Maxwell was indeed close to putting forward a proposal. Accordingly, his staff were alerted to the imminent sale of Derby County FC to Peter Gadsby, a property developer from the Peak District. Maxwell planned to take the £4 million he would earn from the sales of the recently relegated Midlands club, add to it the £40 million he had also garnered from the recent Daily Mirror flotation, and buy a significant shareholding in Spurs. As these rumours gathered pace, Sugar came out fighting again. Drawing on his expert salesman abilities, he made sure that the advantages of a Sugar–Venables bid were spelled out via the media. ‘I’ve got a cheque in the fridge and Terry Venables and I are ready to go as soon as the board sorts itself out,’ asserted salesman Sugar. ‘We put serious proposals to the board on Monday and I believe that, with Terry’s undisputed talent and history of success, when combined with my financial backing, the future prospects for Spurs are excellent.’ It did indeed seem at the time an attractive prospect when compared with that of Robert Maxwell. A dream ticket, one could say.
Although the tale was going to end bitterly, with the benefit of hindsight it must still be a relief to Spurs fans that Maxwell did not win the day.
As time went on, Sugar upped the stakes and piled a bit more pressure on the club. He had clearly been swotting up on the laws and rules of the Football League. Once more presenting himself to the media, Sugar gave chapter and verse on what he saw as the flaws in Maxwell’s north London ambitions. ‘We have heard a lot of noise about another possible bid for Spurs,’ said Sugar. ‘Our reading of the concisely written League rules means that, even if Derby are sold, Robert Maxwell still cannot bid for Spurs. His family holding in Oxford and Reading would have to be disposed of first, unless the League gives written dispensation.’
But would the League be of a mind to give such dispensation? Sugar’s answer was unequivocal. ‘I cannot believe that the League could find sufficient reason to do so in the light of our solid bid and the known feelings of the fans, players and many small shareholders, all of whom desperately want Terry Venables to stay on.’ Once more, the salesman was showing his skills. Here he had charmingly but pointedly pressurised the League to come round to his way of thinking. This was as good a combination of soft and hard sell as one could imagine in the circumstances, and it was soon backed up by the very people Sugar had alluded to in his statement.
The Tottenham Independent Supporters’ Club told the media that a bid from Robert Maxwell would be ‘unacceptable’ to them, and they backed up Sugar’s belief that such a bid would breach Football League rules because of his interests in Oxford, Reading and Manchester United. Coordinator Bernie Kingsley said, ‘We would be prepared to take legal advice to seek an injunction if it seemed the League was going to break its own rules.’
Sugar must have smiled broadly when he read these quotes. With so much united pressure, things could only tip his way. The media seemed to favour the Sugar–Venables camp too. The headline in the Guardian newspaper was typical: ‘Alan Sugar’s bid may save Spurs’. In the accompanying story, it became clear that Sugar’s claim that he and El Tel had the support of shareholders was spot on. Frank Sinclair, one of Tottenham’s executive directors, told the newspaper, ‘We are pleased about any bid that’s likely to be successful. The club has received numerous approaches over the last nine months, but the important thing is to have one that is likely to have a successful outcome. Mr Sugar has considerable financial muscle.’ He did indeed. Sugar was at this point worth £157 million, and had recently been placed at 46th in the Sunday Times Rich List.
An unnamed boardroom source was equally positive about Sugar, telling the Independent’s veteran football reporter Joe Lovejoy, ‘For the first time in many months of negotiation, Venables has finally come up with someone who has got the money involved. Alan Sugar is a very bright fellow. We can do business with him.’
Back then, football was not considered the valuable financial cash cow that it is now. So, although there was backing for Sugar, there was some uncertainty as to what was attracting him to make such a bid. ‘Who knows?’ the same source said, shrugging, when asked. ‘Maybe he’s got tired of computer games and wants a new toy. He can afford it.’
As for Sugar, he was clear about the attraction of the deal. ‘Look, this is the fourth time I’ve told you,’ he told one persistent inquisitor. ‘It’s a business proposition, and a very good business proposition.’
Sugar carried on heaping on the pressure via the media. ‘We have made a proposal and obviously on the basis of that proposal we hope that the club will be back on a reasonable financial ground in the future,’ Sugar told a journalist. Once more, he played his trump card: the involvement of the popular Terry Venables. ‘I think the supporters will really be very, very pleased that Terry Venables is still involved with the club. I think that is the key issue.’
The pressure eventually told, and the deal was finally done. On Saturday, 22 June, Sugar and Venables called a triumphant press conference to announce that they had reached agreement with the board of Tottenham Hotspur and the Stock Exchange to purchase the shares of Irving Scholar and Paul Bobroff, and were assuming control of the north London giants. Under the new regime, Sugar would become nonexecutive chairman of the plc with the task of ‘getting the balance sheet into shape’, while Venables would take over the role of managing director. The first thing that Sugar and Venables did was pay off the club’s £20 million debt. It seemed a match made in heaven, but – to borrow a football parlance – it would well and truly kick off.
Perhaps it was clear all along that Sugar and Venables would struggle to work together. They certainly made for a high-charisma pairing. ‘Terry is all charm, he could persuade you that black is white,’ said a business source who has dealt with both. ‘Alan is gruff and aggressive. But both have monster egos and their self-belief is rarely shaken.’
A journalist in the Daily Mail pointed out one major difference between the two men. True, Venables had a greater football pedigree than Sugar. But this deal was as much to do with business as the beautiful game and, wrote the journalist, ‘In this world, Alan Michael Sugar is AC Milan. And Terry Venables is Halifax Town.’ The ‘Halifax Town’ of the deal would later look back and conclude that, while he had made ‘plenty of mistakes’ in his career, this one was the worst.
On taking the reins at White Hart Lane, Sugar made clear how his and Venables’s duties were divided. ‘Terry will look after the 11 players on the field, I’ll take care of the £11 million at the bank,’ he said. The figure was not just to make a convenient soundbite, as Sugar explained, ‘This club was heading for the receivers when I came along. It owed the Midland Bank £11 million.’
Accordingly, soon after the two took control, Sugar underwrote a fresh injection of money, making him the dominant investor. Soon, however, the partnership went sour. In 1993, Sugar sacked Venables. In business, tough decisions have to be taken and this was a tough decision indeed, for the charismatic Venables was widely adored by the Tottenham faithful and the football community in general. Looking back at how and why he summoned the courage to part company with Venables, Sugar was as concise and direct as ever: ‘Terry: clever man, wise man, smart fellow, written books, loved by the fans. Some people would have said, “No, I’m, not gonna take on God’s gift.” But I made a statement: I was in, up to here. Terry Venables was out. I made that statement to the world at large, to my family, to me.’
The decision had been taken at a two-hour board meeting. The conclusion of the board meeting was that Sugar pointed his finger at Venables and said, ‘You’re fired.’
Venables emerged shaken, saying simply, ‘The board has voted to dismiss me, and I have been and am talking to solicitors. I am advised that’s all I can say at the moment.’
So what had prompted Sugar’s brave decision? He was clear that it was not connected to football matters. After all, Venables had guided the club to the FA Cup semifinal that season, where only a late header from Tony Adams of Arsenal had pr
evented the club from reaching their second FA Cup final in two years. Instead, he said, it was due to associates of Venables. ‘Nobody is questioning his ability as a football coach. And it was a very sad day on Friday, and everybody involved regrets deeply that it has come to this.’ He added that, although many of the fans would be upset to see Venables go, it was the correct thing to do and that they would soon agree. ‘Obviously fans want the team to be strong; they want good management of the football side. We have got good management there at the moment, which worked under Terry Venables – Doug Livermore and Ray Clemence.
‘We will apply the funds in an appropriate manner that one should apply cash in a football club. And the playing will tell the story. Fans are very fickle. There is a distinct possibility that three or four games into the season, if we win and the manager becomes a hero, the cruel harsh reality is that maybe, maybe Terry is forgotten.’ He later added, ‘I’d like to say to the fans that I and the board have the best interests of the club at heart. This is not an ego trip – I’m not an egotistical loony. If I was I’d have been reported many times before for interfering in football. This club has been established since 1882. It’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than Robert Maxwell and it’s bigger than Terry Venables.’
All the same, he had not heard the last of the matter. Venables took the case to the High Court, applying for an injunction against his dismissal. The judge ruled that reinstating Venables would ‘merely postpone the date at which all concerned must face up to the fact that his appointment, for better or worse, has been terminated’.
Spurs fans were furious, and chanted, ‘We want Sugar out’ outside the court. Sugar was escorted out of a back door, and has since said that, in firing Venables, he felt as if he had murdered Bambi.
As for Venables, he has been surprisingly conciliatory since. ‘I don’t know what would have happened to the club without him,’ he has acknowledged. ‘He was the only one prepared to go through with it.’
Nonetheless, the whole battle had been a bitter one for everyone who loved Tottenham Hotspur. An even more terrifying challenge was soon to land on the club’s doorstep. The FA had for some time been holding an investigation into alleged illegal payments that the club had made to players during the 1980s, long before the involvement of either Sugar or Venables. With that investigation completed in the summer of 1994, the club were found guilty and given an extraordinary punishment: 12 League points deducted for the 1994/95 Premier League season, a one-year ban from FA Cup competition, and a £600,000 fine. Many saw this punishment as essentially guaranteeing the club not just a trophyless season for 1994/95, but also a relegation season. This was a disaster. The club statement hardly began to hint at the distress in the air in the white and blue sector of north London: ‘The board of Tottenham Hotspur is extremely disappointed and unhappy at yesterday’s decision by the Football Association, and is considering options available to it, and will make a decision by the end of next week as to what action, if any, to take.’
The decision was naturally taken to appeal to an arbitration panel. The response of the appeal was a mixed blessing. The fine was increased to a record £1.5 million, the FA Cup ban was upheld but the points deduction was reduced from twelve to six.
Sugar’s mood at this time was not helped by the fact that he had just gone into hospital for an operation on both shoulders. All the same, he came out fighting and upbeat. ‘We’re not going down now,’ he told reporters referring to the moderation of the points deduction. ‘We have just lost two games, that’s all. Looking on the positive side, when Arsenal had points deducted in 1991, they went on to win the Championship. The players we are considering buying should not see this as too much of an obstacle.’
However, this look-on-the-bright-side talk should not be mistaken for any approval on Sugar’s part of the fact that the financial penalty had been made tougher after the appeal. ‘I find that laughable,’ he said. ‘I am shell-shocked. The money is a joke.’ He was also quite naturally upset that the Cup ban had been upheld, not least given Tottenham’s fine record in knockout competitions. ‘I was hoping we would be allowed back into the FA Cup. We’ve always been known as a Cup team. I was also hoping they might have suspended the points sentence, like they did the penalties they imposed on Millwall for crowd trouble.’
FA spokesman Glen Kirton said he understood that Tottenham would be unhappy with the situation. ‘However, the board considered the charges which were admitted to be very serious matters,’ he added. ‘These breaches of rules were evidence of a practice adopted at the club for many years, which resulted in an advantage over others who had complied with the rules. Mr Sugar gave us a personal assurance, that we are happy to accept, that there will be no repetition of this type of conduct at the club.’
Sugar did not only have to offer an assurance to the FA: he also had to try to reassure staff and supporters. Then manager Argentinian Ossie Ardiles was said to be taking it on the chin. ‘Ossie’s getting up off the floor now,’ said Sugar after the appeal. ‘He’s disappointed about the FA Cup but he now knows he hasn’t got a problem as far as relegation is concerned.’
The manager himself backed up this upbeat message. ‘Look, let me make one thing clear in all this,’ said Ardiles. ‘I have no time for self-pity. We have a lot of talented players here and some potentially very good players. Sometimes people think it is all gloom and doom around here and that just isn’t the case. I have been very impressed with the attitude of the boys. They have been positive and that is what I wanted.’
A second appeal was filed and in November 1994 the appeal tribunal issued the following statement: ‘The arbitration tribunal convened to hear the challenge by Tottenham Hotspur FC to the Football Association’s punishment has decided to remit the matter to a new FA Commission. Spurs’ punishment, and in particular, its participation in this season’s FA Cup, is dependent on the decision of the new commission. Reasons for the tribunal’s findings will be given to the parties shortly.’
Could it be that the club could possibly go one better, with a second appeal to the FA? They could if Sugar had his way, and he piled the pressure on the authorities by reminding them that Tottenham were not the only club with skeletons in their closet. ‘I don’t want to be dragged down to the levels of depravity which may exist in the football industry in hiding or covering up things. So I hope the private arbitration in this case will find for honesty, because that’s always the best policy,’ he said.
Turning the screw on the football authorities, he added, ‘But, I’m sorry, if the tribunal holds up what the Football Association has done, I will use my best endeavours on behalf of the shareholders of my club to disclose the same irregularities by other clubs, it doesn’t matter who they are. I make that quite clear because, if we are treated that way, and I find it has happened at other clubs, they should be treated the same.’
This was a quite justifiable public stance to take. Football was beset by corruption at the time, and Tottenham could quite justifiably feel they were being made a scapegoat. Furthermore, Sugar was not at the club when the offences took place, so he could feel very aggrieved at being punished.
Around this time, he was asked what would constitute a successful season for the club. It is a mark of the horrendous situation the club were in at the time that his reply was not focused on on-field matters. ‘Success for Spurs at the moment is to have no one suing us and no regulatory authority on our backs,’ he said bluntly. ‘That would do for starters.’ Indeed, this was a candid interview by the Amstrad chief. ‘I’m still learning,’ he said of his part in the football world. ‘This is my fourth season, the first two were with [Venables] and it’s only the last two that I’ve been involved in every detail.’ As he returned to the punishment issue, his anger quickly rose. ‘To me, when you see the ratbags in football, it’s commendable that there’s a regulatory body like the Football Association which still holds it all together. But common sense tells you whatever Tottenham are supposed to be gu
ilty of, if the same misdemeanour was perpetrated by Brighton and Hove Albion, there’s no way they would have been fined £1.5 million.’ He felt that the club were being punished especially heavily because of their wealth. ‘I’m rich, OK, but, if I park my Rolls-Royce in Kensington, the fine is thirty quid, the same as it would be for someone with a bubble car. The FA have stuck a finger in the air and said, “Right, it’s Tottenham, they’ve got plenty of money.” Wallop!’
The second appeal was more successful: the points deduction and FA Cup ban were both withdrawn.
Sugar took this opportunity to outline once more how he saw the balance of power in the football club. Even for football purists, who feel uncomfortable at the role of ‘money men’ in the game – although how do they imagine the game would survive without money? – Sugar’s case was impressive. ‘My view is that the manager should identify the players he requires, then discuss them in confidence with the chairman, who does all the commercial negotiations. How can you expect a manager who has spent all his life learning how to kick a ball into a net to have any idea of finance and delicate negotiations?
‘The only way you judge a manager is on results and the choice of players he asks the chairman to purchase for him. I wouldn’t dream of telling Ossie which players to buy, but, if the man wasn’t skilled or capable of doing the job, he’d be out.’ Sugar also turned to his own image, which had taken something of a kicking during the Venables saga. Although the perception of Sugar is often unfair, he is aware of how many see him and is willing to articulately challenge his image. ‘The rumours are that I’m so arrogant, so set in my ways, that I’m not prepared to admit I’m wrong,’ he said. ‘That’s a load of balderdash. I’m known in the business world as a cut-and-run man. I’m not proud to admit to mistakes, but I’ve made them and I’m out before you know it.’
Sir Alan Sugar Page 9