So, farewell then Martin Jol. Quite frankly it says something about the man that he put up with the management he received for so long given that they had already agreed to pay him £4 million smackers (MoT’s passim). I’d like to say he was let down by the players, and I’d say 80% he was. But then again spunking £16 million on Bent really is setting yourself up for a fall.
On related matters, can the remarks of Archie Knox be noted. He said he had no interest in the Bolton job because he was 60 and therefore too old to commit to Bolton for the length of time they deserved. He may never have been a serious candidate, but at least he was willing to think about the long-term future of a club before the money got talking.
The assumption implicit in your post is that Jol was responsible for the purchase of Darren Bent.
To quote Matt Scott on Guardian Unlimited today:
Sporting director Damien Comolli has signed a series of players against Jol’s wishes. It is ironic that one of the more conspicuous of those underachievers reluctantly thrust upon Jol, Didier Zokora, apparently captained the club in Jol’s final fixture.
When Jol sought to rest Dimitar Berbatov last January for the middle game of three fixtures in six days, he was overruled by the club’s chairman.
I do not deny that Jol made errors, nor that he seemed unable to take the club on further, but I do not believe that anybody (That Bloody Woman excepted, natch) should be subjected to the public humiliation he has endured. In any other walk of life he’d be taking his employers to an Employment Tribunal for constructive dismissal and the Enic lawyers would be praying for him to settle.
That Jol persevered for so long and with such dignity in the circumstances, proves that his supposed superiors within the club are not fit to shine his shoes. I hope that Jol’s severance deal pays him every single penny to which he was entitled under his contract and I wish him nothing but the best of luck for the future.
I shall be posting my replica shirt directly to the club chairman this weekend.
All that said, the revelation that the manager of a club in the Premiership relegation zone has been sacked should not be leading BBC “news” bulletins.
I’ve genuinely not been following football and I didn’t know that about Archie Knox and Bolton: absolutely fair play to the bloke.
I feel I have a duty to play the part of the dispassionate observer here. My overwhelming feeling about all of this (and this is said without any malice or shadenfreude) is that Spurs (or rather, their board) suddenly got too big for their boots.
I absolve the fans from this – they actually watch the games closely enough to know that Jol is the best manager they’ve had in fucking ages, so even though they sit in the relegation zone (largely due to being shanghaied by their own club) they’re chanting his name as he sits in the departure lounge at Gatwick.
Jol must have secretly known that this mess was coming over the horizon from the beginning – he joined what was shown to be a ludicrously arrogant set up involving Frank Arnesen and Jacques Santini, an arrangement so inspired that not one member of it appeared to have been consulted about it beforehand nor was happy about it while it was happening.
Then Jol made his first, fatal mistake – being fucking good at his job.
He ought to have known from his fag breaks in the tunnel with Paul Kemsley (World’s Most Objectionable Individual – TM) that this would spell the end of him and his almost constantly miserable demeanour suggested he did. Now Daniel Levy and Paul Kemsley, legends of football that they are, imagined that having finished 5th in one season, they had an automatic right to expect NOT ONLY that this would happen again (like it’s a regular occurrence), but that now was the time to challenge for the title…or bust. Now Tottenham are part of the Big 5?!
I genuinely don’t think the fans believed it – they were too busy basking in Jol’s achievements of the previous season.
It needs time, meticulous planning, years and years of near misses (yes, even Chelsea – and they were fucking loaded for years) and above all, leaving the manager the fuck alone to make his decisions, in this case, on players. So what to the Dufus brothers do? They hijack the poor bastard with Damien Cannelonni.
I fully expect the appointment of Juan deRamos to be a catastrophe – and the Spurs farce will rumble on.
Sorry, Spurs fans. You glimpsed a chink of light at the end of a long tunnel, and your board tried to smash their way out of it so soon, the whole thing’s come crashing down on you, shutting out the light for a long time more.
Can we commend the Minister on the nature of his protest. Splendid direct action sir! Perhaps others should be taking the same course of action. Or maybe they could be hung with scarves from the gates of White Hart Lane, like other clubs do to mark the passing of a great player.
I’ve already suggested this to my other Spurs supporting mate. He is going to kick the board wear it hurts (in the wallet) by only going to away games. This means he can still support the players, but is giving his money for pies/parking/lemon tea to other clubs. He knows Spurs will get a portion, but not as much as they otherwise would.
He is a bit worried about the fact that no other ground does smoked salmon bagels though. (This is not a lazy cliche by the way, apparently it is true).