Approaching his first anniversary in charge of Tottenham Hotspur, Juande Ramos should be in the mood for celebration, but the embattled head coach must feel far from it. With supporters hurling abuse and some players looking as if they wanted to be anywhere but at Fratton Park during the defeat by Portsmouth on Sunday, the club's European adventure may not be the only thing hanging in the balance in Poland this afternoon.

With players said to be unhappy at Ramos's rotation policy, Tottenham will cling to a 2-1 lead against a powerful Wisla Krakow team who came close to upsetting the odds in the Uefa Cup first round, first leg at White Hart Lane two weeks ago.

Ramos was in defiant mood last night, despite speculation that his job may be on the line in the near future if Tottenham's fortunes are not reversed. Yet victories have been hard to come by for the club since they lifted the Carling Cup in February and they go into the match bottom of the Barclays Premier League, without a league win this season.

Forced into a corner, Ramos came out fighting. “When you win you are the king and when you lose you are the worst,” he said. “I have been a trainer for 20 years and it has always been the same. I am sure that if we win in the next two or three weeks, it will be, ‘Ramos is the best in the world.' It would be a disaster for Tottenham to be knocked out of European competition. We want to win the Uefa Cup.”

Ramos and Tottenham have a reputation as cup specialists. He faced a similar challenge in his first campaign at Seville, when the team took six points from as many matches at the start of the 2005-06 season three years ago before finishing fifth and lifting the Uefa Cup, defeating Middlesbrough 4-0 in the final.

“In Spain, I think the pressure is more than in England because of the media,” he said. “We are not playing the best and the team is not very confident. The pressure is very high and we need to win two or three matches, then the mentality of the players will change. I speak to the chairman [Daniel Levy]. There is no problem. The relationship is very good.”

Ramos has been hampered by injuries to key players, but Ledley King is expected to return tonight and possibly Gareth Bale. Vedran Corluka, who is cup-tied, and Alan Hutton, who has a foot injury, will be missing in defence. “It makes my job more difficult as we can only go little by little in terms of getting good performances,” Ramos said.

Roman Pavlyuchenko is also ineligible, leaving Darren Bent to play as a lone striker, which could solve a problem for the head coach. “They are playing with similar characteristics,” Ramos said. “They need time for adaptation, to work together in a lot of matches.

“It is possible in the future that they will complement each other well. It is a bad situation because they are not complementing each other. We needed to work on this in pre-season, but the problem is that we are having to work on this in matches.”

Wisla are second in the Polish league after defeating Arka Gdynia 4-0 on Saturday. They have been champions six times and runners-up three times in the past ten seasons, but they have never progressed to the Champions League group stages. They defeated Barcelona 1-0, but lost 4-1 on aggregate in the third qualifying round this season.

Maciej Skorza, the Wisla manager, said: “We want to play aggressive and push them back into the penalty area from the first minute. If we can do that, Tottenham will start to lose confidence and play worse.”