The way Martin Jol told it, his club wooing another manager last week was almost a good thing. Tottenham Hotspur officials met Juande Ramos, the Seville coach, in Spain and seemingly offered him the chance to replace Jol as manager, but the Dutchman yesterday attempted to shrug off his board’s machinations as proof that he has moulded Tottenham into “a big club”.

Jol tried to project a relaxed, jocular image: still here, still happy. But he implied that the opposite was true for Jermain Defoe and raised the possibility that the striker’s departure was imminent. Jol expects to go nowhere, in the short term at least. Having seriously looked at dismissing him after only two games, it could be argued that Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, is behind his man in the same way that the senators were behind Julius Caesar on the Ides of March.

After meeting Levy this week, however, Jol believes they can move forward together even though his position appeared untenable only a couple of days ago. “It was not the easiest week,” Jol said. “The chairman said to me he’s 100 per cent behind me and never approached someone to make an offer. [The board] said ‘you did a very good job’. Europe twice . . . but it’s not enough for them and that is the only positive thing, I’m at a club where there are big expectations. Everybody wants to do really well. I think it’s a big compliment.”

A statement from Levy this week made it clear that the board want Champions League football next year. “They never told me I had to quit, they never sat down with me and said ‘you have to do better’,” Jol said. “The only thing they wanted to know is if I had belief that we could be in the top four and I said ‘yes, I believe it – the only thing is, we have players out, I need some time’.”

Tottenham lost their first two games but beat Derby County last weekend. They face Manchester United at Old Trafford tomorrow. Jol took charge in 2004 and steered the club to successive fifth-place finishes in the past two seasons. “They told me they were very happy with what we achieved,” Jol said, “and they’d better be because before me there was not a lot of managers who did the same. So I believe them.”

As for the meeting with Ramos, Jol attempted an analogy that, he conceded, needed some fine-tuning. “If my missus would go to Spain and I would see pictures of her I would be gutted,” he said. “But I always realised that she would come back because she speaks French, Dutch, English but not Spanish, so she can’t talk to the guy. She’d come back to me.”

Jol suggested that Defoe may seek a separation. He has been offered an extension to his contract, which has two years to run, but is unhappy at being a perennial substitute. “He’s not signed. He’s the only player who doesn’t want to extend his contract. Everybody else is committed,” Jol said.

“If Jermain is committed to this club he should sign his contract because we want to keep him. He tells everybody that he loves the club. So – sign a contract. I don’t know what will happen to him if there are other clubs [interested]. The chairman told me a couple of weeks ago, ‘I don’t want to be the chairman who’s having another [Sol] Campbell on his hands’.”

Campbell left on a Bosman free transfer for Arsenal. According to Jol, Defoe is “the best finisher around the box in England” but he has been unable to supplant Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane as the first-choice partnership at White Hart Lane. Defoe has endured similar frustration at international level.

Jol said he was “disappointed” when Steve McClaren, the England coach, brought on Kieron Dyer as a second-half substitute while Defoe remained on the bench in Wednesday’s defeat by Germany at Wembley. “That was annoying for me,” he said. “I always sit in front of the television, I want him to play and he’s not even coming on.” There was the most ringing of endorsements for Paul Robinson, the Tottenham goalkeeper, who was culpable for Germany’s equaliser. “The mistake he made was not a mistake, it was very unfortunate,” Jol said. “It’s a big fuss about nothing.”

No quarter

To join the big four, you have to beat the big four. But Tottenham have won only once – at home to Chelsea last season – against the top clubs in 21 attempts under Martin Jol. Tottenham last won at Old Trafford in 1989 and have not beaten Manchester United since 2001.