Jol V Ramos

For me, there's not a great deal of mystery. Jol was a good manager, but not an elite coach. He did a lot of good things, he did some bad things, and more frustratingly seemed not to learn from his mistakes, or at least not be able to rectify them if he did.

Ramos' work at Sevilla suggested that he was on the cusp of moving into that elite. Was it the right decision to replace a good coach with a possibly great one? Hard to argue anything other than yes. Was it the right time to do it? No. The board should have had the balls to make the decision in the summer, giving Ramos a proper preseason to prepare the squad in line with his philosophy AND to make personnel changes where necessary.

As it stands, the failure to do that threatens to make European football for next season unlikely, bar a miraculous run/capitulation by other teams, or a cup win. As a consequence, players like Berbatov would almost certainly depart. We still won't really know the full implications until the end of the season.

There is an awful lot with Ramos that I am happy with so far, but much like players, the flaws in managers usually become apparent in the medium term, rather than the short term where their strengths tend to be revealed (Jol looked like a genius to start with, but then we all started to see where his weaknesses lay). We'll know more at the end of the season, and by the start of next, where I'd expect the squad to have been overhauled to the point where Ramos has the means to fully implement his ideas for the club.