Sale of Spurs to Scholar

[Cripps14]

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"

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

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.

Steffen Effenberg is a cunt though. So I'm not too bothered about that.

 

[Dannyboy]

I thought Klinsmann was a cunt before he signed for us...and Adebayor.

This thread just highlights how minute the time line is from being a club of great success to being one who were cast adrift for so long. There were a couple of seasons where both ourselves and Everton probably could have just as easily gone down as stayed up.

My first memory of crushing disappointment are both losing to Coventry in the cup and Woolwich in the League Cup semi final - it seemed to prepare me for what has been a pretty arduous time as a Spurs fan

 

[Flannerz]

The 1991 cup final did that for me. We won but my favourite player got injured

 

[Aleksic]

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.

Whilst clubs nowadays have plenty more debt than the 10 million we were in debt in 1991 it was different times of course. no sky money back then, tv deals a relative pittance and the 10m debt was seen as astronomical. It was another (unwanted) first for Spurs.

We went into the 1991 cup final with a small bit of our minds worrying that it was going to be the last match we played before being wound up.

Scholar has a lot to answer for, and I would argue that he did ruin the club, as he brought us to the brink of extinction. We could have done a Rangers 20 years before Rangers

 

[spooky]

We were in the shit. Don't compare modern day monies with the early 90s.

 

[sammyspurs]

He also had massive help from the Trust, which he fails to bleat on about.....funny that.

 

[BernardMatthews]

It's funny how views about a decade appear later on. 20 years from now will Harry be fondly remembered?

Anyway the 90s were strange when you look at managers. Venables, Ardiles, Francis. All some form of terrace favourite.
Then Gross.... and then one of the most successful club managers of the recent times - The man in the raincoat. To me that always seemed like Sugar just thinking fuck it and acting like a businessman rather than a football chairman.

Sugar had a lot of people advising him, who knows which decisions were his and which were mainly others. Plus money was tight. I don't think you can underestimate how much trouble we were in during the early 90s.

 

[sammyspurs]

I don't think you can underestimate how much trouble we were in during the early 90s.

Oh I dont. I just dont like the misconception that Sugar single handedly saved us by pumping billions of his own money into the club.

 

[Flannerz]

Was it really that tight under Sugar? Gazza had been sold for £5.5m and the new TV deal came in

 

[NO1JIB]

I don't think you can underestimate how much trouble we were in during the early 90s.

Oh I dont. I just dont like the misconception that Sugar single handedly saved us by pumping billions of his own money into the club.

wasnt that he put x amount in, he put the brakes on us spending silly money on everything. had to be done at the time, if he erred too much on the side of caution , its understandable. it did fuck us up on the pitch and he should have invested a bit more, but he did what was necessary to secure the future of the club.
we had nothing left to mortgage, no future sky money to lend against either.
sammy, scholer fucked the club up and he fucked the fans over as he saw us as loyal mugs who could be bled dry no matter what he did. football aint a supermarket where you might change using one according to many variables, you support spurs, thats it, your fucked for life, and that cunt exploited this.

 

[NO1JIB]

best thing about levy, for me, i dont even know what his voice sounds like. yeah, they film him a bit at games, but he dont appear to need publicity to boost his ego, he gets on with the job. we have no suger daddy and a small stadium yet we still compete up to a point. 15 million in january probebly would have secured 3rd [even 2nd] but arry wouldnt commit and levy couldnt give a manager who wanted to leave that kind of money.
pity , but thats down to john fucking terry. the cunt.

 

[Schoolboy'sOwnStuff]

My line was 'Scholar ruined us. Sugar saved us, but should have stepped aside earlier'.

Sounds pretty water-tight, Sammy.

 

[NO1JIB]

My line was 'Scholar ruined us. Sugar saved us, but should have stepped aside earlier'.

Sounds pretty water-tight, Sammy.

is about right, or he could have got in a football man and trusted him, dont know if sugar operated like that back then, he appears to now but his empire is that much bigger.

 

[Schoolboy'sOwnStuff]

My line was 'Scholar ruined us. Sugar saved us, but should have stepped aside earlier'.

Sounds pretty water-tight, Sammy.

is about right, or he could have got in a football man and trusted him, dont know if sugar operated like that back then, he appears to now but his empire is that much bigger.

I think he only trusted himself back then. Self-made man with a 'fuck you' attitude, making him stubborn as fuck.

 

[sammyspurs]

My line was 'Scholar ruined us. Sugar saved us, but should have stepped aside earlier'.

Sounds pretty water-tight, Sammy.

Fair enough mate. Im not just debating specifically with you guys, just points Ive heard so many times down the years in general really..

 

[Blanchflower]

best thing about levy, for me, i dont even know what his voice sounds like. yeah, they film him a bit at games, but he dont appear to need publicity to boost his ego, he gets on with the job. we have no suger daddy and a small stadium yet we still compete up to a point. 15 million in january probebly would have secured 3rd [even 2nd] but arry wouldnt commit and levy couldnt give a manager who wanted to leave that kind of money.
pity , but thats down to john fucking terry. the cunt.

^^spot on

 

[Blanchflower]

Was it really that tight under Sugar? Gazza had been sold for £5.5m and the new TV deal came in

Can't have been that tight, we were back signing world cup stars by 94

 

[Éperons]

think you'll find it was scholar who got us into financial difficulty.. the way he got to own thfc from Sidney wale etc was underhand to say the least but nothing to do with debt.

Seeing as I was a schoolboy in the early 80s, and I've not found anything about the sale in an initial search of Lexis-Nexis, the questions I asked in the OP of this thread remain unanswered.

It still seems like Scholar was buying shares secretly from about 1980, before wresting control in 82/83. But considering that in 1972 owners had veto power over sales, it's unclear why, 10 years later, they were selling secretly. Did they need the money to finance the West Stand?

No answers either way are emerging…

http://twohundredpercent.net/?p=20728

Suggests West Stand debt.

 

[Guido 🇺🇦]

Seeing as I was a schoolboy in the early 80s, and I've not found anything about the sale in an initial search of Lexis-Nexis, the questions I asked in the OP of this thread remain unanswered.

It still seems like Scholar was buying shares secretly from about 1980, before wresting control in 82/83. But considering that in 1972 owners had veto power over sales, it's unclear why, 10 years later, they were selling secretly. Did they need the money to finance the West Stand?

No answers either way are emerging…

http://twohundredpercent.net/?p=20728

Suggests West Stand debt.

From memory the book "Sick as a Parrot" by Chris Horrie details the whole torrid affair and should have the answers you seek.

 

[Éperons]

Thanks, @ zin . So it was money trouble. I wouldn't consider what Scholar did devious, though, as suggested in other posts. Collecting proxies is a totally normal way to take over

I wonder why Wale resigned over the West Stand. The bumbling by the Richardsons makes sense: they weren't ready to turn Spurs into an aggressive moneymaker, and it showed. Arthur had been retired for ages, iirc, and Geoffrey knew no other job than shareholder since his 30s. (If I've got that right… maybe he stayed on to work and was a board member only on weekends)