I was born in '94 and I was a toddler in '96. Do you really expect me to know how well Spurs did in that time frame? How was I meant to know that? I know about how well Arsenal did of course because they are the club I follow and I've read about their history, but you can't have expected me to trawl through Spurs' history and know specific elements of it, like the things you've described in detail above. I know a few things about your history and your players, but have very little knowledge on your results and league finishes.
By saying I was "plain wrong", you implied that you did.
Regardless, I'm sure your players were not as bad as you are making them out to be.
Whenever an All Time Worst Spurs Players thread pops up, you will see Edinburgh and Dozzell feature prominently. Likewise, if Jenas was any good, we would've been able to sell him by now.
Sorry but what top, top class player would be attracted to come to Tottenham and play in the Europa League? Hardly inspiring, is it? You could have attracted a few decent players, but it would have been extremely difficult to attract another gem like Berbatov to the club. In my opinion, your problem that season was not the personnel, but the Ramos's and his poor strategies.
We weren't even in Europe when we signed Klinsmann, Rebrov or Davids.
As for the bloody awful start to 2008-9, it can't all be blamed on Ramos - our team had been reliant on the Keane/Berbatov partnership to bail them out since the Jol era, with the 6-4 win over Reading being the ultimate demonstration of this fact.
Jenas has always been pap from what I've seen of him, Zokora was distinctly average in the Premier League but did well in Spain and made 91 appearances for Sevilla, so he can't have been that bad. I get the feeling that if you had a better manager who knew his tactics or was an excellent motivator with man management like Redknapp, you could have had a couple of really decent seasons (by your standards) instead of finishing 11th and 8th respectively.
Zokora improved at Sevilla as they play with two defensive midfielders, of which he is only one. Remember how both Paul Robinson and Huerellho Gomes conceded a lot of long-range strikes a few seasons back? That was because Zokora wasn't doing his job as a defensive midfielder, and frequently losing possession (as well as exposing us to set pieces on the edge of the box at frequent intervals)
Spurs' have played some great football which is easy on the eye, despite having poor league finishes, so that may have come as some sort of consolation for all of Ramos's faults.
The amount of money wasted in that time continues to haunt us - £15m for Bentley?!? We're never getting that back.
Anyway - it does not mean you were a one man team with Berbatov. You'd bought in Keane and Bent, Bent despite being lazy was your top goalscorer in 07-08, Keane went to Liverpool but swiftly returned back to Spurs and you'd let go of and then re signed Defoe, too, although I think that was when Redknapp took over? Can't remember.
Keane and Berbatov were joint top scorer in 2007-8.
Bent may have been our top scorer in 2008-9, but the majority of his goals were in the first three months of the season - the reason we brought back Keane and Defoe was because of this, as well as the fact Bent didn't fit into our system or style of play (which goes back to the money wasted at the time - but at least we made a profit on Bent thanks to the signing-on clause in the deal we did with Sunderland)
The issue was the management, moreso than personnel, in my opinion.
Look at how well you did when Redknapp took over - from looking likely relegation candidates, to finishing 8th in the league, which I assume no one would have been able to envisage, given the lacklustre start to the season.
Defoe, Keane and Palacios arrived in January, and that stabilised the team - we had a second stutter from mid December to mid January, which is why they were brought in.