The most uttered sentence this season is surely ‘Is it time for Jol to leave?’ and life for Martin won’t have gotten any easier as his team lost 3-1 to Newcastle and are now firmly in the relegation zone. Tottenham dished out a performannce that couldn’t have been any more egregiously subservient if they all stumbled out in gimp masks. This woeful performance would have made Danny Blanchflower blanch, Glenn Hoddle pray for reincarnation, and Ossie Ardiles reach for the valium.
Not only did Jol dismiss his teams defending as “rubbish” but Dimitar Berbatov, left stewing on the bench, coquettishly spurned Jol’s advances three times before coming on. The Guardian reports that although Jol was quick to reject rumours of a rift with his Bulgarian striker, the Tottenham press officer was very guarded and initially refused to field questions directed to Jol about Berbatov. Jol said of his star striker:
“I’ve heard about this and it’s rubbish – there was no problem…Dimitar knows exactly what the schedule is for him and he is fine. I don’t know who this rubbish is coming from.”
Yeah, he looked well happy on the bench.
Jol bemoaned the fact that Spurs haven’t had Ledley King as a consistent presence:
“Every time he plays, we seem to be better defensively. He wasn’t there tonight and he was not there last year for seven months. We have to get results without him. I feel people know what we did and what the players are capable of. If they deliver and do the business then there’s no problem.”
One to file away for the Tales Of The Obvious archive, then. If only Spurs had someone who worked at the club whose job it was to make sure the players deliver and do the business. But that’s fantasy talk.