In light of Juande Ramos' dismissal and Harry Redknapp's confirmed appointment, here we consider all the culprits of Tottenham's dreadful run of form.

A year on from the ruthless dismissal of Martin Jol on October 25, 2007, his successor, Ramos, met the same fate on the same date.

You couldn't help but feel sorry for Jol at the time, as despite the club's poor start to the season, he had brought them stability, was excellent with the media and worshipped by many fans. Ultimately, however, there was an underlying feeling he just wasn't a winner; he couldn't take Spurs to the next level.

Ramos came in not as a big name, but a coach fresh from immense success and still brimming with ambition. He had just won a phenomenal five trophies in 15 months with a Sevilla side that so often looked unstoppable. The Sevilla mould with a Spurs budget gave a legitimate reason to starry-eyed Yids to well and truly believe they could contend in Europe and break into the top four in the league. It seemed the shrewdest and perfect appointment possible, though allegations of an illegal approach for the 54-year-old and the Tottenham board's blatant undermining of Jol in recruiting him did the club's image no favours.

The Spaniard himself faced criticism, too: lambasted for leaving Sevilla in the lurch during its tumultuous time, derided by the Rojiblancos' president, Jose Maria del Nido, for chasing the #6 million per year that was being dangled on a string for him by the Spurs board, though the manager himself maintains it was always his dream to coach in the Premier League.

A day after Jol was sacked, Ramos, in his calculations, resigned from Sevilla, and the following day, October 27, he began his spell in charge of the Lilywhites, which was to last less than a year. And again, though more discreetly in this instance, having decided to sack its present coach, Spurs had its new man lined up all along. Harry Redknapp has already announced he would be leaving Portsmouth to take charge of the troubled north London club on the eve of a match.

Doesn't this all seem just a little bit too familiar? A massive £5 million in compensation has been paid out to Portsmouth, but can the Lilywhites really buy their way out of trouble with another manager who has overachieved and recently brought cup success to his former club?

Similarities aside, there will be far less sympathy offered to Ramos than there was to Jol and perhaps rightly so. Many will go as far as to call it karmic justice for both the club and the manager for the manner in which each of them joined forces in the first instance. It must also be noted that while it is still early in the season, Spurs' start has been nothing short of an abomination. If Jol's Tottenham was poor at the time of his dismissal, Ramos' here and now are as bankrupt as the Lehman Brothers.

Until his last days, Ramos remained something of an outsider. He still wasn't speaking English to the press - which didn't project a very good image of the club and affected his ability to gain a rapport with the fans - and he always seemed ill-at-ease, which was reflected in his often mish-mashed and varying team selections.

So, things weren't perfect. But let's just say, you would be hard-pressed to describe this dismissal as ruthless, but foolish? Maybe.

Renowned ex-Chelsea and Spurs' defender, Jason Cundy, has already given his frank assessment of the situation at White Hart Lane, placing the blame firmly on one man - and it's not Ramos.

"You can talk about all this hiring and firing, but the one thing consistent at Spurs is (chairman) Daniel Levy," he told Sky Sports News.

"(Jacques) Santini became a bad manager at Spurs. So did Jol and now Ramos. The one thing constant there is Levy," he added.

Perhaps, similar to Newcastle United, the manner in which the club functions at the very top creates problems that filter down into dressing room, through the tunnel and out onto the pitch as well. After all, only so much relative failure can be put down to bad luck. Coaches from all quarters constantly call for more time in the increasingly pressurised climate of modern management. The big money in the Premier League is having its adverse effects, as big expectations simply cannot be met across the board, and many are facing unfair treatment as a result. Ramos is no exception.

Yes, he has left the club in a worse position than when he joined it a year ago, but this is a reflection of the club, not the man himself. Ramos should be judged primarily on Spurs' form throughout the winter, which ended with them winning the club's first silverware of the decade in the form of the Carling Cup. It may seem a convenient and even contrived cut-off point on the surface, but not only did this win see them beat Arsenal for the first time in seven years - demolishing them 5-1 - and then beating Chelsea in the final, it went beyond luck, facing under-strength line-ups or any other excuses cynics have and will continue to trot out. It was Spurs at its competitive peak in recent times, and much of what has transpired since has been by and large out of the Spaniard's hands.

The poor start to the season under Jol had made it as good as impossible to compete for Champions League places, and with a UEFA Cup spot sewn up off the back of the Carling Cup triumph, the league became a dead-rubber affair in the spring and even sides of the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson have petered out when there was nothing left to play for. The summer then saw the failure of the board to foresee or accept the inevitable sale of indispensable strike pairing Robbie Keane and in particular Dimitar Berbatov. Action was not taken quickly enough to rebuild the shape of the team, which has since had devastating effects on its form.

Levy has even gone as far as to admit this in an open letter to the fans.

"The ultimate failure - as I have said before - of our dealings in this summer's transfer window was not about the departure of two good strikers, or because we have operated a structure that happens to have had a sporting director and a head coach, or because our financial parameters are too rigid - after all, let¥s not forget that we did bring in much quality to enhance our current squad. Quite simply, we failed because we were not as decisive or as successful in identifying or replacing the two strikers as early as we should have," he sighed on the club's official website.

While insisting the structure of the club was not at fault, he admitted the main undoing of the club was in the transfer market and that sporting director, Damien Comolli (who has been fired along with Ramos, his assistant, Gus Poyet, and first team coach, Marcos Alvarez), will not be replaced which is in itself an acknowledgement that the root of Spurs' problems was not Ramos himself. Once again, the continental system - even being operated by a Frenchman and a Spaniard - has failed in the United Kingdom, just as it has at West Ham United and Newcastle this season.

Sacking Ramos is unlikely to end in classic, Jol-like humiliation (as his Hamburger SV side has the chance to return to the top of the Bundesliga with a win today), because Spurs can only go up from where they are at the moment. This move may nevertheless prove a black mark against the tenure of Daniel Levy. It would hardly be a stretch to say Spurs won't be relegated this season, let alone that it won't finish at the bottom of the table. Harry keeping it in the league won't necessarily in any way validate the decision of the club to dismiss Ramos. He will either need to repeat his FA Cup triumph in successive seasons with different clubs, 'do a Ramos' and win what right now seems beyond it in the UEFA Cup, or do the unthinkable and break the top four.

Is any of these really foreseeable, not just this season, but even in the next or the one after? Meanwhile, what are the odds on Ramos doing all three with whatever club he signs with next?