Aaron Lennon names his favourite among the five full-time managers he had during his time at Tottenham, revealing that one coach filled him with confidence and took an interest in him off the field.
Lennon played under Martin Jol, Juande Ramos, Harry Redknapp, Andre Villas-Boas and a brief period under Mauricio Pochettino during the decade he spent at White Hart Lane.
He was a fixture in the starting eleven for all of those managers barring Pochettino, having been part of some outstanding Spurs sides during that time.
The pacy winger has now opened up on his experiences working with different managers, picking one as a clear favourite.
Aaron Lennon credits Martin Jol for helping him adapt at Tottenham
Lennon made the move from Leeds United to Tottenham as a teenager, and he reveals that Martin Jol played a big role in making him feel at home in London and helping him adapt to the demands of Premier League football.
When asked about the time he spent with the Dutchman, the winger told Football.London: “He was unbelievable. I absolutely loved working for Martin Jol. Honestly, he’s some man. The moment I got there, I was really homesick and he was fantastic with me. He was giving me extra days off to try and get me to adapt to London.
“Just the confidence he gave me as a young player coming into a new big club, a new environment, and literally put his arm around me and let me flourish to be the player that I became. He was so important for me.
“He was tactically very good, man management even better, and all around a genuinely lovely, lovely man, one of the nicest guys you’ll meet in football. He actually cared about you as a human being, not just you as a football player, and I couldn’t speak highly enough of him, honestly, he’s still to this day one of my actual favourites.”
While Jol was a popular figure in the Tottenham dressing room, the man who replaced him was anything but, as several former Spurs players have remarked that Juande Ramons’ dietary restrictions made life difficult.
However, Lennon reveals that he enjoyed working under the Spanish coach, although he admitted that he did go too far with his nutritional stipulations.
The England international continued: “In the food department, Ramos was by far the strictest. I remember the first day he came in, he tipped the butter into the bin! Back then you’d have your toast with butter and he went to the bin and it was like ‘what’s happening here? I’ve just seen him putting the butter in the bin’.
“But as an actual man and a tactician, tactically he was unbelievable. Like really, really good and really clever, but the food stuff that’s where he was really strict on the diet. Body fat testing, it was every Tuesday. You couldn’t go up. If you did go up, you’d be doing extra running.
“So he was really strict in that sense, but when it came to actually being around the place he was quite laid back with everything else. It was mainly the diet stuff and I would say he did push things a little bit too far, and he upset a lot of players, especially senior players, they’d got away with what they want to eat.
“You’ve got a lot of players with a lot of superstitions. You might want some tomato sauce on your pasta and you’ve had it for maybe five or six years of your career, which has worked completely fine, then a manager comes in and says ‘no, you’re not allowed this anymore’. So it’s always going to create that problem.
“I actually really liked Juande Ramos. I thought he was a good manager. I just think he went a little bit too far with the nutrition stuff, but each to their own.”
Lennon recalls magical Spurs Wembley moment in 2008
While Ramons failed to last even one full year in the Tottenham hot seat and his time at the club is not remembered fondly, he remains the last manager to win a trophy in N17.
Aaron Lennon admits that the journey to lifting the Carabao Cup final in 2008 was special for Tottenham as they thrashed Arsenal in the semi-final and came from behind to beat Chelsea at Wembley in the final.
When asked about lifting the trophy, the former Tottenham man said: “It was magical, honestly, the whole build up to it that year, it felt like it was going to be our year. I remember when we beat Arsenal in the semis, it felt like something special was happening. Like I said about Juande, he tactically was unbelievable. He prepared things really, really well.
“His in-game tweaking of things that he could change was what he was brilliant at. He did that throughout a lot of big games. He’s really, really clever, and I think that definitely was one of the reasons we managed to win that game, and also the quality. We had some good players as well in that squad.”
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