He lasted just less than a year as Tottenham Hotspur head coach, but Juande Ramos is now being talked about as a candidate for Jose Mourinho’s job as Chelsea manager.
Mourinho’s position as Blues boss was safe as houses at the start of the season. After all, he had just masterminded the double by leading his side to Premier League and Capital One Cup glory in the previous campaign.
However, Chelsea’s start to the 2015-16 season has been so bad – 11 defeats in 25 games, not including a penalty-shootout loss at Stoke City – that Mourinho is now a genuine contender in the sack race.
According to The Times, Chelsea executives will spend today deliberating over Mourinho’s future at Stamford Bridge.
The same newspaper highlight Ramos as a possible option to replace Mourinho on an interim basis.
Ramos, 61, is currently a free agent, having left Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk in May 2014.
He guided Dnipro to second place in the Ukrainian Premier League in his final season with the club.
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In a managerial career that stretches back to 1990, Ramos has held positions at 15 different clubs, most notably Sevilla – with whom he won the UEFA Cup in back-to-back years – and Real Madrid – where a 6-2 home defeat to Barcelona was a lowlight of a mixed six-month stint.
Although Ramos was sacked by Spurs just before the first anniversary of his appointment and left them bottom of the Premier League table after eight games of the 2008-09 season, he is still the last manager to guide the White Hart Lane club to a major trophy, having lifted the Carling Cup in February 2008.
Ramos’s Tottenham beat Chelsea 2-1 in the 2008 League Cup final on a day that saw Dimitar Berbatov and Jonathan Woodgate bag goals, after Didier Drogba had fired Avram Grant’s Blues into a half-time lead.
Overall, however, Ramos underachieved at Spurs. In total, he took charge of 54 games, winning only 21 of them – 38.89% – drawing 16 and losing 17.
To put that into some perspective, Tim Sherwood’s much-discussed win percentage was 50%, while Andre Villas-Boas delivered victories in 55% of his matches as Tottenham chief.
