SPINNING IS the art of managing one's image through the media. And the last 10 days have offered a textbook case study in what not to do. Basically, anyone wanting to pull a Peter Mandelson only needs to look at Tottenham Hotspur's actions and do the exact opposite. Rarely in recent Premiership history has a situation been so mismanaged.

And the result of this Keystone Kops PR is that Spurs go into today's clash with Manchester United with a manager they have undermined in public but can't realistically sack, at least not for the next few months. What's more, whatever problems there may have been behind the scenes, whatever reasons the board may have had to let him go, they are all presumably still there.

Where to begin this sorry tale? Certainly not with the decision to explore other options. Martin Jol may be the most statistically successful Spurs boss in 30 years (on a points-per-game basis) and he may have taken them to two consecutive fifth place finishes, but it's equally true that the club have backed him with enormous sums of money and that, if there is no forward progress, they are entitled to look for a new boss. That part of it is most definitely not the problem.

No, Tottenham's blundering began at the end of last season, when they pledged their support to Jol, despite a reported falling out with Damien Comolli, the club's director of football, back in February.

If there is one basic tenet about having such a role, it's that the director of football and the manager must work in tandem and, crucially, must trust each other fully. Yet according to reports, the relationship between Jol and Comolli makes that between Jose Mourinho and Frank Arnesen appear downright jovial.

Instead, Spurs decided to keep their fingers crossed and hope that everything would magically sort itself out. Two losses in their first two Premiership games evidently convinced them that this was not going to happen. Panic set in and this is where the story comes down to who you believe.

If you buy Tottenham's party line, nothing really happened, apart from club secretary John Alexander and vice-chairman Paul Kemsley flying off to Spain to meet with Juande Ramos, the Seville manager at the very public Alfonso XIII hotel. And, of course, the Spurs' version goes, that meeting had nothing to do with Jol and his job security.

Unless you believe in Father Christmas you probably don't put much faith in this version of events and prefer a more plausible theory. Something like this: Spurs believed they could get Ramos signed, sealed and delivered within a few days. Alexander, a bureaucrat who really only comes into play when it's time to talk contracts, was dispatched to meet Ramos.

What happened next lends weight to this theory. Stories from within Spurs began to leak out suggesting Jol was about to be sacked, to the point that some bookmakers stopped taking bets. That's how sure the club were that Ramos would come to North London. It's the only possible way to explain the stories leaking out of White Hart Lane.

They weren't just wrong, they were spectacularly wrong. Ramos had no intention of leaving, he just wanted to hear what Spurs had to say.

Yet the North London club totally misread him. For reasons known only to them, they seemed to think Ramos would walk out on Seville, a club competing in the Champions' League, a club which spent big to bring in the likes of Morgan De Sanctis and Seydou Keita over the summer, a club which, on Friday, will contest the European SuperCup against AC Milan. And they thought he would swap all that for Spurs, a club whose season is already under way, just a few days before the closing of the transfer market.

Jol tried to make light of it, saying he would be far more gutted if his wife had secretly met Ramos at the Seville hotel. On Friday he seemed resigned and dignified, almost looking to emulate Claudio Ranieri, when the former Chelsea boss found himself in the same position four years ago.

Ranieri won the sympathy vote back then, though it did not stop Chelsea from bringing in Mourinho to replace him. Now Jol is in a similar position: the neutrals love him and the bile is reserved for the Spurs board.

Which, to some degree, is more than justified by their attempts at back-pedalling from their embarrassing situation. They published statements on the club website on successive days, each one more stupefying than the previous.

On Tuesday, they basically gave Jol an ultimatum, saying that their management had to be "of the highest standard". On Wednesday, "to further clarify the situation" (as they put it), they said nobody had been offered a managerial position "while that position has been held by Martin Jol". And, on Thursday, they went even further, saying that Jol had the chairman's "100% support".

To back this up, they even privately told the press that they had rebuffed dozens of enquiries from would-be managers eager to replace Jol.

The fallout from all this is not pretty. Those players who would have been happy to see the back of Jol (and there are a few) are stuck with him. Those loyal to Jol (among them Paul Robinson) have been critical of the club's behaviour towards him and are left to wonder what kind of people are signing their pay cheques every other week.

And Jol himself can now do the dignified "Dead Man Walking" routine the rest of the year, which, incidentally, would get him off the hook if the club finish lower than last season.