Patience Says Balague

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With Tottenham sitting rock bottom of the Premier League table with just two points to their name, the pressure is very much on Juande Ramos.

Just over a year into his reign at White Hart Lane, the Spurs faithful have started to become discontented, with some fans venting their frustration at Ramos during Sunday's 2-0 defeat at Portsmouth.

So is the Spaniard fighting to save his job?

Sky Sports' Spanish football expert Guillem Balague has known Ramos since his days at Sevilla and insists the Spurs boss is happy with life in London and is capable of turning things around.

"That's not really fair," Balague said of the pressure on Ramos.

"At Spurs everyone seems to have lost patience all of a sudden apart from the people who actually sack managers at the club, and that's the board.

"They seem to be happy, they seem to be saying that as well and they realise mistakes have been made in the summer in terms of transfer decisions.

"He hasn't become a bad coach overnight. He's a man that contrary to reports, is enjoying life in London. If he wasn't then why is he spending from 8.30am to 4.30pm every day at the training ground?

"He had commercial stuff going on in Madrid on Monday, which he cancelled to keep working with the side.

"It's just a matter of people being patient and things being improved on the training ground because there is a lot of young players and that's one key part of what's happening at Spurs.

"There's maybe even too many young players, so when things go wrong they put their heads down. We saw that very clearly against Portsmouth.

"They have to work not just on the tactics, but also on the psychological part of it."

Homesick
It has been reported that Ramos is homesick in England, but Balague disputed those accusations, insisting that Spurs fans need to be more patient with him.

"One report in The People said he was homesick - and it was rubbish," he added on Sky Sports News.

"It's not the case. In fact the kids are coming over to London, he loves it.

"It's not just him. Marcos Alvarez and everybody else who is in the team is enjoying themselves. They are enjoying the job they are doing and in fact it was their dream to come to the Premiership.

"I can also tell you that they know football They've been in this situation before in different clubs and you get to a point where there's so much pressure that somebody has to go - and that will be the manager.

"If you look at the stats for Sevilla when both Marcos Alvarez and Juande Ramos arrived, eight weeks into the job they only had four points - but they ended up in the Champions League.

"So people be patient."


Communication
It was not until September 17 - almost a year into his Spurs tenure - that Ramos conducted a press conference in English and many have suggested that the communication barrier is causing a problem.

But Balague insists that bilingual assistants such as Gustavo Poyet and Marcos Alvarez have helped him to overcome that issue.

He continued: "Not only is Gustavo Poyet there to help, but his English is better than it is when he gets stage fright and you put a camera on him.

"He speaks better English than it seems.

"It's a clichÚ I know, but football is a universal language. There's a series of things that you can say through Marcos Alvarez, who speaks good English and Gustavo Poyet.

"He sees football in a way that neither of those guys do so he is able to change things during the game. If that's the case people will ask why he can't see what the best XI is for Spurs.

"Well, what is the best XI for Spurs when you've got players who are not confident, are not playing to their best level and disappear when things go wrong?

"You have to try different things. Plus of course rotation is the name of this business at the moment, five days in 13 or 14 days means you need to give a chance to other people so everybody is fresh."


Policy
Ramos has also been criticised for the club's summer transfer dealing which saw Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov leave, while the incoming Roman Pavlyuchenko has struggled to click with Darren Bent up front.

However, Ramos insists Ramos cannot be held fully reposnibe for transfer policy.

He said: "When people talk about Juande Ramos's signings, I think in the case of Spurs it's a wrong conception.

"I think it's the clubs's signings. There are four or five people giving opinions on signings and he is one of them.

"He can suggest things, and if you look at Spurs you could say they need a centre-back, an experienced striker and a defensive midfielder. I'm pretty sure Juande Ramos realised that as well and maybe even asked for it.

"But the club decided through a very good pre-season where Roma was destroyed, they beat Celtic and Borussia Dortmund that it was not needed and in fact Bent was a good enough striker. Why get another one?

"Well the thing is if you have Bent and Pavlyuchenko they are very similar and it would have been better to maybe sell Bent and get a different kind of striker or maybe get a different kind of striker to Pavlyuchenko.

"The singings have not just been Juande Ramos, the mistakes are not only Juande Ramos' and that's something that the club accepts and realises.

"They have to move on and try to apply the solutions to them."