Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy has placed the departures of Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane as catalysts for the club's current predicament. Levy concedes the club was indecisive in targeting replacements.

"Dimitar first intimated to Martin Jol that he wanted to join Manchester United after just one season at our club - and just 10 days before the end of the summer 2007 transfer window," Levy said.

"The internal decision to sell Dimitar at the beginning of the (previous) window was premised on a suitable replacement being found and on the assumption that Dimitar couldn't be persuaded to change his mind.

"The timing of the actual transfer of Dimitar was completely immaterial and unconnected to our bringing in a replacement for him.

"We had been aware for a long period that he was likely to leave and our negotiations to get the best fee for him was independent of our work to replace both him (as we did with Pavlyuchenko) and Robbie Keane, with experienced strikers.

"We failed because we were not as decisive or as successful in identifying or replacing the two strikers as early as we should have been."