A spoon full of Sugar makes the Venables go down
Friday, October 8, 2010 at 2:58PM #3
The news of the moment is Liverpool (I'm going to choose to ignore Stratford and Gullivan for the time being). Board shenanigans, Yanks, take-over bids, humiliation on the pitch, continued embarrassment off it. Their dirty laundry aired in public for all to see. It's almost like someone has rummaged through our bins and plucked out from the rubbish our discarded tag as the never-ending media circus and stuck it on the back of the Anfield club.
Once upon a time Liverpool conducted their business with complete discretion. The football did the talking. Not even a whisper from the chairman and owner in terms of bickering or disharmony. All focus was on the pitch. Modern times are now all very public, messy, contradictory and soul-destroying for the upside down flag waving regulars of the Kop. Since the Americans bought in. Hardly surprising.
Brings me onto an article I read online (Daily Express) that had me grabbing the nearest piece of upstanding furniture, to aid in supporting me from falling to the floor, all faint and dramatic and struggling to catch my breath. A cup of tea got me sorted, lost deep in a flashback to the early 90s.
Ah yes, the 1990s. Mostly forgettable for the complete lack of direction and progression - and that was just me bumming around doing very little. Don't even get me started on Tottenham.
It was a good decade in parts. Mostly for discovering Jenna Jameson (in the later part of the era) and dating a girl who looked like Jenna (if you've seen the 'artistic movie' The Kiss - that particular incarnation of Jameson). I also got myself a proper job in the IT industry which was practically in its infant days, back when only the lucky ones had dial-up modems that made connecting to the internet not too dissimilar a task than attempting to load a game on a Spectrum 48k.
There were also many pivotal moments in our clubs history that took place during the decade of Brit Pop. We had some great players and great escapes and a League Cup final win to end it on a high. Personally, looking back, it was mostly about the players we had. We got our pleasure and satisfaction from our side from individuals rather than from the collective.
Christ, we had some fantastic players. Players deserving of fantastic teams. Except we also churned out some pretty pathetic transfer signings and managerial appointments. It really was quite shit. But not all of it. Sort of started well, bit in the middle was crap, and sort of ended well. But we muddled through and being Spurs, we always entertained.
1991 was emotional. Off the pitch, we were at deaths door. Financial meltdown, the reminisce of Irving Scholar coming back to bite a massive chunk out of our backside. Keith got it so right.
I get the feeling nowadays, it's all quite under-stated when looking back. Not sure how many of the younger ones amongst us appreciate how big a mess the club was in. It truly felt at the time that we had to win the FA Cup. They all said it, win it to save yourselves. That's how it played out in my head and in the heads of the shelf-side (my original home at the Lane) mob. Either that or I'm holding onto distant memories of back page headlines from The Sun.
If we wanted a buyer we had to at least offer something in the way of a reason for them to even look in our direction. I'd hate to think that we'd have been left to go under. It was grim and it hardly looked positive.
I was ever-present in our FA Cup run that season. Went to the home league games to collect all the necessary vouchers to apply for a semi-final ticket. By apply, that's stand in a queue that finished at the ticket office on the Park Lane and wrapped itself around the corner all the way down to Northumberland Rd where I stood for hours at the arse end of it. Worth it, of course. The day of the Wembley game against the scum is something I've written about before. They were coasting the league. This was the defensive beast of a machine, the Arsenal, boring beyond belief yet practically unbeatable, against the Tottenham in turmoil.
For them, the double was just two sets of 90 minutes away. For us, lose this, and end of days. Both league games finished 0-0 that season.
The journey to the game however did not reflect the potentiality of depression that could have befallen us that day had things turned out differently. I lived in Walthamstow at the time and made my connecting journey to Wembley and found our lot to be the more vocal of the two sets of fans. The gooners appeared reserved. A good friend of mine who also went to the game (a scummer) said that behind a lot of his pre-match bravado, on the day itself, he had a gut feeling about it going in our favour. The odds staked so high in their favour, it made him nervous, because everyone, well most, couldn't see how we could beat them.
My personal highlight was a gooner telling his mate on the train "If we lose, I'm going to hang myself from a tree on the Seven Sisters road". I think, regardless of colours, we all had the same thought.
It's a NLD, it's going to be intense regardless, but this game was beyond anything I had experienced. Well, I guess since the '87 League Cup semi-final trilogy. Which hurt. Badly. Both needing, wanting to win for completely different reasons. One for glory, the other for survival.
At the Twin Towers we had the privilege of welcoming the Arsenal coach and players. We greeted them with a gentle hand wave and cheeky wink. All very pleasant and gay. They smiled and waved back. Post-game rumours suggested they had already recorded a cup final song only made our waving that much stronger.
Why would anyone other than Chas'n'Dave record a Cup final song when the year ends in one?
As for the game.
What I witnessed that day was comic book fantasy. The very definition of wtf is happening mind-blowing unreality sexed up ripping of shreds football. It was both the most unexpected and greatest opening 10 minutes of any game I had or have witnessed. Quite simply breathtaking.
The urgency, the desire. That free-kick. The sheer cheek of scoring twice. It was shaping up to be a monumental upset. Smith scoring before the end of the second half to give them hope. I can remember thinking how could we possibly hold out. You always knee-jerk to the worst scenario you can think off. It's your subconscious tuning you up for protection from the despair you'll experience if it happens.
Spurs face up to Arsenal in the 1991 Wembley FA Cup semi-final
The second half was equally immense in a different type of way, digging deep and then that counter (Mabbutt, fed it well, Nayim to his left and Samways up ahead, but Lineker uses him by not using him, good try, he scored, and David Seaman will be very disappointed about that it seemed to go through his fingers) and the ecstasy of being 3-1 up. We stopped them, double dream dead, and we breathed life back into our bodies as we marched onwards, and of course, won the cup against Forest in the final.
3-1, we beat the scum 3-1.
Venables, in our eyes, saved the club off the pitch too by bringing in Alan Sugar who had the clout to plug the draining black-hole where our money once sat.
Dream team. Or not.
Fast forward to 1993 and it had all gone sour. El Tel sacked, boardroom struggles, high court dates. It's easy (and yet quite uncomfortable) to look back now and accept that Venables was not exactly in the right. He was fairly left to the right. By some distance. It's not quite the same as the Liverpool situation, but the one parallel is the uproar from the fans in support for what they believed in. Again, not the same thing and arguably its far more black and white for them than it was for us.
I was at the High Court, I'm pretty certain, on most if not all of the days. Standing outside with an assortment of Spurs fans, all varying age groups, all with pretty much nothing else to do when everyone else was at work. All of us some what blinded by the details and simply there to support the footballing man over the business man. Back in those days, we didn't have the safety net of internet message boards. It's was all terrace and pub talk and what the hacks are scribbling. It was spent the only way we could have spent it back then. Standing around singing songs and smashing up Amstrad computers.
In the end Sugar won and his decision to sack the manager was validated by the courts.
We moved on. Tel was no saint and that became apparent later on. Our loyalties completely clouded, not really wanting to accept any level of betrayal. Of course, regardless of the facts, the alleged sub-plots, the suggestion Venables never had the £3M investment he was going to stake in the club and that Sugar then had to cover it when purchasing Spurs…I still never took to our bearded saviour, the one with the cash that saved the club. Even though some argue that it was still Venables who actually got him to do the saving by getting him involved. I can’t think of any other suitors at the time who would have stepped in had Sugar nodded a no and walked away.
From a philosophical perspective, it was always doomed from the start when considering the colourful and differing backgrounds of both Sugar and Venables.
I guess looking back now it was probably the best thing to happen to the club in our recent history because of the structure and balance Sugar instilled at the Lane (be it he cocked up several times in matters of a footballing nature) but he gave us a backbone in terms of how we managed ourselves off the pitch.
And of course selling up to ENIC and a certain Mr Levy has birthed a new chapter which is doing its best to drown out most of the misery from the 1990s. It's taken us this long to get back into the game. A very long and winding road of recovery.
As for Lord S, bless him for his honesty in retrospect relating to Klinsmann and the t-shirt in the bin incident, George Graham and the admittance of one or two other related matters concerning his loudmouth presence and conduct when he was at Spurs in the capacity of chairman.
Liverpool fans, don't despair too much. There is always light at the end of the tunnel. Well, unless you're Leeds Utd, but then when you spend a fortune on a fish tank and offer extortionate wages to Seth Johnson, you deserve relegation twice over.
And as for days outside the High Court…hands up if you were there. That might have been me you were standing next to when dancing around the smashed up pieces of a home computer.
You've been reading the third part of Spooky's International Break diary journals.
Part one can be read here.
Part two here.
Reader Comments (40)
Best international break ever.
That's my favourite article of the lot Spooks. I was 10 in '91 and can remember watching that Spurs FA Cup run vividly. Its been a rollercoaster ride ever since then - of course with more downs than ups.
BTW, what is the Jurgen/t-shirt/bin incident? Not sure I've head of that before. Would love to have a Klinnsmann-esque player back at Spurs now.
Really impressed with the recent quality, not to say you're not normally quality spooks ;) The last article was such a good read especially the comments. I remember that queue at the Lane, went to all the games apart from the Pompey away game that started the cup run. Gutted to have missed that. Gazza was out of this world that day. Have to say at the time I sided with Venables but knew deep down it would go pear shaped for him.
I'm never tired of reminiscing about the 91 semi-final, it was the day of all days, simply the best day out ive ever had as a Spurs fan. I went up to Wembley with a Gooner mate and we shook hands before KO before going to seperate ends of the ground, we said the severity of the result meant that we would not meet after the game. It meant so much. The relief when Linekers goal went in was palpable, we were so under the cosh. I could see Gooners crying as I was near the half way line divide.
I remember supporting Venables and hating Sugar like most fans did at the time but the memories of the struggle are a bit blurred now, I don't remember realising at the time how bad our finances were. Fair play to Sugar for saving the club, but boy he made some of the worst managerial appointments in football. When George Graham was employed all my football nightmares had come true. I grew up hating him, his club, his style of football etc etc etc.
Great write-up.
The Klinsmann incident if my mind is not playing vivid tricks on me was when Sugar dumped the Germans shirt in a bin when Jurgen announced he would be leaving and not staying. Sugar performance this in an interview which was recorded, very very embarrassing.
I was 5 in 1991, which is gutting as I can't remember anything about the run or the game. I only remember having the poster of Mabbutt lifting the cup on my door throughout my childhood. One day it will happen again and I'll make sure I can say "I was there!"
Sugar didn't have a clue about the football side and it showed. He relied too much on other people opinions and get far too involved. For me this was still part of the problem at Spurs, we started to stagnate and dip to a level which would have us miles behind certain other clubs. Sugar appointing Gross and GG just made things worse. But I agree, the foundations finanically were built and its allowed us to be in the position we are in now. Almost there.
"Is Gascoinge gonna have a crack? He is you know. Oh I say. School boys own stuff"
Barry Davies. Legend.
ooh yeah Pompey away was immense! Gazza saved the day again. Fans fighting on the pitch, it was mental. Didnt go to Blackpool (think it was Blackpool) remember it blowing a gale during the highlights. Went to all the other games though, it really was Gazza's cup.
How different was football back in the day? Completely different vibe, games, cup games, they meant so much more than what they do these days. All very much more straightforward back then.
All I have is a VHS my older brother gave me of the 91 game recorded off the telly. I was way too young and got to live the moment a few years later playing it back about 1000 times.
Thanks for bringing a piece of history back to life!
back when only the lucky ones had dial-up modems that made connecting to the internet not too dissimilar a task than attempting to load a game on a Spectrum 48k.
lol, so true
wasn't Phil Collins interviewed at half time with a flat cap on saying he was Spurs?
I've now seen him on TV at Man U, the dirty drummer.
Phil supports Tottenham. If he's a United fan now, then I guess he was never really a supporter. Just a cock in a flat cap.
Spooks, Wathamstow 1991 ? I lived in Lancaster Road, 5 minutes from St. James street - I think !
In Fort Worth Texas now....loving the blog....fantastic....
If Corrina is reading this hi ...
USMC Ret.
ROCK star PHIL COLLINS has revealed that ex-Manchester United winker CHRISTIANO RONALDO sent his two sons Christmas presents.
The unlikely pair met up through the Portugese player's assistant ROGERIO, who is a massive fan of the ex-GENESIS drummer.
And Ronaldo did his best Father Christmas act last year after hearing Phil's footie-mad sons were fans.
He told FourFourTwo magazine: "Cristiano sent my boys Christmas presents.
"He's a lovely guy, really charming."
i think Phil lost his kids to Man U.
Queues bloody hell remember them well. Some of them were nightmares. Always seemed to be my responsibility to get to WHL at about 7.00 when there was likely to be a lot of people there. To get there at that time and then see it snake around the ground and every corner you go round you see it going down to the next corner. And of course somehow you see the touts who have handfuls of vouchers at the front of the queue buying 20 or 30 tickets at a time...
SF 1991 - great day - St Hotspur Day
Dropped car off at wembley - champers and a fry up for breakfast - train to wembley - out singing the woolwich pikeys - car home to get lock in with the woolwich boys - watching recording of the game - woolwich Andy having a go at me as we didn't take the urine and he and the other 11 woolwich pikeys couldn't handle the pressure of no abuse!!!!! - finish of the day/night with a great ruby and loads more beer!!!
Some of you are too young to remember it and some of us are too old.
Could I have another blanket Nurse?
Who needs football? It interferes with the the reminiscing.
You're getting better Spooky. Don't peak too soon though, as MrsJimmyG2 used to say
there's a long season ahead.
Semi-final at Wembley. What a day. Gazza's day. I was there and I heard the silence from that lot as both goals went in.The glory of the cup? Marvellous. BUT reading the daily express?! Blimey Spooks.
I love this blog. Outstanding writing.
I wasn't there. Neither did I know much about Spurs before 91...but boy do I feel this piece!
The 'Rafael Van-der Vaart' of blogs.
Brilliant Spooky, you're spoiling us.
I remember it well.as soon as i walked in the Stadium i knew we were going to win.Spurs made Arsenil look pathetic & should of been out of sight at half time.Justin Edinburgh was immense that day,as was Mabbutt up against anti Spurs Sky Sports pundit Alan Smith & his side"s kick & rush football.Allways remember driving past a van on the way there with the words GAZMOBILE/THIS VAN RUNS ON GAZ painted on the side..!!COYS
Where the f*ck do you find the time?
Cracking read.
I just pay a ghost writer to jot some stuff done.
One of the finest Spurs victories of the modern era. Compare it to the 93 lost where the scum took their revenge. They defended, played ugly and scored from a set piece. I guess they tend to forget how much of a bore they were pre-Wenger.
Brilliant read Spooky!! Remember watching the semi on tv, living in Bethnal Green then. Superb game. My alarm then was Radio 1. The radio came on about 7.30 ish the following morning, as I lay there dozing, not wanting to get out of bed due to the stinking hang over, the immortal words of Simon Mayo came over the airwaves, " Arsenal, what about your double now!" I was out of bed like a shot, dancing round the room like a lunatic. Every time I hear Simon Mayo now, I remember those words as if it was yesterday..
Keep up the good work, I look forward to your blogs with baited breath!!
COYS!!
ah, '91. my fav year. i was 18, about to sit my A levels. had taken it from the goons and everyone else at school since 87, the fa cup final, the league cup semi, the goons winning the league in 89. 91, finally i could give it back. gazza, lineker, mabbutt, pompey away, the mad spurs support that day, 6000 it must have been on that terrace. notts county in the 6th round, that crazy county goal from the left back - don o'rieidon? -, then gazza pulled it back. and the draw for the semi - i think it was made after the county game. remember being in my mate's fiesta xr2 on the way back from the lane to southend and the draw was made, the big one,the scum. rest is glorious history.
sugar, venables? venables should have stuck to footy but his ego got in the way, he acted with no class during that whole saga. sugar sorted out the finances but unfortunately appointed some clowns to manage. funny they never bring that up on the apprentice. anyway he did stick a load of cash into the club its just a shame he had no clue about football, unlike the gooners board who left us a million miles behind during that decade. winning that semi and the cup in 91 made up for a hell of a lot in terms of our rivalry with the goons.if we could win the CL, it would surpass that. here's hoping/dreaming. COYS x
Only just started reading these posts...what have i been missing! Great read again Spooky...always good to be reminded of beating the Goons.Keep up the good work
Brilliant piece of writing , who knew international break could conjure up something good after all.
Feeling a bit old for the moment because it seems like the games from my youth are so close , especially that one and so much times has passed since.
Quality read, nothing like a bit of nostalgia, I always wonder what Gazza could have become had he stayed at Spurs and injury free.
I was a Paxton lad, standing on the terraces as a Junior Member. And I will always remember Wembley was absolute mayhem when we scored the first and second goals, we were sitting in the upper tier and I think I ended up about 10 rows down from where I started, people just jumping everywhere going mental.
And then singing you've lost that double feeling all the way up Wembley way. And I do remember seeing grown men crying as well.
I was two when this happened. I didn't even know it happened till 2001.Out of my eleven years of life as a Spurs fan, I've had clost to ten years of enic. Not that they weren't grim, the first few years certainly were, but I'm probably right in saying they couldn't be as bad as the grim days of the early nineties. But I wasn't there when the 91' semi was sending roaring shockwaves through England's complacent footballing powerhouses. I wasn't there. But I swear to the footballing gods I will be there when something like this happens again.
"I can’t think of any other suitors at the time who would have stepped in had Sugar nodded a no and walked away."
Three words: Robert Fucking Maxwell
There would be no Spurs today if that had happened.
So, a lesson to us all, even when it seems shit, it's probably not as bad as it could be.
(PS watched the 91 SF in a house in Tottenham full of gooners. Was never invited back again.)
I had completely forgotten about that. Dear Mr Maxwell...that would have been fun.
Fantastic read, well done. I sent a letter to Sugar after the sacking of Venables. Enclosed was a cheque for my season tickets. I wrote that if he was serious about Spurs then cash it, if you're just some twat looking for a quick buck, then dont. The reply was simply amazing , although it did show his lack of footballing nouse, it was sincere and heartfelt al the same. The guy took the time to personally write a letter of length and clarity and from that day on I had no doubts about the man whatsoever.Still got it somewhere, and his selling to ENIC was as you point out the right and proper thing to do. The Sugar years were painful both on and off the field and his managerial appointments were dubious at best. But he supported his appointments to the hilt and can only ever be accused of being ignorant about the game and loyal when perhaps he shouldn't have been, but that's not a bad trait is it?
great post. bought back some great memories. my 2 best friends were gooners. 'are you coming round to watch to watch the game with us?'. 'no way'. after 15 mins, 'i'm on my way, you twats' then smith scored. then the fear of it all going tits up, then lineker. what a day.
This is LUVERLY!!!! As a long-time fan (first game '49) your gut-level love of our team brings tears to my eyes and a shiver to my spine ....... especially re-living that game against the red filth!!
You are really treating us to some superb stuff during the break Spooks.
Ahh, Gazza, wonderful Gazza. Some of the young 'uns probably think he's just some drunk old plonker, but what a magician he was. Never the same after that cruciate injury. Genius. What a team with Gazza and Lineker.
I remember seeing Gazza as a young lad, when Newcastle sent a team over to the Isle of Man to play a pre season friendly tournament. i think he scored 5 past the IOM team and my Granddad said, "that boy will be a good player if he loses some weight! Jack Charlton was his boss back then. happy days....