What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (77 page)

We then moved on to the player's personal terms. Roach swore on his grandmother's life - again - that he'd promised Popescu only PS8,000 a week plus club bonuses, the terms I'd told him to offer. The problem was, Roach had implied that the bonuses would equate to another PS2,000-3,000 a week.

'Dennis, where did you get that crap from?' I asked.

He said, 'Well, it can happen sometimes. You have a good run and your bonus might equate to that.'

'Dennis, there is no chance. Players may get a bonus of two hundred quid a week, five hundred max if things have gone well. You're lying again, Dennis.
You've lied to the player and his agent. You've put this vision in their minds that he's going to get ten grand a week total.'

I called Peter Barnes to clarify what the bonus could amount to. I was right - never mind PS2,000 a week, they were lucky if they got PS2,000 a year!

Dennis said, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.'

I had to spend the next half-hour explaining to Popescu and his agent that Mr Roach's sole objective was to try to broker a deal and whatever he'd told them, they should forget and start from scratch.

Basically, Popescu was going to get PS8,000 a week and we would pay for six months' accommodation until he found his own apartment. There would be no other frills, such as cars or insurance - that was it. I explained that this was the club's policy and it wasn't going to be broken for anyone. The player and his agent were disappointed and tried to negotiate further with me, saying that otherwise he wasn't going to join. The management of PSV were also disappointed, as they thought they'd done a deal, so they took the player and his agent off to have another discussion. I don't know what went on in that meeting, but Popescu changed his mind and agreed to our terms.

To show again how quickly things happen in football, the player told me he'd pop home right now, get some clothes and come back with me on the plane to England to have a medical and sign the contract. I was amazed at the speed at which these people operated, but it was fine by me! We arrived back at Stapleford and I took Popescu home and called Ossie to come to pick him up and take him away for all the necessary formalities.

Ossie now had his Romanian duo, plus Jurgen Klinsmann, Teddy Sheringham, Darren Anderton and Nick Barmby. The newspapers were full of it and they named the Spurs front line 'the Famous Five'. There was a lot of excitement in the media and for once they were being positive towards Tottenham. They were even being kind to me, as I'd laid out over PS9m, which was a lot of money in those days. I recall an article on the arrival of the two Romanians in one of the national tabloids with the headline, 'They're used to mad dictators, so they'll do well at Spurs - Sorry, Mr Sugar.' They
can
be funny sometimes.

With the season about to start, I had fulfilled my promise to Ossie that we would invest in players to overcome the punishment laid down by the FA. It looked like the investment was going to pay off as we went into the first game of the season at Sheffield Wednesday. It was an eventful match! A lot of the attention was on Klinsmann, who was making his debut. After the World Cup some of the media snipers had labelled him a diver. With Spurs leading 3-2, Anderton crossed to Klinsmann, who headed in a magnificent goal. He then
ran back down the pitch and dived extravagantly onto the turf, sliding to the touchline, followed by a load more of our players, who dived after him. This goal celebration was a dig at the media for their 'diver' accusations. Later in the game, Klinsmann, who clearly wanted to impress, enthusiastically went up for a header and smashed his head against one of the other players, knocking himself out cold. We couldn't believe it - stretchered off the pitch in his first game!

Uncharacteristically, I ran down to the dressing room to see what was going on. Thankfully, he had come round and the doctor was already stitching up his badly cut lip. By the time the game was over, he was up, walking around and ready to talk to the media. Spurs won the match 4-3.

The next game of the season was home to Everton. Klinsmann was fit to play and scored an amazing goal with an overhead scissor-kick. The crowd was going bananas - this internationally famous player was scoring goals for Spurs. Not only were the fans buying shirts with Klinsmann's name on them but, believe it or not, I noticed a couple of fans with 'Sugar' on their shirts! Before we all get carried away, I may have seen the only two fans that ever bought 'Sugar' Tottenham shirts, but it was nonetheless true. Ann happened to spot them on the way into the ground. However, despite the fact that we had the Famous Five, the early signs weren't great as the season progressed. Although we looked good going forward, we were leaking goals at the back, as we were tactically bad defensively. League results were poor, criticism was starting to come from the media and the fans were getting frustrated. Pressure was being put on me to replace Ardiles. With my naivety about football management and the football industry as a whole, I just couldn't understand what was going wrong. Clearly something was, inasmuch as the team was poorly organised from a defensive point of view and this was making the players lose spirit.

Although we had the six-point penalty and were out of the FA Cup, we were still allowed to play in the League Cup and in October we were drawn against Notts County, a second-division club. Normally, a Premiership club would simply sail through his type of fixture, especially with the star players we had. However, they slaughtered us 3-0 and made us look stupid. This was the final straw. I remember sitting in the directors' lounge at Notts County afterwards with Berry and Alexiou, concluding that Ardiles would have to go.

A couple of days later, I summoned Ossie to my house and told him that, sadly, he'd have to leave the club. To be fair to him, he didn't protest. He requested one thing: that he could call a press conference the next day and get it over and done with in a dignified manner, after which he would not discuss the matter with the press.

The search was on for a new manager. I was considering a system whereby I would employ someone as director of football and also have a separate coach, having noted that PSV operated this way. It seemed a good idea to me, to have someone onboard who knew what they were doing and who could advise on which players to buy. Managers couldn't be trusted to do a good deal, since they were just interested in quick fixes. It was becoming abundantly clear to me that the current Tottenham board, despite telling me they were experienced, knew naff all about players.

By now I was on reasonable speaking terms with Irving Scholar, having realised he wasn't the devil portrayed by Venables. Irving suggested the coach Leo Beenhakker, while Andy Gross, Klinsmann's agent, recommended Guus Hiddink. Irving also said that if I was intent on having a director of football, I should consider David Pleat, who'd had a brief stint managing Tottenham in the eighties.

Claude and Daniel went to see Beenhakker and told me it was a non-starter for some reason or other, so I arranged a dinner with Hiddink, Pleat and myself to discuss the viability of this idea. Guus was up for it, but I told him I'd get back to him, as I needed to think the matter through and discuss whether this arrangement could work. I drove David Pleat back from the restaurant to my home and during the drive he seemed to be trying to talk me out of this dual-role idea. In hindsight, I guess he was trying to imply that
he
should be appointed as manager. He confused me so much, saying that he could not see this director of football position working, that it was alien to British football and would be misunderstood and that
I'd
get a load of stick. He suggested I stick to finding a conventional manager. At the same time, people were advising me against David Pleat for the manager's role. Nevertheless, I gave up the idea of the dual role and asked Andy Gross to tell Hiddink the position was not open for him after all.

Gerry Francis was an obvious target for Spurs at the time, having been very successful with Queens Park Rangers. His main claim to fame was that he was able to motivate his players and keep QPR in a relatively high position in the Premier League. Gerry's art was buying wisely (as he hardly had any budget to spend). For some reason or other, QPR's owners had decided to employ the services of ex-player Rodney Marsh and bring him in as director of football. Gerry Francis, from what I understood, took exception to this, as the appointment was made without consulting him, and he resigned from QPR.

I met with Gerry and we had a long discussion. He was a very serious chap and was concerned about whether he could do a good job for Tottenham - he felt more comfortable as manager of a club where he had some
history. He'd been a player at QPR and would talk in terms of, 'We did this, we played well, we were fifth in the league,' whereas when he referred to Tottenham and me, it was a case of, 'I'll try and do a good job for you.' Gerry was a deep-thinker, quite heavily influenced by his family. He told me he'd go off and think about it and have a chat with his dad. At the time, his only impression of me was all the stuff he'd read in the press, the rubbish that Venables and his cronies had been putting about. It is hard to understand, but most people are guided by what they read in the newspapers and take it as
fact.
Gerry Francis had this preconceived idea of me being the money man who didn't know anything about football, wasn't interested in winning trophies and all that crap.

I told him that, having been in football all his life, he should know better than most that what one reads in the papers is rubbish. I didn't want him to take my word for it - I suggested he talked to someone like Steve Perryman, who'd been Ossie's assistant and actually worked with me at the club. I even offered to walk Gerry through all the Venables crap and let him know where the land lay. He said he didn't want to hear any of the past stuff and made it clear that he would take no stance on the Terry Venables issue. It was a rather strange statement and he seemed a bit angry when he made it. I told him it was merely a suggestion, but if he didn't want to hear it, it was fine by me.

He finally agreed to join the club in November 1994 and his first game was at home against Aston Villa. We were losing 3-0 in the first half, so you can imagine what the fans were thinking, but Sheringham scored just before half-time, so we went in 3-1 down. When we came out in the second half, we were a different team. Klinsmann converted a penalty, then went on to score another to equalise. On that particular day, I had to leave early - I was going to my friend's daughter's wedding - so I missed the end of the game. Unfortunately, Dean Saunders scored for Villa in the last minute and we lost 4-3.

When I spoke to Gerry later in the evening, he told me, At half-time I went into the dressing room and told the players, "Right, this is my first game and you don't know me and I don't know you. But what I saw out there in the first half was a bloody joke. If you've got any guts and if this famous football club means anything to you, then you need to get out there and show me what you can do."' He was quite proud of that achievement and indeed they did stage a tremendous recovery.

*

My efforts when it came to beating up Kelly resulted in a two-day arbitration hearing being set up for 24 and 25 November. In my communications with
Kelly, I always demanded quick responses from him because the early rounds of the FA Cup were approaching and I wanted the courts to have enough time to rule on whether the FA's punishment was to be upheld or not.

At the hearing there would be a panel of three arbitrators. The chairman was a former appeal court judge and the two parties were allowed to nominate their own (independent) panel member. I asked Rick Parry, who was still furious with Kelly over this fiasco, whether he would act as our nominee, but regrettably, and quite rightly, he said there would be a conflict of interests, as he was chief executive of the Premier League. However, he came up with a great idea to appoint a Scottish barrister called Donald Findlay, who was a director of Glasgow Rangers. He suggested I call David Murray, Rangers' chairman, to see whether this was possible.

David Murray and I had previously done business on some player transfers. I think he quite liked my straightforward approach and the way I'd decided to take on Venables and the rest of the football mafia without backing down. He was sympathetic to the mishandling of our affairs by the FA and said, 'No problem at all. I'll get Donald to do it for you.' The FA's nominee was a barrister called Johnny Veeder who, though he was a specialist in arbitration, did not have the depth of knowledge of football that Findlay clearly had.

I asked Herbert Smith to find me a barrister who was experienced in this type of thing to put our case at the hearing, someone who had a bit of a sports background. We were represented by Michael Beloff and the FA's barrister was Peter Goldsmith, the fellow who was to go on to become Attorney General under Tony Blair. He was deemed to be the bee's knees of barristers, one of the most respected in the country.

Donald Findlay was brilliant at the hearing, guiding the judge and explaining the technicalities of football to him. Goldsmith, meanwhile, was getting frustrated; he was certainly no expert in football. Edward Walker-Arnott from Herbert Smith was very interested in the case and he spent almost the entire two days there. Once again, he added weight to our side by looking at the panel intensely and nodding sagely whenever our barrister made a good point.

The panel retired on the afternoon of the second day, going into a huddle for about an hour before coming back. As Donald sat down, I looked at him and he winked at me as if to say, 'You're okay, mate.'