MARTIN JOL has carefully juggled Robbie Keane and Jermain Defoe and the Tottenham Hotspur forwards are likely to be kept in midair this season. Jol, the head coach, swapped between the two forwards to partner Mido last season, a tactic he is likely to continue after the arrival of Dimitar Berbatov in the summer.
Defoe sparkled two seasons ago, but he scored nine league goals last season during a campaign in which he started on the substitutes’ bench for 13 of his 36 Barclays Premiership matches. Some felt it was the reason that Defoe was not included in the England squad for the World Cup finals, an argument that Jol discounted after the forward returned to the England team for the 4-0 victory against Greece on Wednesday.
“It is a new season - everything that happened last season is in the past,” Jol said. “The only thing he can do is prove himself again. I think his attitude was immaculate. “He never moaned or criticised Sven, and I think that was a good thing. Two years ago, Sven left him out and I wasn’t even here. He played all the matches, so Sven knew exactly what he could do and he still left him out and took Walcott. It was his decision. Maybe Sven changed his mind a couple of days before the squad was going to Germany. It was not about the season, it was about the last two weeks and then he left him out. For a professional player it is one of the toughest things to accept.”
Jol said that Keane started 25 matches and made a further 11 appearances from the bench last season, a similar number to Defoe. “Sven knew we had Robbie Keane and it was difficult to play them both,” Jol said. “Every time we could play them both, when Mido was injured, we played them. I think that is something that you have to learn when you have big squads. Robbie Keane had to do the same.”