Tottenham - 2 Charlton - 3: Martin Jol's representative flew into London yesterday to renegotiate his client's contract as Tottenham prepared to appoint the Dutchman as head coach today.
Spurs, whose a.g.m. is today, will announce that Jol is to take over from Jacques Santini, who resigned on Friday, possibly on a temporary basis to begin with.
The former RKC Waalwijk coach took charge of Saturday's game against Charlton and had been the first assistant to Santini.
Frank Arnesen, whose appointment as sporting director was always likely to conflict with the manager's position, spent most of the hours before Saturday's game denying that there had been a rift with Santini. He said he had known that the Frenchman had personal problems and that his leaving, if not his timing, had not come as a surprise.
Arnesen is believed to have wanted Jol in charge all along and as the pair shared the post-match press conference the strength of their rapport was obvious. The idea of a Frenchman, Dane and a Dutchman running Spurs always did sound a bit like an EU version of the one about the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman.
"Tottenham is a big club, one of the best clubs in England," said Jol of the chance to manage the north London side. "Everybody knows I was twice named coach of the year (in Holland at RKC). You are not coach of the year if your team is only fighting and clogging and kicking.
"Frank knows my team will play football, nice football. That is what I like about Tottenham. Tottenham was famous for Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle and all the names I played against. I always was a manager or head coach in Holland. If you ask me, one of my ambitions is to be a head coach or manager."
Nice football from Spurs wasn't much in evidence in the first half on Saturday against a dogged Charlton and Jol put the awfulness of Tottenham's football down to the aftershock of Santini's departure. Presumably the bad performance in losing at Fulham the previous weekend was due to a sense of foreboding.
Either way Tottenham, booed off at half-time when Charlton led 2-0 and three down early in the second half, recovered their wits sufficiently to score twice and threaten a draw, earning themselves a sitting ovation.
Jol earned himself some early brownie points by bringing on Michael Carrick, largely ignored by Santini, for the ineffective Jamie Redknapp and eventually restoring Robbie Keane to a central position.
Carrick's readiness to run at the opposition with the ball and pick out Jermain Defoe, Frederic Kanoute and Keane with precise passes steadily unravelled a Charlton defence that for the first hour had defied all of Tottenham's attempts at breaking it down.
Spurs suffered enough near-misses in the closing minutes to make a case for avoiding defeat but Charlton deserved their first away win of the season in the Premiership, not least because they played the final 21 minutes with 10 men.
The moment when Shaun Bartlett, having scored Charlton's first two goals, punched away Reto Ziegler's net-bound shot and got a red card marked the beginning of a Spurs recovery that had looked beyond them a few minutes earlier.
Charlton, themselves jeered off at The Valley the Saturday before after losing to Middlesbrough, were in equally urgent need of points. On Saturday, however, their confidence was restored. Helped by a distinct lack of urgency among Spurs' defenders, who were regularly turned by Jerome Thomas on the left, they scored two smart goals, Bartlett first-timing one and diving to head the other from centres supplied by Thomas and Luke Young.
When, soon after half-time, Tottenham stood transfixed as Thomas exchanged passes with Bartlett before scoring with the aid of a deflection, the discomfort appeared complete. But Keane's penalty, after Bartlett's save, and a sharply taken goal by Defoe, following a mistake by Matt Holland, eased the disappointment of what was after all Spurs' fourth successive league defeat.
