Carrick leaps to Jol's defence and slams 'unbelievable' Spurs board

While still athletic enough at 27 to perform a cartwheel after scoring, Tottenham's captain, Robbie Keane, has been around long enough to have experienced most things in this funny old game. Surely not a manager under pressure for losing the first two matches of the season though, Robbie? "I lost a manager after one game," he pointed out on Friday, "Marcello Lippi at Inter."

Keane did not stay at the San Siro much longer himself, playing only six times after his unexpected move from Coventry City before leaping from the Milanese frying pan into the Leeds United fire. In his sixth season at White Hart Lane, he might have expected to find some stability at last. Instead, two defeats in four days, against Sunderland and Everton, senta Spurs deputation hurrying off to Spain to sound out Seville's Juande Ramos about succeeding Martin Jol as manager.

It now appears that the job was never formally offered, though on Ramos's admission, contact was clearly made with his representatives at the very least. On Wednesday, concerned that his quote about being made a "dizzying" offer was being widely repeated in the British media, he telephoned Guillem Balague, a Spanish journalist based in London, in an attempt to put the record a little straighter. In Ramos's version, as translated by Balague: "I did not get offered the Spurs job at all. There never was an offer on the table from them. Spurs is a big club and anyone would be interested in the opportunity, but it is not for me now."

He would look as foolish as Tottenham if he were to go back on that in the near future, though the word "now" may of course be significant. By Friday, Spurs were even backtracking on demands for Jol to make the top four this season, but that remains the obvious target for the chairman, Daniel Levy, who is a businessman rather than a football man and knows where the real money is in club football: not the Uefa Cup.

More afternoons like last Saturday, when Derby County were effortlessly dismantled 4-0 as the home crowd supportively sang Jol's name, and all will be well. Unfortunately, the request to the visitors – "Can we play you every week?" – cannot be granted, and the fixture list now brings the champions Manchester United at Old Trafford, followed by London derbies against Fulham and Arsenal.

Having worked under Jol, United's former Tottenham midfielder Michael Carrick was as surprised as anyone by last week's developments. "It's unbelievable, a week gone and what he's had to go through, incredible. Since he's got there, they've done as well as the club could have hoped for. But people seem to forget that. I don't know what else they could have asked from him."

"I think we have made progress over the last six years," Levy admitted last October. "But to get to one level higher you're going to need a little bit of luck." Or, Jol may fear, a new manager.