Hoddle: I'm not bitter

"I immediately spoke with Vanessa, my wife, who was also shocked and upset. I had spent the day with my son Jamie and stepson Toby, who were big Spurs fans, so I had to explain the situation to them.

"The frightening thing was that within about 30 minutes the news was on the radio. It was no great tragedy but the club have been a big part of my life and I wanted to tell my family before they heard about it from some other source."

Despite rumours to the contrary, Hoddle insists that he had a good working relationship with Levy and the board. "They want the club to go forward, so we were all of a like mind," he said. "There's no question about the desire and the will, but whether they get it right only time will tell.

"The fans have had to live with the frustration for 25 years, not two years. I was a player when they enjoyed their last period of sustained achievement. I always thought it would take a long time to turn it round and I still do. Unless the club show patience with the new man and give him a five-year project, it's going to be very difficult.

"The fans have to be patient, too. They deserve a bit of success. They've been absolutely fantastic to me over the last two years, even up to the last game at home to Southampton, where they were right behind me and the team. I just can't thank them enough. I came here first as a fan at the age of eight, a player at 11 and I left at 29. So Spurs have been a big part of my life.

"Perhaps that's why I feel so frustrated. I don't think their decision was justified. It's very different to leaving the England job. That wasn't for football reasons and at the end of that experience I felt absolutely shattered. I needed a year off and I took it.

"But at the moment I don't feel like that at all. I'm full of enthusiasm. I feel really energised. If another opportunity came along I'd go straight back to work. I feel really positive about the future. Losing my job was a shock and the way it was done was disappointing, but I don't feel in need of a rest. I want to work again."

What still puzzles Hoddle is why the board sacked him so soon after authorising the summer expenditure of around £12million on Helder Postiga, Frederic Kanoute and Bobby Zamora. "I thought I bought well," he said. "The ironic thing is that I didn't have the benefit of playing Kanoute and Keane together because of injury. The first time they're both fit to play they score a goal each and we beat Coventry 3-0, but I'm already gone. How frustrating is that? I'd told the board I'd turn it round."

The release of players like Teddy Sheringham, Tim Sherwood, Steffen Freund and Neil Sullivan trimmed about £8m off the wage bill, but Hoddle agrees that he had the full financial backing of the White Hart Lane boardroom. "I don't think they could have done much more financially," he said. "There's no pot of gold, but there is a realistic budget to take the club forward."

The sniping of former players like Freund, Sherwood and Sullivan irritates him, though he insisted that the dressing room atmosphere was positive and harmonious throughout his two-and-a-half years in charge.

"Some of them have had a pop at me, but what makes me laugh is that they all wanted to stay at the club," he smiled. "They could see we were trying to build something and had they been offered new contracts they'd have signed. I've been disappointed with some of the rubbish they've come up with and it's a fact that the dressing room whispers started once they learned that their contracts would not be renewed.

"But I thought the rapport with the squad as a whole was good. You ask them how many times we had meetings. I listened to what they had to say before making decisions. I valued their input.

"I probably work more openly with my players than most managers. What fascinates me is that the public perception of me and how I work is exactly the opposite to the reality."

His one big regret, I suspect, remains the inability in the summer to sign a defensive midfield player in the Sherwood-Freund mould. He denied suggestions of a row with Levy over the signing of Chelsea's Emmanuel Petit, but said: "We tried our hardest to sign one. We had four, maybe five, possibles. I went to France. We tried other options. It just didn't work out for us."

Whatever the future holds, nothing can alter the fact that Hoddle is one of the truly great figures in Spurs' history.

In a sense, his coaching posts with Swindon, Chelsea, Southampton and England served merely as an apprenticeship preparing him for a triumphant return to his spiritual home in North London.

Everyone at White Hart Lane wanted him to succeed in the way that Bill Nicholson or Keith Burkinshaw succeeded in the past. "I'd love Bill or Keith to spend a week sitting in the office of a Premiership manager listening to the stuff they have to deal with," he grinned.

"They cannot possibly imagine what it's like today. They would say, 'hang on, when do we do some coaching?'"

That's precisely what Hoddle wants to do now. "I'm bored stiff already," he said. "I've played a bit of golf and watched TV and John Gorman (his former assistant at Spurs) has asked me over to Wycombe to do a bit of training with them.

"But I want to work. I feel there's unfinished business. I'm 46 years of age and I want a job.

"Who's to say that one day I won't end up back at Spurs. Who knows? Football's such a weird game, isn't it?"