Alan "Childish" Sugar on Twitter

[DiscoD1882]

he put FACT. so it must be true.

 

[Kendall]

He's a wanker because you know who he is. Many on here and in the football fan world have been saying AVB is useless. It doesn't make them wankers. He does appear to be pretty damn useless.

Southampton are giving us a lesson in integrating new players and systems this year.

 

[Spurs_Bear]

I bet he is was saying this all season last year too wasn't he? Especially when we were top four. Prick.

He actually was which was quite ironic.

 

[Ribble]

Southampton are giving us a lesson in integrating new players and systems this year.

Southampton bought 3 players in the summer. 1 hasn't adapted well and knew Pocchetino already (Osvaldo), 1 has done middling to bad and was already in the UK for years (Wanyama), 1 has done excellently (Lovren).

How exactly are they showing us up in terms of integration again?

 

[hodsgod]

He's a wanker because you know who he is. Many on here and in the football fan world have been saying AVB is useless. It doesn't make them wankers. He does appear to be pretty damn useless.

Southampton are giving us a lesson in integrating new players and systems this year.

Pocchetino has made a massive difference there. Looks like a decent manager.

 

[jambreck]

He knew how to bail us out of the shit. That buys a lot of clout. A lot more than you or I.

Forgive me for the long rant that follows but this is an old pet hate of mine.

Sugar bought Spurs. That is all, really. It was a brilliant, opportunistic deal for him.

He was a fantastically rich man (worth between £500 million and £1 billion back then) and he bought the club for a song. Yes, THFC was £20 million in debt at the time. But think about that for a moment..................£20 million. There are clubs now that are happily carrying £50 million, £100 million or even £600 million debt. And no one blinks an eyelid.

Sure, football then wasn't what it is now. £20 million probably wasn't far from amounting to our annual turnover. But in a wider business sense, even back then, £20 million was a relatively trifling amount. The crisis in 1990-91 stemmed from the Midland Bank (now HSBC) threatening to foreclose on Spurs' £10 million overdraft. Yet no one who knows truly believes that the Midland would have gone through with such a thing. It would have been a PR catastrophe for them had Spurs gone under. Spurs was (and is) a national sporting institution. Besides, even before Sugar took over, the club's stand in chairman, Nat Solomon, had already renegotiated the terms of Spurs' debt with the Midland. There was no further threat.

So, for starters, let's knock on the head any wild notion that Spurs genuinely came close to going out of business and that it was only Sugar riding in on a white horse that saved us. That simply didn't happen.

So how did this fantastically rich man get Spurs out of debt? With his own money? Some, certainly. But not much and only as part of a wider £7m rights issue. Much of the remaining debt was cleared by the sale of Paul Gascoigne to Lazio for £5.5 million. Thus far, Sugar had done nothing that any wealthy man (let alone fantastically wealthy, as he was) couldn't have done.

So what was Alan Sugar's achievement? Clearing the debt? Balancing the books year on year? Well, yes, he did clear the initial debt. Largely in the ways already outlined above that required little input or expertise on his part. And yet.....and yet the club still had net debt of nigh on £20 million when he handed control of the club to ENIC in 2001. Hmmm. As to balancing the books, that is the absolute, bare minimum that should be expected of any chairman or CEO of a publicly listed company.

What about other performance indicators? In the ten years that Sugar was chairman of THFC, the club lost market share; brand value; new sources of income; competitiveness; and credibility (with potential players, new fans and sponsors). Massively so, in every respect. In any other business sector, such a comprehensive failure to perform would have seen Sugar turfed out long before he eventually did leave. Spurs had been an IBM prior to Sugar's takeover (albeit one that had encountered temporary difficulties). He turned us into an Amstrad.

All Sugar had to do to protect his investment, and watch it grow, was to keep Spurs in the Premier League. That's why his occasional splurges were usually ill considered, knee jerk responses to any threat to our Premier League status. There was no concerted and consistent effort to grow the club. There was no vision, as ENIC have always had. No theme. Sugar was reactive rather than proactive. As the title of this thread says.......childish.

There was a cheapness about the club. A constant management of expectations. A tacit acceptance that Spurs could never compete with the big clubs (never mind that, before Sugar had taken over, Spurs had been one of the big clubs). There was also, according to those who worked at the club, a crisis of morale in every department - much of it the responsibility of Sugar's pit bull and club CEO, Claude Littner.

There were huge, lasting changes to football in Sugar's time at the club. There were gaping opportunities. Sugar wasted each and every one of them and let other clubs overtake us and leave us trailing far behind in their wake. Frankly, it's miraculous that we have managed to catch up as much as we have. Even so, it is still an unequal struggle and might ever be so.

That is Sugar's true legacy.

 

[parklane1]

A idiot on twitter? who whould have thunkit.

 

[djee]

Jambreck, that was one of the best posts I have ever read on this site.
It was always my sense that under Sugar we just watched as Arsenal seized the initiative and became a massive club/brand. The bitter pill, however hard it is to swallow, is that we are sadly a decade behind our north London rivals.

 

[theShiznit]

Here are some real mean tweets, as read by the victims...

 

[shelfboy68]

He's a wanker because you know who he is. Many on here and in the football fan world have been saying AVB is useless. It doesn't make them wankers. He does appear to be pretty damn useless.

Southampton are giving us a lesson in integrating new players and systems this year.

Does it suprise anyone only spurs can do glorious failure or fuck ups in such style.

 

[Tott66]

Spiteful little troll the man who took us from a big club to also rans.

 

[shelfyid]

makes me shudder when you think the man actually owned our club. further proof that not all people in the game have a clue.

 

[myhartlane]

Forgive me for the long rant that follows but this is an old pet hate of mine.

Sugar bought Spurs. That is all, really. It was a brilliant, opportunistic deal for him.

He was a fantastically rich man (worth between £500 million and £1 billion back then) and he bought the club for a song. Yes, THFC was £20 million in debt at the time. But think about that for a moment..................£20 million. There are clubs now that are happily carrying £50 million, £100 million or even £600 million debt. And no one blinks an eyelid.

Sure, football then wasn't what it is now. £20 million probably wasn't far from amounting to our annual turnover. But in a wider business sense, even back then, £20 million was a relatively trifling amount. The crisis in 1990-91 stemmed from the Midland Bank (now HSBC) threatening to foreclose on Spurs' £10 million overdraft. Yet no one who knows truly believes that the Midland would have gone through with such a thing. It would have been a PR catastrophe for them had Spurs gone under. Spurs was (and is) a national sporting institution. Besides, even before Sugar took over, the club's stand in chairman, Nat Solomon, had already renegotiated the terms of Spurs' debt with the Midland. There was no further threat.

So, for starters, let's knock on the head any wild notion that Spurs genuinely came close to going out of business and that it was only Sugar riding in on a white horse that saved us. That simply didn't happen.

So how did this fantastically rich man get Spurs out of debt? With his own money? Some, certainly. But not much and only as part of a wider £7m rights issue. Much of the remaining debt was cleared by the sale of Paul Gascoigne to Lazio for £5.5 million. Thus far, Sugar had done nothing that any wealthy man (let alone fantastically wealthy, as he was) couldn't have done.

So what was Alan Sugar's achievement? Clearing the debt? Balancing the books year on year? Well, yes, he did clear the initial debt. Largely in the ways already outlined above that required little input or expertise on his part. And yet.....and yet the club still had net debt of nigh on £20 million when he handed control of the club to ENIC in 2001. Hmmm. As to balancing the books, that is the absolute, bare minimum that should be expected of any chairman or CEO of a publicly listed company.

In the ten years that Sugar was chairman of THFC, the club lost market share; brand value; new sources of income; competitiveness; and credibility (with potential players, new fans and sponsors). Massively so, in every respect. In any other business sector, such a comprehensive failure to perform would have seen Sugar turfed out long before he eventually did leave. Spurs had been an IBM prior to Sugar's takeover (albeit one that had encountered temporary difficulties). He turned us into an Amstrad.

All Sugar had to do to protect his investment, and watch it grow, was to keep Spurs in the Premier League. That's why his occasional splurges were usually ill considered, knee jerk responses to any threat to our Premier League status. There was no concerted and consistent effort to grow the club. There was no vision, as ENIC have always had. No theme. Sugar was reactive rather than proactive. As the title of this thread says.......childish.

There was a cheapness about the club. A constant management of expectations. A tacit acceptance that Spurs could never compete with the big clubs (never mind that, before Sugar had taken over, Spurs had been one of the big clubs). There was, according to those who worked at the club, a crisis of morale in every department - much of it the responsibility of Sugar's pit bull and club CEO, Claude Littner.

There were huge, lasting changes to football in Sugar's time at the club. There were gaping opportunities. Sugar wasted each and every one of them and let other clubs overtake us and leave us trailing far behind in their wake. Frankly, it's miraculous that we have managed to catch up as much as we have. Even so, it is still an unequal struggle and might ever be so.

That is Sugar's true legacy.

All anecdotal mate. You seem to be implying that at best his intentions were simply to balance the books and at worse something more sinister. Surely it would have been in his commercial (and egotistic) interests for us to have been successful on the pitch.

Furthermore the 3 managerial appointments that I can think of (off the top of my head) were pretty sound in principle. Ardiles -decent track record in management and fan favourite. Gerry Francis - consistent overachievement with QPR probably regularly finished above us. George Graham - won multiple honours including the league twice. Oh and Christian Gross legendary fail of course but done with the best intentions. And not to mention the most exciting transfer since Paul Gascgoigne came to Tottenham, Jurgen Klinsmann

 

[hodsgod]

Forgive me for the long rant that follows but this is an old pet hate of mine.

Sugar bought Spurs. That is all, really. It was a brilliant, opportunistic deal for him.

He was a fantastically rich man (worth between £500 million and £1 billion back then) and he bought the club for a song. Yes, THFC was £20 million in debt at the time. But think about that for a moment..................£20 million. There are clubs now that are happily carrying £50 million, £100 million or even £600 million debt. And no one blinks an eyelid.

Sure, football then wasn't what it is now. £20 million probably wasn't far from amounting to our annual turnover. But in a wider business sense, even back then, £20 million was a relatively trifling amount. The crisis in 1990-91 stemmed from the Midland Bank (now HSBC) threatening to foreclose on Spurs' £10 million overdraft. Yet no one who knows truly believes that the Midland would have gone through with such a thing. It would have been a PR catastrophe for them had Spurs gone under. Spurs was (and is) a national sporting institution. Besides, even before Sugar took over, the club's stand in chairman, Nat Solomon, had already renegotiated the terms of Spurs' debt with the Midland. There was no further threat.

So, for starters, let's knock on the head any wild notion that Spurs genuinely came close to going out of business and that it was only Sugar riding in on a white horse that saved us. That simply didn't happen.

So how did this fantastically rich man get Spurs out of debt? With his own money? Some, certainly. But not much and only as part of a wider £7m rights issue. Much of the remaining debt was cleared by the sale of Paul Gascoigne to Lazio for £5.5 million. Thus far, Sugar had done nothing that any wealthy man (let alone fantastically wealthy, as he was) couldn't have done.

So what was Alan Sugar's achievement? Clearing the debt? Balancing the books year on year? Well, yes, he did clear the initial debt. Largely in the ways already outlined above that required little input or expertise on his part. And yet.....and yet the club still had net debt of nigh on £20 million when he handed control of the club to ENIC in 2001. Hmmm. As to balancing the books, that is the absolute, bare minimum that should be expected of any chairman or CEO of a publicly listed company.

In the ten years that Sugar was chairman of THFC, the club lost market share; brand value; new sources of income; competitiveness; and credibility (with potential players, new fans and sponsors). Massively so, in every respect. In any other business sector, such a comprehensive failure to perform would have seen Sugar turfed out long before he eventually did leave. Spurs had been an IBM prior to Sugar's takeover (albeit one that had encountered temporary difficulties). He turned us into an Amstrad.

All Sugar had to do to protect his investment, and watch it grow, was to keep Spurs in the Premier League. That's why his occasional splurges were usually ill considered, knee jerk responses to any threat to our Premier League status. There was no concerted and consistent effort to grow the club. There was no vision, as ENIC have always had. No theme. Sugar was reactive rather than proactive. As the title of this thread says.......childish.

There was a cheapness about the club. A constant management of expectations. A tacit acceptance that Spurs could never compete with the big clubs (never mind that, before Sugar had taken over, Spurs had been one of the big clubs). There was, according to those who worked at the club, a crisis of morale in every department - much of it the responsibility of Sugar's pit bull and club CEO, Claude Littner.

There were huge, lasting changes to football in Sugar's time at the club. There were gaping opportunities. Sugar wasted each and every one of them and let other clubs overtake us and leave us trailing far behind in their wake. Frankly, it's miraculous that we have managed to catch up as much as we have. Even so, it is still an unequal struggle and might ever be so.

That is Sugar's true legacy.

Why do you rant, and why do you take so long to admit he saved the club. As you say he cleared the initial debt. He wasn't the only one willing to do it, but it was him that did it.

I never said he was good for the club, just he saved it, and that is not debatable.

 

[Luka Van der Bale]

I bet he is was saying this all season last year too wasn't he? Especially when we were top four. Prick.

He was. Sugar don't like AVB.

 

[jambreck]

All anecdotal mate. You seem to be implying that at best his intentions were simply to balance the books and at worse something more sinister. Surely it would have been in his commercial (and egotistic) interests for us to have been successful on the pitch.

What do you mean, "all anecdotal"? It's nothing of the sort. It is opinion, based almost entirely on verifiable fact.

I didn't imply at all that Sugar's intentions were, "at best, simply to balance the books and at worse something more sinister". You have merely inferred it.

When I wrote that "....all Sugar had to do to protect his investment, and watch it grow, was to keep Spurs in the Premier League", I didn't mean that he wouldn't have wanted Spurs to have achieved far more. Of course he would have. I just meant that he didn't do what was necessary for Spurs to achieve far more. Caution ruled. In football, he knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing. There was no long term plan. No real ambition. No vision. No consistency. He made mistake after mistake after mistake while insisting that he was right all along.

The truth is that he never understood football. Never understood Spurs and what the club stood for.

He set us back a decade. Not just any old decade. But the most revolutionary decade in the modern history of football. It is a setback from which we may well never fully recover.

 

[jambreck]

Why do you rant, and why do you take so long to admit he saved the club. As you say he cleared the initial debt. He wasn't the only one willing to do it, but it was him that did it.

I never said he was good for the club, just he saved it, and that is not debatable.

Not sure that you read my post properly.

As I clearly said, the club didn't need saving. Terms had already been renegotiated with the Midland Bank before Sugar took over.

 

[Bulletspur]

He is a tosser, I amazed he was our owner tbh

He knows fuck all about football

I bet 95% of the other 36,000 supporters on a match day at WHL knows fuck all about football but are allowed an opinion. He is fan and he is allowed one. Also he is right, at least about Wenger IMO.

 

[Dinghy]

I bet 95% of the other 36,000 supporters on a match day at WHL knows fuck all about football but are allowed an opinion. He is fan and he is allowed one. Also he is right IMO.

But he's famous an famous people ain't allowed disagreeable onions

 

[jambreck]

Furthermore the 3 managerial appointments that I can think of (off the top of my head) were pretty sound in principle. Ardiles -decent track record in management and fan favourite. Gerry Francis - consistent overachievement with QPR probably regularly finished above us. George Graham - won multiple honours including the league twice. Oh and Christian Gross legendary fail of course but done with the best intentions. And not to mention the most exciting transfer since Paul Gascgoigne came to Tottenham, Jurgen Klinsmann

Just seen this added edit.

Even if, as you say, sound arguments can be made for some or all of his managerial appointments, the point is that he still got it badly wrong. He still took a club which was known as one of the big five to being a club that dwelt in mid table or lower and which even, all too routinely, engaged in relegation dogfights.

And yes, the Klinsmann signing was fantastic, incredible, amazing, jaw dropping..........any superlative you like. But it only goes to support my earlier point that Sugar only showed decisive ambition when he felt Spurs' Premier League status to be threatened. The previous season, we had only avoided relegation by the skin of our teeth by beating Oldham away in the penultimate game. Subsequently, in early summer, Spurs were deducted 12 points and excluded from the FA Cup as punishment for transgressions that came to light during the Venables court case. So Sugar knew that something spectacular was needed.

What was far more telling, really, than Klinsmann signing was Klinsmann leaving. After just that one season. He left because there was no vision. There was no concerted ambition to move the club forward from that point. Spoke volumes.