LONDON (AP) -Tottenham fans had every reason to think their team would contend this season. Few would have imagined that after six games their team would be last in the Premier League and off to its worst start in 53 years.
Manager Juande Ramos had strengthened his League Cup-winning squad with such players as Luka Modric, Giovani dos Santos and David Bentley.
Now, far from looking like a team capable of challenging the traditional top four of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, Spurs are in crisis. They have but two points and can't even keep up with Stoke, Bolton, Middlesbrough and Fulham. Even a League Cup victory at Newcastle hasn't lifted the gloom.
Until Sunday's 2-0 defeat at Portsmouth - a team that had conceded 10 goals without reply in its previous two games - Tottenham fans had kept faith with Ramos, the man who had guided Seville to two UEFA Cup triumphs.
But it was too much for some fans. They chanted ``You don't know what you're doing'' when Ramos removed the club's latest big signing, Russian striker Roman Pavlyuchenko, and replaced him with the uninspiring Darren Bent.
The fans clearly wanted two strikers on the field, especially with their team two goals down, and they have been puzzled by Ramos' repeated, seemingly needless lineup changes from game to game. Nineteen different Spurs players have started so far this season.
The Tottenham followers see Aston Villa, a club which has the same ambition to break into the top four, third in the standings and Villa manager Martin O'Neill has started with the same 11 in every league game. The last time a Villa manager had this approach, the team won the English league in 1981 using only 14 players all season and followed that with the European Cup - now Champions League - a year later.
That's the sort of achievement Spurs fans have been dreaming of for years. Right now it's hard to see where their next league victory is coming from.
Spurs' next game is at home to Hull City, the team that made it to the top tier for the first time in its 104-year history through the promotion playoffs last season.
While that would have seemed like an easy three points when the fans looked at the schedule at the start of the season, they will be glad of just one right now.
Hull has turned out to be no pushover and on Saturday scored a stunning 2-1 victory at Arsenal.
If Tottenham goes out of the UEFA Cup by losing at Wisla Krakow on Thursday and then tumbles to Hull, Ramos will be in far more trouble with the fans as well as the club's owners.
``I speak with the chairman regularly and everybody is aware of our delicate position but we have to work hard together to change it,'' Ramos said.
``There is another game on Thursday in a different competition and the players know they must recover quickly. Does it hurt when the fans say those things? No, it hurts only when we cannot win games.''
Ramos certainly needs to keep the Spurs fans behind him. He will have seen first hand the fiasco at Newcastle. The Magpies supporters have vented their fury at owner Mike Ashley for the team's appalling play and left their stadium 60 percent empty for the League Cup meeting with Spurs.
``The fans need to understand that the first people who want to change the situation are the players, the management and all the people in the club,'' Ramos said. ``This is when we all need to work together. It's a difficult time and we all hope to change the situation.''
It's lucky for Ramos that the season is only six games old and he has 32 more to put things right.
``We have young players but players with quality and I have every confidence in the team. However, they are young, the pressure is on and it's possible the confidence is low,'' Ramos said. ``I'm sure when we win two or three matches that situation will change.''
But Martin Jol thought the same thing this time last year, and look what happened to him.
He was fired after 10 games and replaced by Ramos.
