I DON’T blame Juande Ramos for Tottenham’s dismal start to the season — and you might be surprised to learn I don’t blame Daniel Levy, either.

If you want to know why the club is suffering so badly then look no further than the sales of Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov.

There is no doubt in my mind that Tottenham could not afford to lose two of the best players in the Premier League within a matter of weeks.

In a time of criticism, we all want to blame individuals. Sometimes that’s too simple. With the sales of Keane and Berbatov, there were so many things that went wrong.

Among them greed, mismanagement, egos and selfishness.

Bulgarian strike ace Berbatov kept telling us he had a ‘dream’. Well, good for you Dimi, you had a dream with a few extra noughts added to your bank balance.

But don’t you think Spurs had a dream too? Don’t you think that when they bought you and helped you blossom into one of the best strikers in the world, you had a duty to reward them by helping them fulfil THEIR dream.

You got your way but your poisonous presence at the start of this season — the pouting, the brooding and the reluctance to play — has cost the club that believed in you.

And what about the team-mates you left behind, how do you reckon they feel now?

Spurs chief Levy is much maligned. It’s always easy to blame the men in suits.

But I’ve got to know him over the years and got to like the way he thinks — and the dreams he had for Tottenham, too.

Under Levy, the club has shown visible signs of progress. Expectations were growing each year and last season’s Carling Cup success at Wembley suggested good times ahead. But this season has come like a thunderbolt. None of us could have predicted Tottenham’s terrible start.

Like many, I thought they would be serious contenders for a top-four finish. Bottom of the table was completely off the radar.

But in the sales of Keane and Berbatov, it has all gone spectacularly wrong.

It was clear throughout last season that Berbatov didn’t want to play for Tottenham any more. And there was an inevitability he would go during the summer.

The only surprise was that the club waited until five minutes before the transfer window closed to sell him.

That was clearly a mistake. But why did it happen?

We have to look back at the way Spurs bought and sold players during the summer and understand what their master-plan was meant to be.

I believe they were relying heavily on bringing in Roman Pavlyuchenko, which they did, and pairing him with Andrei Arshavin from Zenit St Petersburg.

Only on Sunday night, after losing 2-0 at Portsmouth, Ramos’ No2 Gus Poyet publicly admitted Pavlyuchenko and Darren Bent cannot play together — which suggests Tottenham never intended them to be their main striker partnership.

They thought they were going to get Arshavin. He would have been Pavlyuchenko’s perfect partner and no doubt they would have have transferred their international success at Euro 2008 to the Premier League.

But Spurs completely misread the Russians’ resolve to get top dollar for him. This was a massive managerial blunder by Spurs, especially when they had allowed Keane to leave for Liverpool.

While the Berbatov transfer was regrettable, it was as inevitable as it was understandable. But the Keane transfer staggered and amazed all of us.

I can only believe the reason Spurs let him go was they truly believed the Liverpool offer of £20million was too good to refuse.

But by letting Berbatov and Keane go, without having Arshavin in the bag, was a massive boardroom blunder.

Berbatov and Keane are two players that would walk into any top-flight side and it’s not insignificant that one has gone to the Premier and European champions and the other has gone to a team pressing hard on their heels.

The irony is Spurs didn’t really need to sell the pair of them having already got rid of Jermain Defoe. And then players such as Paul Robinson, Pascal Chimbonda, Anthony Gardner, Younes Kaboul and Steed Malbranque in a whirlwind of business that saw them rake in over £20m.

They could have got Arshavin without selling Keane and Berbatov but I suspect their heads got turned by the money and they lost their grip.

So while the sale of Keane was baffling, the decision to wait to the last minute to sell Berbatov was suicidal.

I can understand Levy not wanting to be bullied by Alex Fergsuon and by hanging on so late, they probably squeezed another £3m out of Manchester United.

But that £3m seems like pennies now when you look at the table.

Spurs should have sold Berbatov a lot earlier and given themselves time to find a replacement once they realised the Russians weren’t going to sell Arshavin at the price they wanted to pay.

There are so many victims in all of this — not least the 36,000 who turn up every other week at White Hart Lane and who dared to dream just like Berbatov did.

The only winners are the ‘Big Four.’ For it is the super powers such as United and Liverpool that turn players’ heads and, in the process, leave lesser clubs crippled.

TERRY VENABLES was talking to MIKE DUNN

Spurs are 10/1 to be relegated from the Premier League this season.