My decade with Tottenham Hotspur, by Darren Lewis

By Darren Lewis in Mirror Football Blog

Published 11:33 23/12/09

• 

Fewer clubs’ fans can claim to have been on a more exhilarating roller-coaster ride than Spurs over the past decade.

The Lilywhites have that unique ability to shoot themselves in the foot off the pitch, just when things are going well. 

But when they click on the pitch, they do so to stunning effect.

Yet it would indeed be events off the pitch that would kick off the decade. In 2001 Alan Sugar fell out of love with football, sold his controlling interest in ENIC to Daniel Levy and in came Glenn Hoddle as manager.

Brillliant as a player, he looked an inspired statement of intent for the club’s new owners but fell at the first hurdle with defeat to Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-final.

I remember the eruption Sol Campbell then caused that summer by making the most controversial club switch for years – joining bitter rivals Arsenal.

The Gunners had called a press conference one summer afternoon but Campbell was the last player they had been expected to unveil.

While it was an inspired signing on a free transfer for Arsene Wenger, all hell broke loose in north London.

The obligatory burning effigies (where do people get them from??) turned up outside pubs and, subsequently, on the front pages of the national papers.

Campell’s name instantly became mud among the fans that had adored their club captain for the previous nine years.

The drama of the situation made back and front page headlines for days.

And at the time, even now, you could understand their anger at the man who had declared in the Spurs official magazine that he would never sign for Tottenham’s bitter rivals, only to run his contract down and leave on a Bosman free.

It added insult to injury. Not only did he join the Gunners but Spurs did not get a penny for the man they made a star.

Hoddle then set about a project in which he would bring in a clutch of battle-hardened players whose experience, in theory, would drive the club towards silverware.

The likes of 34-year-old Les Ferdinand and 32-year-old Tim Sherwood were joined by  35-year-old Teddy Sheringham (for his second spell at the club).

Chelsea’s old stager Gus Poyet and Liverpool reject Christian Ziege, who was then – to be fair – in his late twenties – were also brought on board.

After their 5-1 demolition of Chelsea in the Worthington Cup semi-final, I was convinced the project would prove a resounding success.

It failed, however, when Spurs were beaten by Blackburn in the competition which was to be their best chance of silverware, the Worthington Cup.

Robbie Keane took the first steps towards writing himself into the Tottenham history books when he arrived at the start of the following season and I remember thinking he had finally found himself a home after two brief spells with Leeds, another with Inter and another with Coventry.

When Hoddle was finally ditched six games into the 2003-4 season the roller coaster really went into full swing.

Spurs embarked on the Sporting Director exercise – which has never worked in English football- which they would stubbornly stick to for the next four years before admitting it had all been a costly mistake.

Reporting on the club over these years, however, would be as much fun as watching them play, for vastly different reasons.

Jacques Santini’s English was a joke, with his press conferences so ludicrous – even with the help of a translator – that the club began offering the media players instead.

Santini, lampooned by the players, would eventually leave anyway, just six months after being appointed, in November 2004. Understandably so, given that Michael Carrick, who would go on to win three Premier Leagues, the Champions League, two Community Shields and the FIFA World Cup Cup, couldn’t get into the Frenchman’s team – even though Santini had signed him!

It was only when Martin Jol succeeded Santini that Carrick could get back into the side and put together the performances that would earn him his move to Old Trafford just two years later.

I remember being at the World Cup back then and learning that, on hearing the news that United were interested, Carrick instantly wanted to leave with Spurs powerless to keep him.

It was a feeling the club were already used to after Campbell. And would experience again in 2005 when Chelsea poached Jol’s assistant Frank Arnesen to become their Director of Football.

Spurs did lots of posturing and tough-talking. But the bottom line was that there was nothing they could do – except of course, take the £10million in compensation the Blues put their way for their aggravation.

Jol, meanwhile, was not without his faults. He turned around the club’s league slump and led them to ninth in his first season and fifth over the next two.

But it was the Dutchman’s decision not to play Jermain Defoe regularly in the 05-06 season which led to the striker being left out of the World Cup squad – even though Defoe had scored 22 goals the season before.

I believe that decision impacted directly on England’s chances as, when injury struck, Theo Walcott was far too inexperienced to do what Defoe could have done easily.

Jol would bristle and try to blind the media with statistics when he was challenged as to his decision not to play Defoe.

But, to be fair to him, his team was still performing and so it was not only a surprise when Spurs sacked him, it was appalling the way they went about it.

Instead of sacking Jol and pursuing Juande Ramos, whose Sevilla side had knocked the north Londoners out of the UEFA Cup in the spring of 2008, Spurs went about things in a way that would have made blundering Manchester City chief executive Garry Cook proud.

A Spurs delegation travelled to Spain to hold talks with Ramos, making him a “dizzying” offer. When pictures of the meeting appeared in the Mirror’s sister paper, the Sunday Mirror, however, Tottenham first cracked open the denials.

Then they put their hands up, admitting they HAD gone to see Ramos but that it was because they wanted to chat about football.  As you do.

Nobody swallowed it and, sure enough, within a week Jol was gone.

Ramos, however, was a disaster. Initially he looked the business, crushing Arsenal and Spurs in the League Cup and wiping out Tottenham’s apparent fear of the top-four teams in that competition.

But in the League it was a completely different story. Following the League Cup win Spurs had the cigars out and, despite all his press conference rhetoric about putting things right, Ramos was totally incapable of doing so.

His bid to get the players eating more healthily was also dying a death, particularly after his fitness coach gave interviews effectively calling the Spurs squad fat.

And Ramos’s lack of English, despite being at the club nearly a year, was also becoming a standing joke.

He made it to the end of the 2007-8 season, however, only to be dealt not one but two hammer blows.

Liverpool came in for Robbie Keane and Manchester United for Dimitar Berbatov.

Both men were key players for the club but both had left the Spurs hierarchy in no doubt that they wanted to go and play Champions League football for their respective bigger clubs.

It also emerged that United had actually come in for Berba the previous summer but the Bulgarian had promised to give Spurs one more season of his services.

Both players left, wrecking Ramos’s plans for the new season, and – sure enough – Spurs endured their worst start in the club’s history.

It saw Ramos sacked and I felt sorry for him because he had to work with the awful signings brought in by Sporting Director Damien Commolli. He too bit the dust.

His role was finally scrapped as Spurs saw since and brought in Harry Redknapp. His own man.

I remember that Saturday night clearly. Being woken by a radio reporter late one Saturday night to be told that Ramos had gone, that Redknapp was coming in, that compensation had already been arranged with his club Portsmouth and what did I think. I knew from the start it would be a fantastic signing.

In his first two weeks in charge, Redknapp took the club out of the relegation zone, winning ten out of the twelve points available with wins against Bolton, Liverpool and Manchester City and a 4–4 draw against North London rivals Arsenal.

The team finished the 2008-09 campaign 8th in the league.

But, more importantly, there was a sense of realism back at the club. There was no more need for translators, no more sense of farce. No more ludicrous claims – as put forward by Jol – that Keane and Defoe could not play together.

Back came Robbie Keane – scandalously treated by Liverpool – in the January of 2009. Jermain Defoe was also brought back after he had quit for regular first-team football in 2007.

These days Spurs are a much happier ship, Christmas parties notwithstanding. Keane’s position remains the subject of much conjecture with the talk being he is bound for Celtic in January.

But you do get a sense that the club are on for the top-four target that Jol was never quite capable of reaching.

Its been a fabulous ten years covering Spurs. They are indeed a friendly, family club who may not always get things right in PR terms but are more of a community club than most other outfits will ever be.

Fancy winning £3,000 for FREE this month? Play Mirror Football Streak for your chance to win cash prizes! Start predicting now!