Alan Sugar

[General Levy]

Errr, we are talking about the guy that had the PC market there for the taking and fucked it up royally, so good businessman though he is, he does have a track record of not executing on the opportunities he has before him.

Agreed he saved the club and I'll always be grateful, but that was step 1 and he didn't progress to steps 2, 3, 4 etc etc.

He is still a top businessman or he wouldn't be worth the reported £830million.

But I do agree that he fucked it up, perhaps a lack of foresight again...

 

[Wiener]

Firstly it is complete nonsense to say that Tottenham Hotspur Football Club only exists today because of Alan Sugar.

Secondly, the reason we recovered financially is because more then 30,000 loyal fans continued to come to White Hart Lane throughout the nineties (despite the fact that we were shit).

To my mind the question we should ask regarding Sugar's stewardship of our club is how much progress we made during his tenure? Did he realise the potential of one of the largest and richest fan bases in the UK?

Levy has had about half as much time as Sugar. In that short time we have finished 5th twice and won the Carling Cup and we are starting to play the kind of football our tradition demands.

Obviously it is a complicated issue and Sugar is by no means the devil incarnate but please stop saying that THFC would not exist if it wasn't for him.

 

[TheBlueRooster]

I don't know if he saved the club, but things could have a lot worse if Bob Maxwell had got his hands on it. He was selling shares he held in other clubs all over the place to buy us.

Sugar certainly steadied the ship and laid the foundations for what we have now.

 

[SpurSince57]

Tottenham Hotspur might not exist were it not for Alan Sugar.

We'd have gone to the wall in 1991 if he hadn't come in and bailed us out (or would you have preferred Maxwell?). 30,000 loyal Spurs fans would very likely have been trying to cram into Brisbane Road.

Yes, it is a complicated issue.

 

[mkkid]

He hired George Graham. Need I say more?

Yeah after all he only won the league cup and got to 2 semi finals,one of which we were robbed by the ref.

As for Sugar,the man who turned us into Lidl and appointed one fool after another.
Who can forget Ruel Fox,Clive Wilson,Armstong,Sinton,while he didnt want Berkamp and Zola!
He turned us from a top 4 club to a mid-table club along with a couple of battles to beat the drop!
Oh ,what happy days,while the lot down the road won title after title.

 

[worcestersauce]

When a club is advised by the bank not to write any more checks as they may not be honoured then the club is in the shit.
What we needed was a beligerent pig headed son of a bitch business man who would call a spade a spade and stand up to anybody from the FA to tin pot toe rag politicians and agents and who had a bucket of money.
I think we got that just about right, perhaps he should have moved aside a little earlier but I'm in the "glad we had him" camp without a doubt.

 

[Rocksuperstar]

Errr, we are talking about the guy that had the PC market there for the taking and fucked it up royally, so good businessman though he is, he does have a track record of not executing on the opportunities he has before him.

Agreed he saved the club and I'll always be grateful, but that was step 1 and he didn't progress to steps 2, 3, 4 etc etc.

:lol:

mate, i worked for Amstrad as product support, mainly for their PC's - to say "he had the PC market there for the taking and fucked it up royally" says to me that you actually don't have that much knowledge of Alan Michael Sugar Trading, or the way it worked.

He was, from the very start, a market trader. He's Delboy, but the difference being, he had vision. To coin a phrase from the Donald Duck Dunn, he had the power to turn goat piss into gasoline.

The fact that his machines weren't completely compatible with the new PC type setup wasn't a unique fact - look at the other competitors at the time in Commodore and Sinclair - neither of them even really made a dent in the home PC market, aside from Commodores early toe-dipping with some basic base units. Amstrad did though and made, what we used to jokingly refer to it as, the Vauxhall Astra of PC's.

It wasn't great, it wasn't powerful, it wasn't earth shattering - it was a basic spec PC brand, at basic spec prices - the same ethos that has gotten him where he is today. He aimed at the people who couldn't afford to spend hundreds. At that point, PC's were the domain of businesses and rich twats who just played Chuck Yager all day on an orange screen - He developed a PC brand for the lower classes and made a packet from it.

The fact that he continues to provide "the cheap alternative" products, across a wide range, not just the PC market, still rings true to the way he works and, if you don't mind me saying, he's not doing badly for it. Not at all.

When he came here it was our first taste of having a real businessman at the helm. He realised that, even if he wanted to fall in with the romance of Tottenham Hotspur, he couldn't because it was basically f*cked. He did the only thing he could at that moment and steadied the ship like the grumpy **** he truly is.

Basically told everyone who was dragging the club down to go f*ck themselves, told anyone at the council who caused him grief to go f*ck themselves and knuckled down to saving the club.

He did it and, despite causing probably as much trouble as he did joy, we have to remember that the amount of debt we had would've sent most clubs under without question - he really, really put his neck on the line for us.

To say it was solely us fans who kept the club going is also rubbish - we would never, ever, in a million years of full houses, have covered the debt that was growing over our heads - the debt was mounting faster than we could pay it back and, without Sugar throwing his hand in like he did, i doubt Levy would be here. I doubt ENIC would be anywhere near WHL, unless they were picking up some rizla from the newsagents Spurs Shop would undoubtedly be by now.

 

[justfookinhitit]

Rocksuperstar - Interesting to hear your insight into Amstrad. I do agree that he saved the club - whether we could have found another saviour (that wasn't Maxwell) is a mute point, but he did put his own money on the line and we should be thankful he did so because God knows where we would be now without that. It is a shame he didn't take the next steps to take us forwards, but that is behind us now.

Just for the record, it wasn't me that said anything about "it was solely us fans who kept the club going" - I don't want that attributed to me !!!!!

 

[millhouse]

No Sir Alan Sugar, No Spurs

THANK YOU SIR ALAN!

 

[Wiener]

Tottenham Hotspur might not exist were it not for Alan Sugar.

We'd have gone to the wall in 1991 if he hadn't come in and bailed us out (or would you have preferred Maxwell?). 30,000 loyal Spurs fans would very likely have been trying to cram into Brisbane Road.

Yes, it is a complicated issue.

So are you suggesting that if there had been no Sugar the most likely alternative would have been our main creditor forcing us into administration? Are you then also suggesting that the administrators would have decided the best deal for creditors would have been the sale of all our assets (stadium and players) and then closing the business down?

Sounds a bit far fetched to me.

 

[Rocksuperstar]

So are you suggesting that if there had been no Sugar the most likely alternative would have been our main creditor forcing us into administration? Are you then also suggesting that the administrators would have decided the best deal for creditors would have been the sale of all our assets (stadium and players) and then closing the business down?

Sounds a bit far fetched to me.

from what i understand, you're actually not as far from the button as you might think. :shrug:

 

[Wiener]

He did it and, despite causing probably as much trouble as he did joy, we have to remember that the amount of debt we had would've sent most clubs under without question

Yes possibly we could have gone into administration and who knows what would have happened then. If by saying "sent under" means THFC would no longer have existed, I think that is highly unlikely.

he really, really put his neck on the line for us.

He made a shrewd investment. There is nothing wrong with that but I don't think he was thinking of us when bought into THFC.

To say it was solely us fans who kept the club going is also rubbish - we would never, ever, in a million years of full houses, have covered the debt that was growing over our heads - the debt was mounting faster than we could pay it back and, without Sugar throwing his hand in like he did, i doubt Levy would be here. I doubt ENIC would be anywhere near WHL, unless they were picking up some rizla from the newsagents Spurs Shop would undoubtedly be by now.

Who knows what would have happened. The point is that our wealthy and loyal fanbase is one of the club's greatest assets and this would have been recognised by administrators / creditors if our club had gone into administration. When we went down in 76/77 attendances remained virtually unchanged. Throughout the 90s attendances remained high and we were paying some of the highest prices for increasingly crap football.

Basically told everyone who was dragging the club down to go f*ck themselves, told anyone at the council who caused him grief to go f*ck themselves and knuckled down to saving the club.

Finally this is an example of Sugar's legacy. He didn't recognise that the local council was an important partner for the club in the long-term and this has complicated our plans for increasing capacity.

 

[Rocksuperstar]

I'm not going to get into a quote off with you, i can never be arsed for very long.

Simply put - no, the loyal fans would've meant nothing to the creditors who were getting very obviously uncomfortable at having to shoulder such a massive, massive debt. We're not talking now, remember that, we're talking back when the most expensive players were still in the single-figure millions and there wasn't so much cash in the game.

To equate that to a debt now, and if any accountant wants to correct me, feel free, but we're talking the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pounds today. We were really, really f*cked and, despite the newspaper reports, i don't think it really sunk in how much trouble the club was in.

Sugar saw his opportunity and, as i said, never even had the option of getting wrapped up in the game side of things - as a business, the club was as good as finished. In anyones shoes, to front up the cash like he did was such a massive risk i'm personally shocked he did still. The gamble was immeasurable but, and here i will agree, he knew at least that the stadium would fille each month - it was a start, but if it was that simple and was just a case of reorganising the income, then he wouldn't have had to stump up the notes like he did.

Yes, i agree, he did stomp all over a lot of toes at the local council level but, at the time, we weren't exactly the popular local club we are now anyway and, again if the stories rang true, there were elements in the local council who were going to cause strife no matter what.

I'm frankly glad that we had a man arrive who was pig headed enough to stand up to those who wanted us to jump through hoops at every junction. Yes, he pissed off a lot of people but, in the long run, he also made the local council realise that not only are we a massive local asset, when run right, we aren't pushovers either.

It's better to be with us than work against us and vice-versa. Times have changed.

 

[Wiener]

Without meaning to challenge you to a "quote off" here goes:

To equate that to a debt now, and if any accountant wants to correct me, feel free, but we're talking the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pounds today. We were really, really f*cked and, despite the newspaper reports, i don't think it really sunk in how much trouble the club was in.

Yes we were in trouble, but my point is that the debt was clearly manageable over the long run. How do you think we managed to turn it round in the 10 years from 1991 (despite an appaling player trading record)? Firstly high attendances and high prices. Secondly Premiership / Sky TV money.

Admittedly there is an argument that the future of football didn't look too rosy in 1991. We were in the midst of a recession and with rising interest rates our debt would have been difficult to service. The outlook was not good. I am just not sure that it would have come to administration, and even if it had we would still exist now.

No-one in their right mind would say that Sugar was not the best option at the time. But the alternative was not oblivion.

He stumped up the cash in 1991. He had the vision to see the potential of a "premiership" and the potential income from TV, but he failed miserably to make the most of it. From a footballing point of view his 9 years in charge saw a steady decline. The THFC brand suffered.

 

[SpurSince57]

But the alternative wasn't administration, the alternative was Maxwell, who was still to many bluff honest 'Cap'n Bob'. He had put in a bid (and it's since been revealed that he made the club a £1m 'loan' to pay off the final instalment of Lineker's transfer fee), and Venables, probably more aware than most that the guy was a crook and fraudster on a grand scale, persuaded Sugar to make a rival one. Just as well, because if Maxwell's had been accepted (as it almost certainly would have been) we'd have been even worse off; a few months later the **** made his splash in the Atlantic and the whole can of worms was opened up. We'd have been in an even worse state.

You simply can't make airy statements that you are not sure it would have come to administration. What else was going to happen? It seems that even now some people aren't fully aware of the depth of shit we were in. No-one seems quite sure of the scale of the debt, but it was at least £20m and possibly as much as £40m—this doesn't sound much today, but as RSS says, it's actually the equivalent of hundreds of millions in current terms. You have no idea of what administrators might or might not have done. Chances are we'd have seen a wholesale sell-off of assets, quite possibly including the ground. Sky didn't acquire football rights for another year, and our share of the original deal would barely have dented the debt. I don't see faceless administrators taking on the FA over our points deduction, cup ban and fine. Do you? I can't see them bringing in the 'Famous Five' either. Sure, that was a flash in the pan in the end, but it sure lifted fans' morale after all the doom and gloom.

Sure, Sugar certainly made mistakes, big ones. He didn't come in out of love for the club, either. But to suggest he isn't the main reason why we still have a Spurs in the EPL is plain ridiculous.

 

[DOX]

So in other words, Sugar is the Jol of board directors and Ramos' Levy?

 

[mkkid]

At the time,i remember the Mirror reporting that the Midland bank one of the main creditors,didnt what spurs to go into adminstation because of a blacklash from spurs fans.

 

[drjimmy]

Yes we were in trouble, but my point is that the debt was clearly manageable over the long run. How do you think we managed to turn it round in the 10 years from 1991 (despite an appaling player trading record)? Firstly high attendances and high prices. Secondly Premiership / Sky TV money.

Admittedly there is an argument that the future of football didn't look too rosy in 1991. We were in the midst of a recession and with rising interest rates our debt would have been difficult to service. The outlook was not good. I am just not sure that it would have come to administration, and even if it had we would still exist now.

No-one in their right mind would say that Sugar was not the best option at the time. But the alternative was not oblivion.

The only reason the debt was 'manageable' was that Sugar underwrote the thing; he actually put very little of his own hard cash into the pot.

But then he didn't need to; he had the financial muscle to do what was needed - which was give stability and confidence to the creditors - without splashing the cash.

Yes, we traded our way out over the long term, but at the time, 'time' was not something we had a lot of. The interest on the debt was rising and we needed "someone who wasn't Maxwell" to pull us, kicking and screaming, into facing up to the fact that as a plc, we didn't know squat, when it came to finance!.

A choice of only Sugar & Maxwell? Without Sugar, seems like oblivion to me.....

 

[themanwhofellasleep]

'If it wasn't for me there would be a Tesco's where the Lane is'

That is crap. Knowing Tottenham, it would have been an Asda or Aldi.

 

[Wiener]

It's wrong to think of THFC as being put up for sale. One of the main driving forces behind the quick and rather opaque sale of Scholar's controlling share were his own financial problems. Sugar rather cleverly managed to make the most of this.

At the time we were probably insolvent, but we did have some fairly liguid assets (we sold Gazza for over £5mln not so much later) and our creditors would have been careful not to undermine THFC as a going concern. Whichever way look at it (and that includes the rather cantankerous SS57) we are all speculating to a degree.

I am simply saying that I believe THFC had more options available to it than some of you are suggesting and therefore I think it far-fetched to say that Sugar saved THFC from oblivion.