MARTIN Jol has too much humility to engage in any Teutonic acts of schadenfreude, but you might forgive him a wry smile as his former employers remain rooted to the bottom of the Premier League after the worst start in the club’s 126-year history.

It will be a year next Sunday since Jol was given his marching orders by Daniel Levy, a dismissal that was expedited by the fact Spurs had clocked up just seven points from their opening nine league fixtures; Ramos, by way of comparison, currently has a return of two points from eight.

Jol was eventually shown the door after the 2-1 home defeat against Getafe in the UEFA Cup, and it is a fate his successor could well face this Thursday as Tottenham travel to Italy to play a Udinese side that is currently perched on top of Serie A.

Ramos arrived at Spurs with a reputation as one of the best coaches in Europe having guided Sevilla to back to back UEFA Cup victories, yet despite winning the Carling Cup in his first season at White Hart Lane (with a team mostly assembled by Martin Jol, it must be said), things have not run according to plan.

Finishing in the bottom half of the Premier League was hardly a ringing endorsement for a man brought in to replace a manager who was supposedly only capable of finishing fifth (the fact that Martin Jol’s Hamburg side currently top the Bundesliga kind of rubbishes that argument). But the real problem is not that Ramos has forgotten how to be a decent manager (although he is doing a pretty good impression), the problem is with Levy himself and the now, supposedly, exit-bound Director of Football Damien Comolli.

The problems with Levy are manifold and self-explanatory (the treatment of Martin Jol, the handling of the Berbatov transfer). But the problem with Comolli is not just his proclivity to spunk millions of pounds on talent-shy cloggers (Bent, Kabul, Modric, etc), nor is it that he is completely and hideously out of his depth (his only prior scouting experience was helping Arsenal sign Gael Clichy: the total sum of seven years toil at the Gunners). The real problem is with the role of the Director of Football itself.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Tottenham’s troubles are engineered not by Ramos, but a management structure that surrenders the responsibility of buying and selling players to an incompetent coterie of boardroom cronies. As illustrated at Newcastle, a Director of Football does not work. Levy might point to the so-called ‘success’ of the Chelsea model, but then Mourinho had little to do with the arrival of Shevchenko or the sale of William Gallas, and we all know how that sorry little episode concluded.

Removing the manager from the transfer process not only undermines his position at the club (can you imagine Alex Ferguson being told he no longer has carte blanche on who Manchester United buy or sell?), but it makes a total mockery of his accountability. Managers have always paid for poor results with their jobs, but it is hardly fair to ditch the manager if they have had to pick players they didn’t even want in the first place. Would Ramos honestly choose Darren Bent over Berbatov, Keane or Defoe? The team sheet says yes, logic and reputation suggests no.

What Comolli’s Director of Football role ultimately implies is that Comolli knows more about football than Juande Ramos – or in more commercial terms, that Ramos cannot be trusted to buy players. Which is clearly utter bilge, and more pertinently, exactly the reason why this system doesn’t work.

Managers will always buy dud players (Ferguson has probably bought more flops than stars – think Veron, Djemba-Djemba, Cruyff, Poborsky, Forlan, and so forth), but that is football. If you can’t trust your manager to buy the right players (and allow for the fact he will occasionally get some decisions wrong), then clearly he is not the right man for the job.

For now, Ramos still has the support of the Tottenham fans – but then so did Martin Jol. If history is the barometer, then Ramos has just one game left to save his job. Only this time Levy won’t be able to rely on Comolli to do his dirty work: this time he will have to face the manager and the Tottenham fans himself. Therefore it might not be results that save Ramos, but Levy’s cowardice instead.