Stuttering Spurs lost for words

JUANDE RAMOS is understood to be a man of few words. But the Spaniard is already fluent enough to get a simple message across to the players he has inherited from Martin Jol and whom he saw in action for the first time yesterday.

Minutes after the final whistle had sounded on a morale-sapping home defeat by a relentless but by no means ruthless Blackburn side, he strode into the dressing room and told his new charges: “We start tomorrow morning”.

Fittingly, the new regime will embark from precisely the same spot where the sacked Martin Jol left off last week — third from bottom in the Premier League.