- Mar 27, 2006
- 6,983
- 14,837
he put FACT. so it must be true.
I bet he is was saying this all season last year too wasn't he? Especially when we were top four. Prick.
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.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.
He knew how to bail us out of the shit. That buys a lot of clout. A lot more than you or I.
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.
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.
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.
He was. Sugar don't like AVB.I bet he is was saying this all season last year too wasn't he? Especially when we were top four. Prick.
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.
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.
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.He is a tosser, I amazed he was our owner tbh
He knows fuck all about football
But he's famous an famous people ain't allowed disagreeable onionsI 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.
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