What a difference a year makes for Tottenham Hotspur and their legions of long-suffering supporters. The 2-1 victory over Liverpool on the opening weekend, followed by an impressive 5-1 demolition job away at Hull in the second game, sees Spurs sitting pretty at the top of the English Premier League table. Okay, it’s only after two games, but it is a remarkable turnaround in the club’s fortunes given that this time last year, the White Hart Lane outfit were in utter turmoil.

Going into the 2008-09 season the first team had a different look about it under elusive Spaniard Juande Ramos and sporting director Damien Comolli. Ketchup was banned from the lunch menu, gone along with it were popular figures Jermain Defoe and Robbie Keane, not far behind was sulking superstar Dimitar Berbatov, and in came big money signings Luka Modric, Giovanni dos Santos, David Bentley and Roman Pavlyuchenko to replace them.

But just two points from the first eight games – the worst start in almost a century – saw the club without a win and languishing four points adrift at the bottom of the table three months into the season. Only city bankers seemed more depressed.

Tottenham jokes spiraled the internet quicker than a virus – and even Ramos, whose grasp of the English language was limited, must have understood a few as the ‘R’ word of relegation hovered over the blue and white half of North London.

The chairman, Daniel Levy, whose infamous and ugly appointment of Ramos from Seville at the expense of fan-favourite Martin Jol, was forced to admit his plan had spectacularly backfired, and he finally acted on October 26 by sacking Ramos and Comolli and bringing in Harry Redknapp. Talk about chalk and cheese.

Here was a man who knew English football, knew the English players, knew the English transfer market, knew the English media, and, the biggest contrast of them all, knew the English language.

It brought immediate rewards. In his first seven days in charge, Spurs defeated Bolton, earned a dramatic 4-4 draw with arch-rivals Arsenal, then beat Premiership leaders Liverpool at the Lane – albeit a night-time robbery from a Liverpool perspective – and they finished the year just outside the European places in eighth.

Which brings us back to this season. The Prodigal sons Defoe and Keane have returned, along with Pascal Chimbonda and Peter Crouch, who began his career at Spurs, and the bandwagon is beginning to role. The fully-deserved victory over Liverpool last Sunday seemed a million miles from the smash-and-grab raid last November, and the players have a smile on their faces. As do their fans – for now.