I really cant see what all the fuss is about maybe changing the manager??? if we had the chance to take Dani Alves instead of Chimbonda who whould say a thing other than Alves is a great player and in the last two seasons has won boat loads of cups and will take us on to the next level so why make such a big deal out of "maybe" changing the manager???

Anonymous said...

The way we have conducted this is really bad. Having said that, sometimes you have take a chance when an opportunity comes up. People will point to Fergusan and the time he was given but he already had a great track record. Wenger came into Arsenal and one wonders what Spurs would have been like if we made a move for him then. Is Ramos maybe the next Wenger? Will Arsenal, Chelsea or even ManUtd decide to line him up? We did not conduct things very well but I do appreciate the fact that the board are looking for opportunities. Also it seems interesting that Riquelme and Ramos thing happened in the same week. I reckon Ramos wanted him

Anonymous said...

James Cutmore: The only good thing that can possibly come out of this is that strangely a lot of the pressure is now off Martin Jol. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesnt win anything at Spurs, and that may help.

Spurs fans are the biggest heapers of expectation in the league,and the pressure on Jol before the season was massive. All this expectation has now been shifted, and turned in to sympathy for Jol. If he loses, its the boards fault for pileing on the pressure, if he wins, then momentum for keeping his job could swing behind him and proppel Spurs to where we all want to be. This goes back to my Ranieri theory again.

Anonymous said...

Right now, it's LIMBO.
A few steps above Purgatory and near Heaven. But it can be Hell on a whim.

9 days to sell Berbatov.
Save your season.


Nemesis

Anonymous said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/t/tottenham_hotspur/6958450.stm

How can BMJ stay after this?

Anonymous said...

its very interesting that all this rubbish has come out so early into the season! y spend 40mill on players which the nex manager may not even want. evry paper is sayin we've spoken to RAMOS but its intresting dat JURGEN KLINSMANN is not 2far away wiv Germany @ WEMBLEY n also TERRY VENABLES was watchin on sat so does dat mean we've spoken to them aswell??? i dont fink so. this is just paper rumours cos dey wud rly like to talk bout sir alex but jol is an easy target. id rather talk bout JUAN ROMAN RIQUELME!!!!!! Any news on dat harry??????????

Anonymous said...

Agreed whole-heartedly with your earlier post Mr Cutmore.

As it transpires, Ramos has confirmed he was offered the job after our categorical denial.

I personally believe that as fans we are offered an explanation from the board on the truth of this matter. What a farce.

Bueller

Anonymous said...

Meant we should be offered an explanation.

Bueller

Death said...

What a bloody shambles....

Progress..

Progress.....

Self-destruct

My shrinks have a name for this kind of behaviour.

Pfft.........

"to dare is to do" said...

just to reply to asked the chimbonda alves question..well mate id take chimbonda any day.
alves way over rated

Anonymous said...

Rumour has it the rift was between Robbo and Berba and that Jol took Robbo's side and told Berba to leave the room.
Anyone knows anything about this?

Anonymous said...

I for one am ashamed at the behavior of the board this past week. BMJ deserves far more respect than what has been shown during this debacle. They have undermined his job as coach and made him look like a fool by making him tack his name onto that official statement. The one thing I was proud of was the fact that the club was forced to issue a second statement in response to all of the letters and e-mails they received from Jol supporters. Well done to all the people who wrote in after they recognized how awful BMJ was being treated. Out of all this mees I truly wish that Jol will find a happy conclusion. I would not blame him for signing up as manager of the Dutch team at all in June and getting a healthy comp from our board. It is the least he deserves.

EL said...

Let's read that again:

Levy - "So do you think you can take us into the champions league with no experienced & top quality left winger or playmaker?"

Jol - "Yes"

I'm impressed, behind him and doubtful.

Re:11.30am

We're not getting riquelme, Ramos doesn't fancy him ;)

Anonymous said...

What happened to the third email on the club site in response to Ramos' statement saying he HAD been approached? withdrawn for good or withdrawn to be re-worded?

It basically said "we've said it once, we're good as gold and we're not lying - so there"

Anyone remember the Man Utd game @ WHL where there fans sang that one Fergie song for the first 20mins? (think it was his anniversary game - the 3-5?) Thats what we should be doing on sunday (for BMJ not Fergie obviously ;))

Anonymous said...

sorry above message should read "third statement"

EL said...

Re:12.42pm

Yeah, rumour has it that after Berba left the room Jol picked a piece of lint out of his navel and Robbo put the kettle on whilst mumbling about elastic in his socks being too tight.

Anonymous said...

GRAZZA: Makes sense, robbos aimless punts normally spark a Berba tantrum (you know the ones - lots of flapping and pointing to where the ball didnt land) He probably got that part of his game off Keane.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to repeat but James Cutmore 9.06am great summary mate.

It has backfired on the board PR wise who seemed certain to get Ramos, so Jol either lives with the pressure and achieves the Goal - Top 4 or walks out/ gets sacked which could typically fall at a bad time for us - double edged sword here.

But shit, you can see now why DL is a great businessman, no f*cking around with him!

From the official site;

"We have had two good, progressive seasons with fifth place finishes. I am an ambitious Chairman, we are an ambitious Club and we want Champions League football at White Hart Lane,” commented Chairman, Daniel Levy.

Observation - these are the comments of a winner, a wolf, now this IS someone I want to be running our club!

"The last two seasons we have finished fifth and this season we start with an even better team. So we should be optimistic. Yes, it is pressure to deliver, but that is what we managers should expect. Hopefully all the media will relax now – all I shall be concentrating on is each and every game.” said Martin Jol.

Observation - "SHOULD" says he is not completely confident we will make the top 4 to me, it's like a positive-negative like we could make it or we might not...hmmmm under the cosh comes to mind.

One thing to come out of this mess is whatever happens for the first time in many years we have a board who are not just business minded, but have put serious money where their mouth is with good investment. This is a good thing as they can clearly smell massive potential to succeed here which should be acknowledged...especially when a smart individual like Daniel Levy has something to do with it.

However that 40 million investment may ultimately prove to be too heavy a noose around Martin Jol's neck.

Anonymous said...

"for the first time in many years we have a board who are not just business minded"

My point was remember the Alan Sugar years lads?. Yeah he saved our club, but we also rarely looked like we had a hope in hell of winning anything?

At the same time I badly want MJ to be the man who fulfills the boards and fans ambition.

There was never an easy way for the board to do this due to MJ's popularity with Spurs fans.

Hey, it's like a marriage...sometimes the bad times make the marriage stronger and DL is like the nagging wife who cheated on MJ for not achieving millionaire status fast enough...Oi DL you slag!!!

EL said...

Our very own Gareth Bale is playing left midfield for wales against bulgaria. He's had the only decent chance so far; a header from a simon davies cross.

Wonder what the odds of him getting injured are?

EL said...

Ramos made a statement today to the effect that when he stated earlier that he had been made a dizzying offer by Spurs, that that wasn't what he meant to say and he takes it all back. He now says that he was never made an offer. ??!!!

You really couldn't make it up.

Oh yes and you know that famous 'I have a dream' speech by Martin Luther King? Well Ramos says that King never meant to say that either.