David Ginola: my five-point plan to save Spurs
David Ginola believes Spurs should stick with Juande Ramos
David Ginola has watched with disappointment as Tottenham Hotspur, one of his former clubs, has endured the worst start to a season in their history. Eight games into the campaign, they have yet to record a victory, lie bottom of the Premier League and attract daily headlines questioning the future of Juande Ramos, the manager, and Damien Comolli, the director of football.
Here Ginola, a former France international, lays out his five-point plan to turn around the club's fortunes. He is adamant that they should Ramos keep in the long term, implies that they need a new director of football and suggests they create an English core of players whose first objective is to entertain the White Hart Lane faithful.
1) Give Ramos five years
DG: "If you sign a manager and say he is probably one of the best managers in the world, in a few years time you cannot say he's the worst. He's still the same guy. You have to say, we are all on the same boat. The sports director, the chairman, the people working in the office, the manager and the players. And you have to give them three, four, even five years.
"You say, we have been struggling for many years. We start from scratch. You say, in five years time, I want to reach that point. How can someone arrive at work in the morning with the the pressure that they have to win on Saturday? Get past this and the manager will be smoother - in the way he talks to the players, to the press. He will be accessible."
2) Employ the right director of football
DG: "The manager and the sports director must first be friends, they must like each other. They must also have the same background in terms of education. If, for example, you have a sports director who did six years of study after his A-Level and a manager who is an ex-footballer, the sports director will look down on him. They will have an intellectual difference.
"If the manager is talking to a sports director who has no football background, he will say, 'I'm not talking to him because he doesn't understand the game.' They start to have conflict when they should share ideas. This is the role of the chairman - he should have knowledge of both men. If they cannot work together, there is no way you are going to be successful."
3) Players must give more of themselves
DG: "I have spoken to a few people still working for Spurs and the first thing they say is: "We miss you, David." They didn't mean that about football. That would be obvious, that was my job. They mean off the pitch.
"I look at players now. They walk out the stadium, get into their cars and that's it. I was always the last one to leave the stadium, even when we were losing. I would talk about the kids, life in general, going into different rooms in White Hart Lane, always giving my time.
"I am not trying to say I am better, but we were so lucky doing something we dream of and that was the least I could do. If someone is talking to me, I listen to them. Some of that has been lost at Spurs.
"In my time, we were close to each other. So when you lose, everyone is involved. When you win, everyone is involved. Nobody is hiding behind a curtain, saying it is not my fault. You need to be like a family, like the mafia. Nothing gets in or out."
4) Create a core of homegrown English players
DG: "It is good to have foreign players - I was one. But you when you have English players in your team, it helps the identity of the club and brings it closer to the fans. They say 'this is our man. One day he could play for England, represent our country'.
"Those players should be coming from the youth academy, where they are schooled in how to play football the Spurs way. To create the family spirit there has to be the opportunity for young players to progress. This is how football used to be."
5) Stick to a flair game
DG: "I don't like modern football. We have forgotten that football is a game, a show. Fans buy tickets and want to be entertained. Yet football now is about tactics, sides are strict in the way they play and extravagant players are very rare.
"When I joined Spurs, people told me I was their typical player because I had flair. That image was Spurs' strength, their marque de fabrique across the world, but it has been lost along the way. They need to recreate it."