Juande Ramos

As we prepare to welcome our former manager back to White Hart Lane a brief look at his time at the club.
A period that brought a couple of tremendous highs with the  crushing 5-1 win over Arsenal followed by the League Cup triumph when we beat Chelsea in the Final.
He also oversaw our worse ever start in the League.  

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Juande having been forced to stop playing due to an injury went into management and coached a number of Spanish teams,although a number for just one season. He then spent three years at Sevilla. Where he had won the UEFA Cup twice, the UEFA Super Cup and the Copa del Rey. Then having not coached outside Spain he joined Tottenham as manager in October 2007 replacing the very popular Martin Jol. He got off to a good start with a 2-0 win at home to Blackpool in the League Cup. Tottenham started to put together a string of results and the season that started so badly was looking up. January 2008 saw Tottenham play Arsenal in the Semi-Finals of the League Cup. A 1-1 draw in the first leg away was following by an evening never to be forgotten as we crushed them 5-1 in the return game. We moved on to the Final at Wembley, our first game at the stadium since it was re-built and the now famous 2-1 win as we beat Chelsea. Another amazing day for the club and its fans.

With European Competition assured and things looking up for the club everything suddenly turned sour. The Wembley triumph was followed by a 1-4 defeat at Birmingham who would be relegated. Within two weeks we tumbled out of the UEFA Cup. The league season went from bad to worse. As we won three of our last 12 games and we picked up only 14 points. The team finished 11th behind Fulham and West Ham. A massive 30 points away from the Champions League places. The chances of recruiting top players for the following season was lost and the sale of Keane followed by Berbatov left Spurs with a strike force of Pavlyuchenko, Bent and Campbell-Fraizer.

The following season was the worse ever start to a league campaign. After eight games we had two points and was bottom of the table. On the field our performances were poor and uninspiring. In Europe we had four points from three games. Cracks were showing in his relationship with the players and The Board decided they needed to act before it was too late and removed  him from his post.

The statistics show that after a promising start he ended his rein with just 14 wins in 35 league games and a points per game average of 1.17 which places him 28th in the table compared to other managers. This with an  overall win rate of just 38%.

Returning to Spain he took over at Real Madrid and lasted only one season. A 6-2 defeat to Barcelona who finished 9 points ahead of Madrid meant the end. He moved to CSKA where he was removed after just 47 days. In October 2010 he joined Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk. In the three seasons he has been in charge they have finished fourth each time. In fact Dnipro have finished fourth six years running and at the half way stage this season they lay, fourth.

So Thursday sees his return to the Lane and a warm welcome and a night for many memoirs.

About the author:
Keith Harrison, Nilgiris, TN
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