Tottenham have sacked head coach Andre Villas-Boas after less than 18 months in charge following Sunday's 5-0 home defeat by Liverpool. The Premier League defeat to the Reds appeared to have been the final straw for the White Hart Lane board, coming just three weeks after the 6-0 thumping by Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium. A Spurs statement said: "The club can announce that agreement has been reached with head coach, Andre Villas-Boas, for the termination of his services. "The decision was by mutual consent and in the interests of all parties." The club later revealed technical co-ordinator Tim Sherwood and Spurs U21 coaching team of Chris Ramsey and Les Ferdinand would take charge of the first team ahead of the Carling Cup quarter-final visit of West Ham on Wednesday night. Steffen Freund and Tony Parks stay on as part of the coaching staff but Villas-Boas's backroom team of Jose Mario Rocha, Luis Martins and Daniel Sousa have left. Early candidates which headed the Sky Bet betting to replace Villas-Boas were former England boss Fabio Capello, now in charge of Russia, Spurs' current director of football and Capello's assistant at the Football Association, Franco Baldini, former England supremo and Spurs boss Glenn Hoddle and Swansea manager Michael Laudrup. Another contender, Dutchman Guus Hiddink, was immediately ruled out of the running by his agent as he is taking over as Holland coach after the World Cup. Cees van Nieuwenhuizen said: "I would be surprised if (Hiddink) went to Spurs. I could hardly imagine that happening. "He has just signed a contract with Holland and he has also turned down offers from other countries recently to coach them at the World Cup so I wouldn't take any talk of Guus going to Tottenham seriously." Villas-Boas endured a shorter turbulent time at London rivals Chelsea, moving to Stamford Bridge from an extremely successful stint Porto in June 2011 before being sacked in March 2012 by Blues owner Roman Abramovich. He was soon lured back to the Premier League in July of that year and managed to guide Tottenham to their first win at Old Trafford since 1989, beating Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United 3-2 in September. Spurs went on to accumulate 72 league points in the Portuguese's only full season in charge, the largest haul not to qualify for the Champions League in Premier League history. The 36-year-old then revealed in the summer that he had turned down offers from Paris St Germain and Real Madrid to remain at Tottenham before star asset Gareth Bale was sold to the Spanish giants in a deal worth a reported world-record 100million euros. Tottenham used the Bale money to strengthen their squad with the acquisition of, among others, Spain forward Roberto Soldado, playmakers Christian Eriksen of Denmark and Argentina's Erik Lamela, and midfielder Paulinho of 2014 World Cup hosts Brazil. However, after an encouraging start to the new season, a 3-0 home defeat to a striker-less West Ham raised first questions over Tottenham's strengths before they continued to struggle to score league goals. Last week, a convincing 4-1 victory over Anzhi Makhachkala saw Spurs advance in the Europa League and appeared to ease concerns over their attacking potency but Sunday's north London humiliation precipitated the club's decision to finally part company with Villas-Boas.
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