by Tom Bower
Six days later, on 26 June, Venables and Tony Berry, a director of Tottenham under investigation by the DTI for his controversial management of Blue Arrow, met Lazio’s representatives at the Hyde Park Hotel. Also present was Gino Santin, an Italian restaurateur and friend of Venables, introduced to act as a translator. Lazio’s offer for Gascoigne was reduced to £4.825 million. In Sugar’s name, Berry was keen to accept. As Sugar later confirmed: ‘We’re talking about a fucking geezer with one leg.’
The first to veto Sugar’s acceptance was Venables: ‘I’ve been transferrin’ players for years and I’m a fuckin’ maestro at it.’ On Venables’s initiative, Gino Santin was asked to act as an intermediary with Lazio. Sugar agreed. With surprising naivety, the businessman believed that football transactions were similar to normal commerce. Unsuspecting, he was introduced to the erratic world where unknown parties inserted themselves into transactions to earn spectacular sums merely by nodding their approval of a transfer. Or casting a veto.
At a board meeting in July 1991, Tottenham’s directors agreed to pay the restaurateur a 5 per cent commission, with a maximum of £150,000, if he proved successful. A third person involved was Mel Stein who was to receive £400,000 on completion of the transfer. ‘Are you being fuckin’ serious or are you pullin’ my pissa?’ snapped Venables when told about Stein’s potential income from the deal. (Soon after, Stein was charged with perpetrating a fraud in America and was named in a French arrest warrant for fraud in totally unrelated matters. He was acquitted on both charges.)
Scholar had retained Roach to sell Gascoigne, but once Santin and Mel Stein became involved Roach accepted £27,500 in compensation and withdrew. By then, unknown to some directors of Spurs, Lazio’s directors had agreed to pay Roach £75,000 for ‘making the deal work’. Although Tottenham’s new board, during an eight-hour meeting, noted ‘Lazio may also be paying Roach in connection with the Gascoigne sale – this is illegal both under the Football League and FIFA regulations’, no action was taken after Roach denied receiving any money. Yet his exclusion from the big prize rankled. ‘How Alan Sugar ever got to be the managing director of a public company,’ Roach resentfully complained, ‘I’ll never know. He’s so uncouth. Every other word he uses is a swear word.’ Roach was especially troubled by Sugar’s scrupulous attitude to money, ‘He’s so careful. He treats every pound note like a dead body.’
In late July 1991, Venables reported that Santin had negotiated the sale of Gascoigne to Lazio for £5.5 million. The offer was accepted on 1 August 1991. The following year, Santin demanded his commission of £200,000. The invoice provoked Sugar to scream ‘outrage’ and spit at Venables, ‘I thought you said he’d do it for a fucking drink?’ Venables spat back, ‘Yeah, but that was as a translator. He put it all together.’ Still unaware that Santin’s negotiations had produced the same deal which Lazio had offered just before the takeover, Sugar signed a cheque for £200,000 plus VAT on 7 September 1992 payable to Santin’s company, the Anglo European Market Research and Consulting Company, registered in Switzerland. Curious that Santin, apparently a resident in the UK, should use a Swiss company, Sugar also began wondering if Venables would secretly share that commission. An official inquiry found no evidence whatsoever of an agreement that any part of Santin’s fee was paid back to Venables. But, as an entirely separate issue, no one knew that in 1987 Venables had opened an offshore NatWest account in Jersey where he had accumulated at least £71,000.
The unusual circumstances surrounding Gascoigne’s sale influenced Tottenham’s new directors at their meeting on 7 August 1991. For the first time, they became aware of the ‘Barnes file’, the secret arrangements during Irving Scholar’s management. The contents, they agreed, were ‘a very sensitive area’. Five weeks later, on 12 September 1991, the directors decided, ‘Mr Sugar is very clear that a report must be sent to the appropriate authorities.’ To understand the legal consequences, on 10 October 1991, Eddie Ashby and others consulted Anthony Grabiner QC, an eminent lawyer and a Tottenham supporter. Grabiner’s advice was unequivocal: ‘AG suggested that Alan Sugar and Venables should arrange to meet with representatives of Football League to explain our position rather than have any letters written.’ Sugar’s solicitor, Brian Fugler, added, ‘it is of the utmost importance’ and ‘imperative that . . . immediate action is taken’. On 24 October 1991, the board agreed that Sugar and Venables should report the issue to the Football League.
Over the following weeks, Sugar and other directors reconsidered their attitude. Some suggested, especially Venables, that disclosure might be unwise. More advice, it was agreed, should be sought from Peter Leaver QC, a former director of Tottenham. To the relief of the directors, Leaver appeared less insistent on disclosure and instead recommended taking action against Scholar for ‘misfeasance’. For the moment, the crisis appeared to have passed.
Alan Sugar, however, was beginning to realize that his experience in the East End and the City bore little comparison to the unorthodox jungle of the football business. Even the trade in players usually appeared to produce losses. Bought at the top of the market, most players were subsequently sold as a diminishing asset. Every decision ‘to refresh my squad’ appeared to be solely based upon Terry’s instinct. For the computer manufacturer accustomed to fixed costs and written records, Venables’s unwillingness to record anything in writing, despite the requirements of a public company, and his habit of trading players, was irritating. ‘It’s all in me ’ead,’ smiled Venables emerging from another endless session watching videos of football players. Gordon Durie, bought in such haste, had proved to be a failure. Venables showed no remorse for the costly mistake.
Sugar was intolerant of chaos. For his part, Venables feared the threat of Sugar’s financial muscle. Amid increasing tension, the footballer believed that his failure to match Sugar’s investment would demean his status and weaken his influence. This sentiment was aggravated by his ignorance concerning finance. In particular, Venables appeared unable to grasp that Tottenham’s debts and the suspension of its shares on the stock exchange could best be resolved by the directors investing more money in the club to repay the bank loans. Sugar suggested that the two partners issue more shares to refinance the club, costing £800,000 each. Venables’s reaction, fuelled by Ashby, was antagonistic. He feared that Sugar was dismantling the ‘dream-team’ by placing himself under financial pressure, and altering the partnership from equality to 47/23 per cent in Sugar’s favour. To avoid that imbalance Venables signed an agreement with Sugar at the Grosvenor House Hotel on 21 November 1991 pledging money to buy the shares which he did not possess. That signature confirmed Venables’s recklessness; finding the additional money for the shares, he knew, would be difficult. His saviour was Ted Ball of Landhurst Leasing, an unorthodox finance company.
To secure the loan of £1 million from Landhurst, Venables pledged on behalf of Edennote, the company which contracted Venables’s services to Tottenham, four public houses and their contents. That pledge, signed by Venables, was dishonest. One public house in Cardiff did not exist and he did not own the three others or their contents. In Venables’s favour, some would suggest that Ashby was responsible for the ‘exotic’ deal, an allegation which the bankrupt denied. The document which undermined Venables’s protestations of innocence was a personal guarantee to Landhurst signed by Venables, based upon the ‘sham sale and leaseback’ of assets which Venables falsely claimed to own. Subsequently, Venables denied signing the personal guarantee. Exacerbating his dishonesty, Edennote was trading while permanently insolvent but the secret was protected by accounts which, DTI inspectors later concluded, were contrived to give ‘a misleadingly favourable impression’ and concealed a loan of £500,000 to Venables. Sugar was unaware of that subterfuge, which Ashby would describe as ‘Terry’s crucifixion’.
Ostensibly, Venables’s partnership with Sugar remained solid. While Venables struggled to win prizes for Tottenham, Sugar watched from the chairman’s seat in the directors’ b
ox at White Hart Lane, enjoying the glamour of 36,000 fans roaring their support for his team. The chairman ruefully reflected that those thousands were utterly uninterested in the shenanigans among the club’s directors, although football constantly threw up bombshells.
The worm turned at Easter 1992. The multi-millionnaire Michael Ashcroft regretted his partnership with Eddie Ashby in the cleaning business. Their recriminations were mutual. Ashcroft remained suspicious of Ashby who, as Tottenham’s ‘general manager’, had become the football club’s central organizer. Ashcroft telephoned Tony Berry, a director of Tottenham and similarly a former cleaning contractor. Berry took the call in his kitchen in Boca Raton, Florida. ‘Your man Ashby,’ said Ashcroft, ‘is a bankrupt, officially bankrupt.’ Berry was stunned. As a bankrupt, Ashby was forbidden to act as Tottenham’s ‘general manager’. Sugar was told about Ashby’s impropriety on the same day. ‘We can’t have these crooks around,’ snapped Sugar. He urged Venables to fire his adviser but Venables refused. The embarrassment was disclosed in May 1992 to the Independent newspaper.
Sugar was ensnared by football’s sleaze and by his dependence upon Venables. Like all club chairmen, his choices were limited: Venables could either be fired or supported. Fearful of the fans if Venables was dismissed, Sugar reluctantly agreed that Ashby could continue to attend board meetings. Although his entanglements were accumulating, the board’s minutes recorded that Sugar envisaged ‘no problems with Mr Ashby’s bankruptcy per se’. Dismissing Ashby had become complicated by his familiarity with the circumstances surrounding the purchase of Teddy Sheringham from Nottingham Forest.
In the Tottenham boardroom after a match in early summer 1992, Venables had discussed with Sugar the purchase of the striker Teddy Sheringham from Nottingham Forest. One surmountable problem, explained Venables, was the unusual demand of Brian Clough, the club’s manager. ‘Cloughie likes a bung,’ explained Venables. Sheringham’s transfer would depend on Clough receiving a large, secret payment, in cash. ‘Well, just forget it,’ Sugar replied spontaneously, refusing to authorize a procurement fraud. Bribes were completely out of the question. ‘I had never heard anything like this before,’ commented Sugar. Subsequently, Venables described how Clough, following another transfer, had received a ‘bag full of money’ in a motorway café. Sugar became convinced that the negotiations between Venables and Clough were ‘an aggravation’ because of Clough’s demand for a bung. His interpretation was supported by Tony Berry. During a lunch with Venables at Langan’s, a fashionable London restaurant, Venables had received a call on Berry’s mobile telephone. Berry was convinced that the call concerned the payment of a bung to Clough, despite Venables’s denials. Nevertheless, at the end of August 1992, Sugar finally approved Sheringham’s transfer.
Since Venables and Clough could not settle the deal directly, Frank McLintock was asked to help as an intermediary. McLintock, a former Arsenal player, was the co-owner of First Wave, a football agency. Venables agreed that McLintock would be paid for his work. On 27 August 1992, Sheringham, accompanied by McLintock, arrived at Tottenham’s training ground and signed his transfer for an announced fee of £2.15 million. Forest’s accounts, however, would only show the receipt of £2.1 million. No one could subsequently explain the missing £50,000.
The same afternoon at White Hart Lane, McLintock was paid £58,750 in cash by Tottenham’s finance director. The invoice was marked, ‘For attention of E. Ashby’. The payment was approved in writing by Sugar in the belief that the cash – £50,000 plus VAT – was a payment to an agent. That evening, McLintock and Sheringham met Ronnie Fenton, Clough’s assistant, at the Posthouse Hotel in Luton, off the M1 motorway. A box containing the money from Tottenham was handed over to Fenton.
Over the following days trusted members of staff at the Forest ground received envelopes from Fenton containing between £200 and £250. The gossip rippled through the club that £50,000 had been handed over ‘somewhere on the motorway’ to the assistant manager who, while drunk, had admitted to Alan Hill, the chief scout, that the £50,000 had been split between himself and Clough. By then £8,750 had been returned to Tottenham because it had been wrongly added as VAT. The confusion aggravated the tense relationship within the club.
Alan Sugar’s frustration was palpable. The abrasive businessman proudly dominated Britain’s computer market but was apparently powerless to control a mere north London football club. Screaming obscenities at Korean suppliers for failing to deliver acceptable parts for his computers produced results, but ranting at Darren Anderton and the other players, he was warned by Venables, would prove unproductive. Sugar resented the footballers’ criticism that he was ‘paranoid that he was being ripped off’. He could not tolerate any criticism, especially accurate comments; but he feared the compromises demanded by football’s heroes, who ignored the requirements of a public company. Terry Venables suspected the real reason was that Tottenham was Terry’s ‘blue and white army’ and not Alan’s. Sugar, Venables believed, was incandescent that the fans chanted for Terry and not for himself as the ‘The Saviour’. Denied that weekly adulation, Sugar, Venables convinced himself, was seeking to exploit his partner’s vulnerabilities.
Eddie Ashby’s continued employment as ‘general manager’ was one of Venables’s weaknesses, compounded by the continuing failure to inform the Football League about the ‘Barnes file’. Helpfully, on 25 June 1992, Jonathan Crystal and Brian Fugler – two lawyers close to Tottenham – had received advice from Peter Leaver that since the club had recently come under the jurisdiction of the Premier League rather than the Football League, the requirement to disclose the file had disappeared. But that relief did not cure Sugar’s dislike of Ashby and Venables. His predicament was partly resolved by finally forbidding Ashby to attend board meetings, although the bankrupt continued to manage the club on Venables’s behalf. Venables himself was, for Sugar, another dilemma.
Sugar believed that the chief executive and manager was using Tottenham as his private piggy bank to pay for holidays, extra motor cars and his father’s medical bills. Dennis Roach was secretly recorded commenting, ‘Terry doesn’t trust anybody. Go to him with a deal and he thinks he can do it better. But he wasn’t exactly intelligent by giving his daughter a job at Tottenham for forty-five grand when the previous girl earned fifteen grand.’ In Sugar’s opinion, Venables and Ashby were always ‘at the edge’. Ashby’s original appearance of reasonableness had become suspicious. Mistrust had ruined Venables’s relationship with Sugar, and Venables resisted attempts to broker a truce. His stubbornness was short-sighted. Sugar began to plan for his partner’s removal.
The headline charge against Venables was carefully crafted by Sugar to highlight the footballer’s managerial incompetence and alleged dishonesty. In his draft affidavit, Sugar mentioned Venables’s disclosure concerning the transfer of Teddy Sheringham from Nottingham Forest to Tottenham. The single disclosure – ‘Cloughie likes a bung’ – was calculated to cause a sensation. Despite Venables’s vehement denials, insiders recognized the truth. The only uncertainty was whether adequate evidence could be produced to prove Clough’s receipt of a bung for Sheringham’s transfer.
Alan Sugar calculated the odds to be in his favour. On 6 May 1993, he chaired a tense board meeting at White Hart Lane, waiting for the moment to move in for the kill. ‘Like a volcano,’ John Ireland, the company secretary, described later, ‘we were always waiting for him to erupt and when he blew we were paralysed.’ In Sugar’s mission to crucify, he initially targeted Jonathan Crystal, the barrister, for criticizing Tottenham’s purchase of Amstrad computer equipment. ‘We ain’t spunking money on fucking lawyers. You ain’t going to spunk any more of my money up the wall,’ Sugar began, shouting at Crystal mercilessly. In Sugar’s harsh judgement, Crystal was little more than a gaunt, unhappy and insecure Rottweiler always yapping around Venables’s feet. ‘You fucking cunt, you fucking cunt, you fucking arse-licking cunt,’ Sugar burst out in a rage at the lawyer. While Crystal fea
red a physical attack as punishment for uncritically supporting Venables, Sugar launched an equally violent attack against Venables himself. Emptying his briefcase on the boardroom table, he threw a letter at the startled manager. ‘You’d better read this,’ spat Sugar, so overwhelmed by the excitement that he uncharacteristically omitted to utter a swear word. The ultimatum had been carefully crafted by his lawyers. Sugar demanded Venables’s resignation in return for accepting £2.8 million for his shares and compensation for his remaining three-year contract.
Shortly after Sugar stormed out, Tony Berry took Venables down to the Oak Room. Previously a fan, Berry had become disillusioned by Venables’s misuse of money. Vulnerable to the DTI’s continuing investigation of his own business record, Berry had swung to support Sugar’s complaints. ‘Take the money and get out of trouble,’ Berry told Venables. ‘There’s so much against you. It’s a generous offer. It’s the market price. You’ll pay off your debts and can stay on as coach, leaving Sugar to manage the money.’
‘You just want to back the winning side,’ replied Venables, unable to calculate that Sugar’s 47 per cent stake and Berry’s 2 per cent plus an additional director’s vote were sufficient to force his removal. Tottenham had been valued by Coopers Lybrand, said Venables, at £30 million, pricing his own shares at £8 million, rather than the £2.8 million offered by Sugar, and its value was rising. Eventually, Tottenham would be worth £160 million. Venables failed to understand that the only valid price at that moment was Sugar’s. ‘It’ll only end in tears,’ urged Berry who, after seventy hours of grilling by DTI inspectors, understood the perils of running foul of corporate law. ‘Terry, there’s been stealing. Things have gone.’ ‘Nah, you don’t know the whole story,’ scoffed Venables. Bluster, bullying and a revolt by the fans, Venables believed, pitting the supporters against the shareholders, could smother Sugar, whose image was bad. Unwittingly, the two street fighters were set to reveal the reality of English football.
