Sale of Spurs to Scholar

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Éperons said:
Not having much luck with Lexis Nexis so far, but this article came up on a different (though currently topical) bit of news:

The Globe and Mail (Canada)

October 4, 1985 Friday

Rift could rattle foundations of English soccer

BYLINE: RONALD ATKIN; SPCL

LENGTH: 734 words

DATELINE: London ENGLAND

BY RONALD ATKIN
Special to The Globe and Mail
LONDON
It has not taken long for the disasters at Bradford and Brussels to
have repercussions on English soccer. Attendance is down this season and
television is carrying every sport except soccer, so the biggest names in
the game have decided to do something about it - something that threatens
the future of the English league.

Representatives of the Big Five - Liverpool, Everton, Manchester
United, Tottenham and Woolwich - met secretly at Manchester last weekend to
discuss the cash crisis, caused partly by the ban on competition in
Europe, that is plaguing English soccer.

Officially, the agenda was to deal with the continuing absence of
soccer on television because the league has failed to come to terms with
the BBC or any independent network. Government-sponsored moves, such as
the issuing of identity cards to soccer spectators in a bid to curb crowd
violence, were also debated.

But in the end, the discussion moved to what the league has long feared
- the breakaway formation of a super league.

Irving Scholar, a 37-year-old Monte Carlo-based millionaire businessman
and chairman of Tottenham, called the meeting and said afterward: "If we
don't make changes, our sport will continue to decline."
Scholar and others with the leading clubs are eager to implement the
recommendations of a report on the future of soccer in Britain. The
report, presented by Sir Norman Chester, was put on the shelf by the
league after its publication in 1983 simply because its recommendations
were not palatable to the majority of the 92 clubs.
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I remember it well. It was the first time a breakaway was discussed, sowing the seeds of the Premier League.

Ironically, Scholar bankrupted us just in time for the launch of the old 'Premiership', which led to us being left behind the big boys from the early nineties until recently.
 
Scholar fucked it all up. Then we had Venables/Sugar. No wonder it took us so long to recovery. The rest had consistency and got richer off the back of it. We had to get past the fact we almost lost everything.
 
Overspending.

But then I'm only remembering what I was told after the fact. There was no internet back then to micro analyse boardroom drama.
 
The cost of paying for two 'chirpys' not to mention Warren Mitchells exhorbitant fees for a half time appearance is what really skinted us.....


Didnt scholar also introduce some ticketing thing that also made a huge loss?
 
Christ, I should really know this. Was it East Stand work? I'm fairly certain it was an improved to the stadium that had major impact in its aftermath.
 
another thing to bear in mind, the european ban hurt us badly, cant blame anyone at spurs for that. we were regulers in europe, we bought and paid players accordingly, then it was gone, but the contracts remained. lost hoddle and waddle because if that.
 
Bank debts mount to more than pounds 12m over next two years as ground development costs spiral and Hummel leisurewear firm slumps.
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Was def the West Stand then. As noted, Shelf side sorted later on. Also I remember the famous 'urban myth' of Alan Sugar pointing at a player on the pitch and saying:

"That Barnaby is going to finance the new East Stand"
 
sammyspurs said:
Isnt alot of the negative spin on Scholer, Sugar peddled propaganda though?

At the end of the day, he was Chairman through a decade of actual acheivement, where as Sugar likes to talk about saving Tottenham...yet what did he actually do?

Re-negotiated the terms of a 10M pound debt with Midland Bank -

By 1991 it (Spurs) owed £10.5m to Midland Bank (now part of HSBC), a debt which reportedly made the bank transfer the account from the Smithfield branch to its casualty unit in Cannon Street and demand a series of changes including a new chairman and the sale of its then best player Paul Gascoigne. - Financial News

Sugar tries to live off signing Klinsmann (who fucking hated him), and stabilising the club financially (which he did to be fair) yet look at the managers he appointed. He was the chairman that took us into the dark ages on the pitch, and while we couldnt exactly splash the cash in those days, we didnt have to flirt with relegation every season either.

How would that have panned out for his hero status..
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Not really. Scholar ruined us. Sugar saved us. Then Sugar should have moved over, sure, but without him, we'd have been Rangers.
 
I know someone who had a very high boardroom position at Spurs during the late 80s / early 90s, spoke to him a little bit about those times, a LOT of internal politics.

Sugar had to get the club back on an even keel, which he managed to do. The main reason we fell so far behind everybody at the start of the PL years was the gamble the club had taken in the 80s.
 
Schoolboy'sOwnStuff said:
sammyspurs said:
Isnt alot of the negative spin on Scholer, Sugar peddled propaganda though?

At the end of the day, he was Chairman through a decade of actual acheivement, where as Sugar likes to talk about saving Tottenham...yet what did he actually do?

Re-negotiated the terms of a 10M pound debt with Midland Bank -

By 1991 it (Spurs) owed £10.5m to Midland Bank (now part of HSBC), a debt which reportedly made the bank transfer the account from the Smithfield branch to its casualty unit in Cannon Street and demand a series of changes including a new chairman and the sale of its then best player Paul Gascoigne. - Financial News

Sugar tries to live off signing Klinsmann (who fucking hated him), and stabilising the club financially (which he did to be fair) yet look at the managers he appointed. He was the chairman that took us into the dark ages on the pitch, and while we couldnt exactly splash the cash in those days, we didnt have to flirt with relegation every season either.

How would that have panned out for his hero status..
Click to expand...
Not really. Scholar ruined us. Sugar saved us. Then Sugar should have moved over, sure, but without him, we'd have been Rangers.
Click to expand...

I accept he stabilized us but I dont buy the line "Scholar ruined us. Sugar saved us."

Sugar could have kept the club well on the pitch too without some of the absolute shit he signed. We were not in 100M debt.
 
Flannerz said:
If Sugar had appointed good managers we wouldn't have been in decline for so long. We were on the same level as the scum in 95, they had Bruce Rioch as manager. They signed Bergkamp and Sugar wouldn't as he didn't want another "Carlos Kickaball"
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He also appointed the man who turned down Zidane for being "too wooden"..

:wall:
 
sammyspurs said:
Flannerz said:
If Sugar had appointed good managers we wouldn't have been in decline for so long. We were on the same level as the scum in 95, they had Bruce Rioch as manager. They signed Bergkamp and Sugar wouldn't as he didn't want another "Carlos Kickaball"
Click to expand...

He also appointed the man who turned down Zidane for being "too wooden"..

:wall:
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And laughed along with the other directors at the name of a German footballer who it was recommended that we sign. Needless to say, Steffen Effenberg did not join us.
 
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