Sale of Spurs to Scholar

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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.

I'm pretty sure we were financially ok before he brought in that cunt — who I hated more for his negative football than being a goon.
 
I think Scholar also invested quite a bit of money into the introduction of ID cards, as there were real signs that they would be introduced, but it came to nothing.
 
Fuck me, I remember actually watching a game for 20 odd mins in the levelled out west stand building site before being spotted by a cozzer & escorted to the paxton.
It's also ironic that the most successful years of my time as a fan attending 6 cup final appearances (inc replays) a LC final, UEFA cup final & semi finals in Hillsborough/Highbury/ Vllla Park x2 and Wembley coincided with the start of the financial meltdown of the club and I was unaware. I was too young to understand. I was12 when I joined the SSC and had just turned 19 when we won the UEFA cup.
However, there were only 3 TV stations until 1982, no internet and news did not travel/leak so fast.

We have always been the non establishment club whereas Woolwich have been the establishment club.
Maybe being old Etonians at the helm helps somewhat when you have a conservative Government.

Scholar was a fan, but knew fuck all about how to run a football club but a lot about buying property.
Unfortunately the difference between us and Woolwich is we had Scholar buying up our shares they had Dien - who was a football man, had lots of footballing contacts, got them into G14, suggested Wenger after Graham got sacked ( the others went with Rioch) and got him the next season and actually went to Italy to sign Bergkamp.
 
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"
We finished above ,woolwich in 93.
They signed bergkamp and we signed ruel fox,Chelsea signed Zola ane we signed Armstrong.
It was a choice of Robert maxwell or sugar.we got the better deal there.
We had chance after chance to be successful and blew it with shit signings and poor managers.Much as people slagged G Graham off.He was need at the time.A cup win with ten men and we were robbed against Newcastle in that semi final.He would have beaten woolwich in that fa cup semi and we appointed that loser Hoddle.
The man who changed this club was Martn Jol.
 
We finished above ,woolwich in 93.
They signed bergkamp and we signed ruel fox,Chelsea signed Zola ane we signed Armstrong.
It was a choice of Robert maxwell or sugar.we got the better deal there.
We had chance after chance to be successful and blew it with shit signings and poor managers.Much as people slagged G Graham off.He was need at the time.A cup win with ten men and we were robbed against Newcastle in that semi final.He would have beaten woolwich in that fa cup semi and we appointed that loser Hoddle.
The man who changed this club was Martn Jol.
He turned down Bergkamp because of Klinsmann. He didn't want another "Carlos Kickaball".
 
We finished above ,woolwich in 93.
They signed bergkamp and we signed ruel fox,Chelsea signed Zola ane we signed Armstrong.
It was a choice of Robert maxwell or sugar.we got the better deal there.
We had chance after chance to be successful and blew it with shit signings and poor managers.Much as people slagged G Graham off.He was need at the time.A cup win with ten men and we were robbed against Newcastle in that semi final.He would have beaten woolwich in that fa cup semi and we appointed that loser Hoddle.
The man who changed this club was Martn Jol.

Hoddle was given fuck all to work with and had Pleat knifing him in the back at every turn.

Graham and his sidekick Houston were cunts... as for that matter is any spurs fan who praises that pair and slags off Hoddle.
 
We finished above ,woolwich in 93.
They signed bergkamp and we signed ruel fox,Chelsea signed Zola ane we signed Armstrong.
It was a choice of Robert maxwell or sugar.we got the better deal there.
We had chance after chance to be successful and blew it with shit signings and poor managers.Much as people slagged G Graham off.He was need at the time.A cup win with ten men and we were robbed against Newcastle in that semi final.He would have beaten woolwich in that fa cup semi and we appointed that loser Hoddle.
The man who changed this club was Martn Jol.
Theres no guaranteed formula for success, or everyone would be successful. Take the nostalgic rose tinted spectacles off.
 
Hard to recall from memory the correct figures....but I think the club debt in 91 was indeed about 10 million. Scholar brokered the deal to sell Gazza for 8 million ( reduced after injury to 5 million ) so once Gazza was sold there was zero risk of being shut down. Its almost certain the club would not be shut down regardless as it was the parent company that held the debt not just the football club, which as part of the parent company's holdings and would have been sold off as a going concern while the other bits were sold off or closed down.

On arrival Dodgy Tel & Sugar both invested 3.5 million each, which removed any of the long term risk of being closed, and it really would not have been a risk. In their first season I am pretty sure Spurs sold rather than bought anyone of value, Durie aside....by the end of 92 the heart of the cup winning team, Lineker, Stewart etc were all moved on for big money and the club was back in the black, Sky came into town & even then we were able to buy quality players like Teddy Sheringham.

El Tel got rumbled in 93 and from there it was pretty much down hill, although having signed Cundy in 92 it might well have already gone to rat shit, but it really was the 96-01 period where we hit the abyss.....generally as we seemed to buy on the cheap and pay low wages ( remind u of ENIC ? ) and could never quite get the beating of teams with a bit of grit ( remind you of ENIC ? ) and lastly Gerry the Mullet had a style of play that was in-flexible, dour and defensive and flair became an over rated luxury ( hang on that that also remind you of anyone ? )

Back to Scholar, no lesser light than Gary Mabbutt confirmed that Scholar loved Tottenham and was acting with the best of intentions at all times, despite everything that went wrong under him we were the equal of Man United in his period in charge, under Sugar Spurs eventually became the equals of Wimbledon with Fans....as a famous player once said.
 
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Going to stick this in here, as it is to do with Scholar.

I don't know who put this together but the editing is awful.
It's to do with Spurs financials under Scholar, it starts with Spurs, then there's a bit about agents, then it goes back to Spurs.
For any of the younger fans who don't know, Scholar had the idea of buying various companies with the idea being that their profits would fund Spurs, it turned out the complete opposite.

 
Going to stick this in here, as it is to do with Scholar.

I don't know who put this together but the editing is awful.
It's to do with Spurs financials under Scholar, it starts with Spurs, then there's a bit about agents, then it goes back to Spurs.
For any of the younger fans who don't know, Scholar had the idea of buying various companies with the idea being that their profits would fund Spurs, it turned out the complete opposite.



Looks as it it maybe a composite from a number of tv programmes ?

Either way its an illuminating 'documentary' on Spurs financial issues in the Scholar/Sugar years, football agents etc
 
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