Spurs face football meltdown

Juande Ramos yesterday likened the life of a football manager to the vagaries of the stock market. "Down and up," he said, waving his arms, smiling. "The markets change and go up." And they go down. Life at Tottenham Hotspur is similar to the economy right now. Two periods of negative growth – the end of last season after winning the Carling Cup and the start of this campaign – and they are indeed in recession.

Ramos's analogy may have jarred a little with Spurs' chairman – and effectively chief executive – Daniel Levy. After all, Levy, a figure who shies from the spotlight, is rightly renowned for his business acumen, and financial results due to be released next month will again show annual profits soaring to more than £30m. Spurs are a tightly run ship. Every penny is wrung out of the resources. Levy is, after some bitter experiences, good at closing a deal. Money is provided for managers. Take the way he pursued and captured the £16.5m midfielder Luka Modric this summer. Firm but fair, he's learnt lessons, and drives a hard bargain. And he certainly sweats the asset, as they say.

Levy's football knowledge? Well that, at best, can be described as a little patchy, given the roller-coaster fortunes, like that wildly fluctuating stock market graph Ramos sketched out, on the pitch. Two points from seven Premier League matches is simply astonishing for a club with Spurs' resources and their ambitions.

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Are they in crisis – a word used by Modric in midweek – Ramos was asked yesterday. "The name is the same," the Spaniard, who now carries out his pre-match briefings in English, said. "At this moment the players don't win matches." And tomorrow they face Stoke City away. It's a fixture that is being met with a shudder of apprehension.

Quite how it has come to this is, however, not so difficult to analyse. And what happens next? Rather than Ramos's future, despite some misgivings, especially about his perceived (wrongly, in fact) obsession with the Uefa Cup, and concerns which are growing by results, it is that of the sporting director, Damien Comolli, which is being discussed. He was a solemn-looking figure at Tottenham's training ground, Spurs Lodge, as he watched training yesterday.

Within Spurs the debate is now over when – not if – Comolli goes. With an annual general meeting due to be scheduled soon, an announcement before that may provide the ideal moment for Levy to take some of the heat out of the situation. He certainly will not want to face the hostility which is rising among supporters who are both exasperated and frustrated by what is happening to a club which, after two fifth-placed finishes under Ramos's predecessor Martin Jol, would probably accept fifth from bottom this season.

Maybe it can be blamed on Sergei Rebrov. The name still probably makes Levy shudder – and not just because of the Ukrainian's racist advice after Roman Pavlyuchenko signed this season. Rebrov was Spurs' record signing – at £11m – when he arrived from Dynamo Kiev in 2000. George Graham was manager but when he left his successor, Glenn Hoddle did not like the striker. He did not play him and the "asset" diminished to such an extent that he left. For free.

Levy vowed to change things. He would have a sporting director, a director of football who would buy players and provide the continuity if the club changed managers as well as advice to the board. It was forward-looking and European. He even looked at models such as PSV Eindhoven and Bayern Munich and determined on his plan. First in the role David Pleat, who did not get on with Hoddle and then, with much fanfare, Frank Arnesen, before he was spirited away by Chelsea's millions.

Still, a list of replacements was drawn up. Jol wanted Mark Wotte, a former manager, now at Southampton, who had been Feyenoord's technical director. But he was also a Dutchman, like Jol, and Levy was nervous about the pairing. He wanted a more independent voice, but still surprised many when he chose Comolli. After all it is understood the Frenchman, just 33 when he was appointed in 2005, was not even on the original six-strong shortlist and had a very sketchy knowledge of English football.

But he had worked for Arsenal. Just as Levy thought he was pulling off a masterstroke by appointing Jacques Santini ahead of Euro 2004 – he envisaged the Frenchman would lead his country to the title before, in reality, they bombed – so Comolli would be the man to redirect Arsène Wenger's conveyor belt of talent.

It led to another switch. Spurs had targeted young British talent: Tom Huddlestone, Aaron Lennon, Michael Dawson. Now Comolli, following on from Arnesen, was looking overseas. Benoît Assou-Ekotto, Kevin-Prince Boateng, Younes Kaboul. And the prices for the players were quickly rising, too. Then four of Spurs' most experienced scouts – including respected figures such as Eddie Presland and Alan Hill – were axed.

It wasn't just that. The squad, as ever, was unbalanced. Players, it seemed, were collected rather than collated. Everyone in football knows about Spurs' so-called "left-sided problem", but it was never solved. Under Pleat, Gareth Barry was one solution offered, but the deal fell through. Then there was Stewart Downing and, last year, Martin Petrov. Still no deal. In the end Spurs, this summer, bought David Bentley. A right-winger. Even Bentley, it is believed, questioned why Spurs wanted him when they already had Lennon. Look at the present squad list, which Ramos has culled with several of Comolli's signings denied squad numbers: there are four left-backs and just three strikers.

And that is even before the departures of Jermain Defoe, Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov were discussed. Good prices for all but what price for Spurs' future? Last year Jol had implored the board that if the club were to sell Michael Carrick then, please, do it early so he could rebuild his team after losing its focal point. A great price was achieved but Spurs paid a price, and Jol, too, with his job.

Ramos seemed a no-brainer. He was the exciting talent in European football. A man who played good, attacking football and who wanted to come to England. A buccaneer. A real catch. Comolli championed him and after a ham-fisted, messy, public courtship he was captured. He whipped Jol's squad into shape – literally – with players such as Huddlestone losing nine kilos and Paul Robinson, ten. Criticising Jol's players for being unfit bought him time and a cup was won. It was exhilarating.

But then it tailed off. The summer brought problems. Surely this was Ramos's chance to get his own squad, his own players – but he was recommending not just only those based in Spain but, largely, in Christian Poulsen, Jesus Navas and Diego Capel, those who played for his former club Seville. He wanted Real Zaragoza's Sergio Garcia as Keane's replacement. But that didn't happen. Instead Spurs bought Pavlyuchenko but not fellow Russian Andrei Arshavin while transfer deadline day was a frantic round of attempts to secure more firepower – Kevin Doyle? Emile Heskey? – as Berbatov left for Manchester United.

The new players have not, as yet, gelled. Why? "It's difficult to explain," Ramos said yesterday. "I can't explain that. It's [a] very long [explanation]." He then added: "If we can't win matches it means we have not got a good enough squad. We need to improve to win matches. We have to show we are worthy to stay up and avoid relegation." Incredible as it seems, that is a statement worthy of debate.

King in exile: The injury keeping Tottenham's lost leader on the sidelines

*Such is the poor state of Ledley King's knee that the Tottenham captain is capable of playing only one game every two or three weeks, the head coach Juande Ramos admitted yesterday. "Do you understand why I rotate?" Ramos asked. "What can I do if he is not in a condition to play? The problem with Ledley King is that for two or three years he's had a knee injury. It's been a very serious injury and it takes a long time to recover."

The 28-year-old missed the end of last season in the hope that his rehabilitation work would mean he could play more often this campaign but Ramos's claim casts serious doubts over King's participation. He has largely been used in the Uefa Cup but, given Spurs' league plight, Ramos must be sorely tempted to play him at Stoke tomorrow rather than away to Udinese on Thursday.