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Of course, winning the title is also the aim of Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, Arsene Wenger at Arsenal and Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho.

The top-four target shows that Tottenham acknowledge, at the highest level, that they do not belong to the elite.

Privately this has been well known for a long time but I have rarely seen it accepted so clearly by a board of a once-top club; one that was considered part of the 鈥淏ig Five鈥� when the Premier League was formed.

In that sense they are like a political party that is often thumped in the polls and hopes to reduce its margin of defeat in the next election.

Politicians may privately accept that, and after an election even admit it, but while they are fighting a campaign they do not make such modest ambitions known.

Tottenham have been more openly honest - clearly there is no chance here of Tottenham doing a Tony Blair in 1997 and winning a landslide after four election defeats.

This is in sharp contrast to how the then owners of Tottenham saw the situation even a decade ago.

Alan Sugar, who was the chairman 10 years ago, held a very convivial lunch for us hacks and made it clear that his aim was to bring the championship back to London - he even set a time limit of three years.

We know what happened to his goal.

Of course, the change of aim shows how the Champions League has changed English football.

Getting into the Champions League means another 拢10m-拢15m a year.

As long as you stay in what is essentially a midweek European League, even if you do not progress far, you accumulate wealth.

Last week Martin Jol thought his days were numbered and this became very clear when he started talking statistics about how successful he has been.

Football, unlike cricket, is not a game where minute details of managerial records are touted around, and when managers go back to the record books you know they are in trouble.

In a sense Jol is a victim of his own success.

The 51-year-old Dutchman nearly took Spurs into Europe in his first half-season in charge after in November 2004, just missing out on a Uefa Cup place that season.

In his first full season in 2005-2006 he raised expectations even higher when he .

Jol was the first manager to get Spurs into Europe through their league position for 20 years - they had not reached such heady heights since the 1980s.

With European qualification now producing wealth that was just not there pre-1992, when the Champions League began, it is easy to see how Jol鈥檚 success made Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy鈥檚 eyes light up.

The problem has been the increasing feeling among the Tottenham board that Jol can lead the horse to water but cannot persuade it to drink.

I was first aware of this last season when I heard criticism of Jol鈥檚 handling of three crucial matches.

Curiously they were all cup matches, starting with the first leg of the which Tottenham led 2-0 only to draw 2-2.

The second occasion was the away match to when, after leading 3-1, they drew 3-3.

On both occasions they lost the return match.

The third occasion was the when Tottenham failed to make the most of home advantage and Juande Ramos clearly out-thought Jol.

There were, as Jol has since admitted, whispers, and the whispers were about his substitutions.

For example, taking Dimitar Berbatov off against Chelsea led to Tottenham drawing a match they had looked like winning.

You could ask, if that is the case, why did Levy give Jol 拢40m to spend this season, only to then offer his job to Ramos?

Here you might say Levy has form.

In the 2003-2004 season he gave Glenn Hoddle lots of money, then .

After that it took him 10 months to find a manager, with Tottenham being left in the hands of director of football David Pleat.

- was hailed as the start of the French revolution but lasted barely four months.

This time, led by Paul Kemsley, who is not a plc director but a vice-chairman of the subsidiary football club board, Levy clearly thought he had his man nailed down.

However, Ramos, having been tempted, decided not to come.

It is interesting that Kemsley made the offer to Ramos given how close he is to Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp, who has also been talked about as a possible Tottenham manager.

Now that Tottenham have got a messy compromise with Jol, two questions remain.

Firstly, how will Jol get on with Daniel Comolli, the director of football?

There are conflicting reports on how bad the relationship is.

The irony here is that Levy believes in this continental system of a director of football and a manager, something still relatively unknown in this country.

His previous partnership of Pleat and Hoddle was not without problems.

You could argue that they were both Englishmen who did not understand this foreign nonsense.

But evidently Jol the Dutchman and Comolli the Frenchman find the system just as difficult to work.

The other question is how has Jol鈥檚 position with the team been affected?

When it looked like Jol might be on his way out, and clearly while Ramos considered Tottenham鈥檚 mouth watering offer, there were briefings which suggested Jol did not get on with his players.

There were suggestions he had favourites whom he always picked.

Pointed attention was drawn to Steed Malbranque who, after scoring the first of his brace in the , rushed to embrace not Jol but Didier Zokora, who had been dropped by the manager.

The word was that Malbranque is a man who does not mince his words and it showed how some players felt about team selection.

Can it all be swept aside with a statement saying both sides agree Tottenham must make the top four?

I doubt it.