Tottenham: Comoli Exit Imminent As Levy Weighs Up Sporting Director Role

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Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy is weighing up whether to scrap its director of football set-up completely, with the sacking of sporting director Damien Comoli at White Hart Lane imminent.

Comoli is set to leave Spurs after their worst start to a season for 96 years, which has left the North London club rooted to the bottom of the Premier League, without a win in the Premiership yet this season. Levy is set to come under severe pressure not to replace the Frenchman when he eventually does part company with Tottenham.

The system was first put in place at Spurs by Levy in May 2004 when Levy appointed Frank Arnesen to recruit players for Tottenham, with the management team of Jaques Santini and Martin Jol brought in to do the coaching side of things at White Hart Lane. However, Levy has been told by those around him that Comoli’s role has become insignificant to the club and that it is really not necessary to replace him. This would mean scrapping the system of one man responsible for recruitment and another responsible for coaching, which Spurs were the first to introduce in the Premier League.

It is understood that Comoli’s role has been reduced to acting as nothing more than a go-between for Levy, who is the one that decides the limit of Spurs’ buying and selling in the transfer market. With the Tottenham chairman being the one that ties up the majority of the deals for players that arrive in North London as in the case of the £16.5million deal for Croatian International Luka Modric from Dinamo Zagreb earlier this year.

Comoli joined from bitter rivals Arsenal in 2005 after Arnesen left Tottenham to join Chelsea and is believed to have been the major player in the sacking of Jol from Spurs in October 2007. With the Frenchman declaring in the press conference to mark Jol’s successor at Tottenham Juande Ramos that he would ultimately stand or fall on the decision to appoint the Spaniard. A price that he is now about to pay.

Comoli is now believed to be heading for the exit at the Lane within the next few weeks under the guise of the understanding that this will be ‘by mutual consent’. His shortcomings were highlighted this summer when the late sale of Dimitar Berbatov to Manchester United left Spurs short of options upfront, but his transfer dealings of the previous summer, with Younes Kaboul, Kevin-Prince Boateng and Darren Bent arriving at Tottenham for a combined £27million and failing to live up to expectations along with the failure of other signings Adel Taraabt and Benoit Assou-Ekotto, who have also failed to make any sort of impact at Spurs.

It has emerged since Comoli left Arsenal for Spurs that Tottenham were not getting Gunners boss Arsene Wenger’s bright young scout, but as Arsenal chief scout Steve Rowley later revealed that the only player of note Comoli had a hand in bringing to the Gunners was Gael Clichy. Which begs the question on why Levy saw fit to employ Comoli in the first place.

However, when Comoli does leave Tottenham it will largely fall on Levy to decide with the rest of the board at ENIC whether they will employ someone else in the role. Should they choose not to then Ramos will become a more traditional manager at White Hart Lane, with the Spaniard having a direct line to Levy with regards to transfer dealings, but this might not suit Levy, who has grown used to the buffer that Comoli provides. With no sporting director in place to take the flack it would fall on Levy to take the flak in the future.