by Sugar, Alan
The deal was done. We had bought Scholar’s and Bobrof’s shares and we now had control of the company in sight. There was just one problem. Where was Terry Venables’ three million quid? It was at this point that Ashby casually said, ‘Oh, by the way, Alan, there’s a bit of a delay with Terry’s three million.’
A delay? What do you mean by delay? You knew this was the completion meeting. You knew that we had to turn up and pay out the money! What do you mean delay? You sat there watching me beat up Bobroff, negotiate with Scholar and fight off Maxwell – you saw it all – and now you tell me your money’s not here?!’
‘No, no, it’s a technical issue. It’ll be here Monday for sure. It was just a problem with the bank transfer. I promise you, it will be here on Monday – no trouble at all. I guarantee you, you’ll have the money on Monday.’
I was faced with a dilemma in Ansbacher’s offices. I’d signed and agreed a deal with Bobroff and Scholar. I had given Bobroff an £822,000 draft for his shares; meanwhile, Scholar’s lawyers were waiting for me to hand over a £3.2m draft for Scholar’s shares and repay a loan he had made to the club. I had no alternative but to shell out over £4m for the full acquisition that night.
As you can imagine, I was thinking, ‘What the bloody hell have I let myself in for with this Venables and Ashby pair?’ Venables couldn’t see anything wrong with the whole thing; he didn’t understand the procedures, as he’d left everything to Ashby and, in his mind, my having to wait till Monday was no problem. He never spoke to me about this, but hid in another room and let Ashby do the talking.
By now, there was another person hovering around, a barrister called Jonathan Crystal who had popped in during the evening session. He said he was a good friend of Terry and I assumed that, as a barrister, he was part of his advisory team.
When I was having a row with Ashby about the funds not being there, Crystal stepped in and said, ‘I can vouch that Terry’s money will be coming through next week. You can take my word for it as a barrister.’ I suppose this gave me some comfort at the time.
The following Saturday, there was a press conference at White Hart Lane and it was announced that Terry and I had taken over Spurs. It’s easy to speak in hindsight, but if I thought I’d had aggravation with the PC2000 series and winding down Amstrad, that was a walk in the park compared to the hornets’ nest I had now entered.
In the end it took ten days for Venables’ £3m to turn up and even then I never thought of asking whether it was from Venables’ own pocket or whether it had come byway of some form of funding or loan. I was just grateful to receive it.
The fact that we’d bought over 29 per cent of the public company meant that we now had to make an offer of 75p per share to the other shareholders. The £6m was used to pay £4m to Scholar and Bobroff and £2m to the other shareholders.
Assisting in these negotiations was a man called Tony Berry. He was a businessman who’d once run the public company Blue Arrow and was a director of Spurs, as was Douglas Alexiou, a divorce lawyer whose father-in-law had once owned the club and sold it to Scholar. Another director was Frank Sinclair, a very nice fellow who also lived in Chigwell.
The essence of this deal, as I saw it, was that Terry Venables would look after the football side of things, while I would oversee the business side and finances. That was supposed to be the dream ticket.
Back at Amstrad, Bob Watkins turned to me and said, ‘You aren’t gonna last ten minutes with that Terry Venables bloke.’ I couldn’t understand why he would form that opinion – it was quite uncharacteristic of him. I think what he was referring to was a clash of egos. Little did he know how spot on he was.
I got a load of phone calls from people congratulating me or expressing surprise over this deal. One such call was from Edward Walker-Arnott, now senior partner at Herbert Smith, who told me that I needed to take care on entering this football business. He said, ‘It’s not meant for your culture, Alan.’
Naïvely, I agreed to Venables’ suggestions about reshuffling Tottenham’s board of directors. It would now comprise myself, Tony Berry, Terry Venables, Jonathan Crystal, and a man by the name of Igal Yawetz who was an architect and a friend of Venables.
I also appointed a finance director, Colin Sandy. He was not associated with Amstrad, but was someone who had handled my personal finances and those of my property business. Tony Berry was declared the chairman of the football club, while I was declared the chairman of the PLC holding company. I didn’t really understand what that meant; I just went along with it.
In August, we were due to play Arsenal in the Charity Shield, the traditional pre-season match between the winners of the league and the winners of the FA Cup. We were due to go on holiday that day, so you can imagine how pleased Ann was when I told her that first we were going to Wembley to see a football match. It was the first time I would be able to see the team I’d bought.
The club secretary, Peter Barnes, had made special arrangements for me to get into Wembley Stadium. My driver had been instructed exactly what to do and the police had been informed to let my car through. As anyone who’s been to Wembley knows, it’s mayhem on match days, so the police escort clearing and holding up the traffic around the stadium for me was very unusual, to say the least.
Before the match itself, it’s traditional for the chairmen and dignitaries of both clubs to gather and have a grand luncheon. However, I was informed that the seats had all been taken – apparently this had all been worked out long before the acquisition. I didn’t think anything about this at the time and, quite honestly, I didn’t really care.
All became clear when I got to Wembley, however. I was waiting outside the grand dining hall when eventually the diners started to exit and make their way to the stands. Out came Terry and all his mates, including Jonathan Crystal. Having enjoyed their slap-up lunch, they were pouring out of this place, while I, the so-called owner and chairman of the club, was standing there like a schmock.
One of the people emerging from the dining hall was hardcore Tottenham fan David Buchler, an accountant who was involved in the early stages of negotiations with Scholar and Bobroff. Back then, he wasn’t a happy bunny because I had excluded him (as had Terry) from any ongoing participation in the running of the club. Yet here he was, strolling out of the dining hall. He greeted me by saying, ‘We’ve just had lunch on the top table with Arsenal. You didn’t miss much.’ I didn’t know how to feel at the time.
The game ended in a draw and the Charity Shield was shared. Peter Barnes had again laid on the police so I could make a quick getaway to Heathrow to catch my private plane down to Sardinia. I was going to hire a boat in the Mediterranean after spending a week at the Cala di Volpe Hotel in Sardinia with four of our friends. I’d arranged for them to come and watch the game at Wembley, then follow us in convoy to the airport. Peter Barnes’s arrangements were brilliant and everything went like clockwork. We got away from the ground and arrived at Heathrow, checked in at a private terminal, jumped onto the plane and took off for Sardinia.
We landed two and a half hours later, unloaded the luggage and asked the taxi drivers to take us to the Cala di Volpe Hotel. They looked at us as if we were mad, shrugging their shoulders and shaking their heads. We said it again, ‘Cala di Volpe Hotel. We want to go to the Cala di Volpe Hotel.’
One of them got out a map of Sardinia and showed us that the Cala di Volpe Hotel was located in the northern part of the island – we had landed in the south. It turned out that if we wanted to get there by car, we’d have to make a journey the equivalent of Hyde Park Corner to Penzance. We had landed at the wrong airport!
I’d spoken to the pilots earlier in the week and they’d asked me, ‘Which airport are we going to?’
I thought Sardinia would only have one airport, so I looked at the map and flippantly said, ‘Okay, we’ll go to that one.’ Apparently there were two airports.
It sounds funny now, but consider six people stranded with loads of luggage, 250-odd miles aw
ay from where we should have been. Fortunately, the flight crew were still there, so we lugged all our stuff back onto the plane and flew to the other airport. Eventually, we turned up at our hotel.
Apparently, this hotel was owned by the Aga Khan, for whom Nick Hewer was a PR consultant. It was one of those hotels that were very sought after and difficult to get into. The elite all stayed there, and even they had to book years in advance. So as you can imagine, we were eager to see what was so good about this hotel.
As we were led to our room, I thought that someone, perhaps Nick, was having a joke – it was the biggest dump I’d ever been to in my life. I said to my friends, ‘Have we made a mistake? Did we not only go to the wrong airport but also the wrong hotel?’
But no – this was the famous Cala di Volpe Hotel.
When we walked through the reception, the men and women were dressed in very smart and exotic outfits, so I wondered if they’d dumped us at the staff’s quarters by mistake. What’s more, Nick had booked me into what was called ‘the Grand Suite’. The air-conditioning grille on the wall was black with soot and looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for twenty-five years. The bed was a simple metal-framed affair, the so-called patio windows were stuck slightly open and there was just one little wardrobe to hang a few clothes in. One of my friends told me to come and look at his room. It was a total joke – he didn’t even have a wardrobe.
We went down to complain at the reception. The man behind the counter shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, ‘Yes, I know it’s a problem, but that’s how it is here.’ Unbelievable. One of the most expensive hotels in the world and it was a bloody rip-off. And to add insult to injury, when we came to check out and tried to pay by credit card they said, ‘No, we only take cash or cheques here.’
During my stay that week, Eddie Ashby phoned me from Tottenham and told me that Terry had identified a Scottish player, Gordon Durie, who was playing for Chelsea, and he wanted to buy him. Eddie was looking to me for authorisation to go ahead with this transfer.
Are you joking, Eddie?’ I said. ‘We’ve just used our money to buy Bobroff’s and Scholar’s shares, plus the others – there’s no money left. We’ve got Midland Bank currently working out an arrangement for us to repay the eleven million quid we owe them, plus the Gascoigne deal’s not going through. So, Eddie, please explain to me where the money for this new player is coming from? Why are you even bothering to ask such a stupid question?’
‘Look, Alan, Terry is confident he is going to sell some players. With the money, we’ll easily be able to pay for Durie. Actually, Alan, I’m just letting you know as a courtesy that the transaction is going ahead.’
By now, I was starting to get a bit concerned. ‘Hold on a minute, Eddie, have you actually got a contract for the sale of the outgoing players? Who are these outgoing players anyway?’
‘Terry doesn’t like to publicise that certain players are up for sale, otherwise we won’t get much money for them, so he needs to keep it to himself.’
‘Never mind keeping it to himself – he can surely share it with me. Can you tell me who these players are and at what stage of negotiations are we? How far down the line are we in concluding these deals?’
‘Well, Terry won’t be happy to tell you all that and he needs an answer today on this Chelsea deal.’
‘I don’t give a fuck whether Terry’s happy or not and I’m getting a bit pissed off being treated as if I’m some kind of idiot. I am hereby telling you, in plain and simple terms, that you are not allowed – repeat, not allowed – to buy this player until you show me a road map of where the money’s coming from. I’m not sticking one more penny in until we’ve got to grips with what’s going on.’
I slammed the phone down on Ashby.
By the time I got back from holiday, Venables had gone ahead with the Durie transfer without my permission. He’d called me while I was in Sardinia to assure me the deal would be financed by the sale of other players. Bearing in mind I hadn’t been in business with him long, I accepted this on face value. I reminded him that I’d given my personal assurance to Midland Bank on the eve of the acquisition of the club that there would be no spending on players – the priority would be to reduce the £11m debt.
Venables seemed to be oblivious to this. He buried his head in the sand like an ostrich, always referring me to Eddie. Needless to say, he didn’t sell any players, so we had to finance the deal from the cash flow on season ticket sales. We had to pay 50 per cent of Durie’s fee to Chelsea straightaway, otherwise we’d have been in breach of Football Association rules, having signed a contract. The bank was very angry and demanded a meeting with me and Colin Sandy to discuss the matter.
*
As the new season started and I began attending games, I was told that I’d been allocated a few seats in the directors’ box, in about the fifth or sixth row back. Tottenham directors and guests were in the right-hand side of the directors’ box; the left-hand side was for the visiting team’s directors. The front rows, right and left, were for the chairmen and directors of Tottenham and their opponents. I, the owner, was stuck five rows back! A number of people, including Ann, asked me why I was stuck in the back rows. Tony Berry was tucked up in the second seat on the front row, leaving a space for Terry Venables. The remainder of the front row was occupied by Venables’ family. People were starting to wind me up and I began to feel as if I’d been taken for an idiot.
I got hold of Venables after the second game and told him that this seemed all wrong. Perhaps he could explain to me what all this ‘chairman of the football club and ‘chairman of the PLC meant.
Once again, he shied off, saying that he didn’t understand all this technical stuff and I should discuss it with Eddie, at which point I told him, ‘Never mind “all this technical stuff”, it’s as simple as this, Terry – you’re taking me for an idiot. You must think I’m some wally with a load of money who’s come in here to rescue the club and let you do as you wish. Well, I’m telling you right now, you’ve picked the wrong bloke because that ain’t gonna happen. And while we’re on the subject, as chairman and owner of this football club, I will be sitting in the front row and so will my family. On top of that, I’ll be asking Peter Barnes to explain to me this seating allocation and who gets what because I want to know why all these hangers-on seem to be walking around as if they own the place.’
For the first time, I realised that Venables had no bottle. He was only in his comfort zone when surrounded by his lieutenants. He said he did not take me for a fool and that he hadn’t been behind anything that had gone on. He told me that Tony Berry was the one who organised everything, placing the blame with him. I never asked Berry if this was right or not. But I did tell Berry that the game was up. I was a fast learner and while it was a nice try to see if he and Venables could put me in the back room, it had failed. I told him to resign as chairman of the club and simply remain on as a director. I took on the chairmanship of the club in addition to that of the PLC.
The next few months were spent dealing with the bank, as well as various other people who’d come out of the woodwork claiming we owed them money. After a series of meetings with Midland Bank, we had to have a rights issue, which I ended up underwriting. This resulted in me injecting another load of cash into the club, making my total investment £8m. I would have more shares than Venables, as he had no money to underwrite his portion of the rights issue.
Ashby was Venables’ right-hand man, though he never had a formal title or position – he just seemed to be the main mouthpiece. Terry placed all the financial decisions in his hands and I think it fair to say that Ashby was running the place. I had agreed that Venables, as chief executive, would have total responsibility for not only the football side of things but also for all commercial aspects. However, when it came to financing everything, there were no ideas forthcoming at all. Ashby was talking about getting mortgages, which never materialised, and the sale of Gascoigne, which would have brought in around £5.5m fro
m Lazio, had stagnated due to his injury. To make matters worse, during his rehabilitation, Gascoigne got involved in some incident that resulted in him damaging his knee again, putting the whole healing process back several weeks.
Even telling you this story in hindsight, I’m still shocked as I recall the unbelievable events that were about to unfold.
Venables explained to me that a very well-connected Italian called Gino Santini was going to broker the deal between Lazio and Tottenham to see whether we could get them to pay us the money even though Gascoigne still hadn’t fully recovered. This sounded fine to me and all I kept hearing over the next few weeks was ‘Gino this’ and ‘Gino that’. Gino turned out to be a restaurateur in Kensington who spoke Italian and had helped in Mark Hateley’s move to AC Milan – that was his claim to fame.
He was absolutely useless in the negotiation of this matter. I thought it was handled in the most unprofessional manner, with stupid suggestions such as, ‘Insurance policies will cover Gascoigne’s recovery and provide a warranty to Lazio.’ Why would anyone in their right mind pay us £5.5m when the player was still injured, without any medical evidence that he was fit to play? I told Venables and Ashby that this sounded like a load of nonsense. The bottom line was that Lazio was not going to pay millions of pounds for a player unless he was fit and ready to play. Neither would any insurance company give a guarantee that Gascoigne would fully recover.
Despite this, Ashby convinced Venables that he would find an insurance company who would cover the risk. Ashby came up with a Mickey Mouse insurance policy and ran up a bill with a broker. The offer put forward by the insurance company was so ridiculous in respect to the premium payable (as well as the limited liability of the policy) that it was a total joke – Lazio would just laugh at it. I shut it down before we started running away with extra costs.
In the end, the sensible thing happened. Lazio sent over a medical team to England to examine Gascoigne at the end of his rehabilitation and finally approved him fit to play. At that point they transferred the money.