Gross bounces back to join the elite

Compared to the rest of Switzerland, Basle - a few miles from the French and German borders - is a football hotbed. Their average gates of 27,000 account for 15 per cent of the town's population. Some weekends their home crowds are bigger than the combined attendances for the rest of the division.

Gross says the intensity of his own Premiership experience has helped him raise the bar of Swiss football. He told Standard Sport: "I miss the hectic life and the pressure of the Premier League. Before Spurs, I had never coached in a country where football means everything to the people in a life sense.

"It allowed me to improve and was a marvellous experience. I am a coach and a man who has a huge passion for football and I always like to translate this to the players.

"I had six months out of the game after Spurs which was a good time for me. I kept my flat in Clerkenwell and used it as my base to travel around England and Europe, watching lots of football.

"After that time, I knew I wanted to get back in the game and Basle was an excellent opportunity. There is no other town in Switzerland where the club is so close to the people."

A win at Liverpool might be what Gross needs to transform his image here. Mention his name to most English fans and chances are the reaction will be a snort of laughter.

He was brought in by Alan Sugar from Grasshoppers Zurich in November 1997 as Gerry Francis's successor and was meant to be Tottenham's answer to Arsene Wenger.

Instead, he was ridiculed and his staccato press conferences in a heavy German accent did little to help him with the media when explaining his problems with bigname players such as Klinsmann and David Ginola.

Relegation was avoided only on the penultimate day of the 1997-98 season when Klinsmann scored four in a 6-2 win at Wimbledon.

The German striker retired that summer and Gross was sacked three games into the following campaign.

He is happy to defend his Tottenham record, saying: "I did incredibly at Spurs. I did a lot in a very, very bad situation. When I agreed to join, I didn't realise how bad the situation was at Spurs. When I arrived, they had 13 points from 15 games. It was very difficult to stop them being relegated but we managed it.

"That summer, I wanted to bring in top players from the Continent but it proved impossible because we weren't in Europe. It is very hard to sign ambitious European players if you can't tell them 'we are in the UEFA Cup or Champions League'.

"George Graham and Glenn Hoddle had exactly the same problem - I see in the end Hoddle bought Robbie Keane from Leeds."

Gross's dismissal in September 1998 surprised no one and even today the normally non-committal official Spurs website describes his appointment as "ill-fated".

Gross, though, bears no grudges, as he explained: "Alan Sugar, or Sir Alan Sugar I should say, always told me things straight face-to-face - and he has certainly carved out a new career for himself."

Basle are ranked by UEFA as the weakest of the 32 clubs in the Champions League. However, goals by Swiss international Hakan Yakin and tricky Argentine forward Julio Hern·n Rossi against Spartak have raised expectations among the 35,000 fans who will pack out the St Jakob Stadium for their European clashes.

Gross describes his team as "offensive-minded" and snapped up Sunderland's Swiss utility player Bernt Haas just before the Champions League transfer deadline. But he is keen to keep a lid on the rising expectations of his team who are second in the league behind Grasshoppers.

"When I joined Basle three years ago, the chairman said the target was to reach the top level of Swiss football," he said. "Nobody could have believed we would be in the Champions League.

"In my mind, we are still big outsiders in the group and compared to Liverpool my players lack international experience. Let's be realistic, to finish third in the group to get into the UEFA Cup would be a great achievement for us."