What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (78 page)

The chairman said they had decided in favour of Tottenham Hotspur and that the details would be published later. We suspected that meant we'd got our six points back and were back in the FA Cup but we had no idea about
the fine; whether we'd get the money back or if it was to be reduced. Kelly was plutzing; you could see he was gutted - no one had ever taken on the FA and beaten them up in this fashion. The chairman warned us that until he had written his ruling, the decision was to remain confidential. I was elated over the victory, but frustrated that I couldn't tell Gerry or anybody else.

Uncharacteristically, the FA had managed to keep this arbitration hearing from the media, but no one could stop the legal profession talking. On the morning that the official written ruling was published, Peter Leaver, the barrister and ex-director of Spurs who was soon to be the new CEO of the Premier League, called me, saying I had made legal history. He'd heard the result of the ruling on the legal grapevine. Alan Watts was not happy that Leaver had disclosed this to me before he'd officially announced it to me.

The decision was made public: we had our six points restored and were back in the FA Cup. The only thing the arbitration panel didn't overrule was the PS1.5m fine, even though they considered that it was bordering on irrational. Instead, they referred the matter back to an FA panel to review in the light of their comments.

I jumped in the car and went down to the training ground, where Gerry was still working with the players. I told him I had some good news and that he should assemble the players together. I walked into the dressing room and told them that we were back in the FA Cup and we'd got our six points back. Teddy Sheringham, who'd never shown any enthusiasm towards me in the past, was beaming - you could see his heart really
was
with the club. Many of the other players sat there silently when I announced the good news, but some of the older ones seemed pleased with the result. Gary Mabbutt, our captain, spoke to me outside, saying he wanted to apologise on behalf of the players that hadn't shown any great emotion when I'd made this announcement. He told me that some of these guys felt intimidated in front of chairmen and tended to shrivel up into their shells. But on behalf of the players, he wanted to let me know this was a fantastic thing which had been achieved and they were all delighted. Nice bloke, Gary.

Back to the ever-dwindling rainforest and our contribution to global warming - the newspapers had a field day and Kelly was made to look a real prat. For once, it seemed I had achieved something positive in the football world.

At the next Premier League meeting, I was invited to debrief the chairmen on the events that had occurred. Sam Hammam, the chairman and owner of Wimbledon, said to me, Alan, you're a frightening man - not in the physical sense, but frightening in the impact you've had on football in the
short period you've been involved. Look at the TV deals you've helped structure - and now
this.
Perhaps you don't realise it, but you have broken the mould. No one has ever gone against the Football Association in the way you have and won.'

Although Kelly was present, I didn't hold back and told the meeting that the whole fiasco was down to him. I showed him very little respect. He knew his action was a sham and should never have been brought in the first place. He didn't have much to say in return, other than a weak 'Congratulations' to Tottenham for battling their way through this situation, as if we'd been battling with someone else and not him!

The FA were still dragging their heels on the Tottenham Clough bung inquiry, but the media was not going to let it go and the story ran and ran. It finally resulted in an in-depth investigation where a barrister was employed by the FA to look into the matter, assisted by ex-football manager Steve Coppell. Inevitably, this would involve Tottenham having to give evidence.

In delving deeper at Tottenham, we had uncovered a ludicrous situation which supported the fact that the PS58,750 paid to McLintock in cash
was
indeed a bung. In tracking down the history of the affair, John Ireland, the club's lawyer, had questioned Peter Barnes, the club secretary, and it was clear Peter knew a bit more about this arrangement than he'd let on originally. At the time, Peter had been in an awkward situation - torn between Venables and me - and, like Tony Berry, he'd sat on the fence. With Venables gone, I'd started to put pressure on Peter to recount the events. He admitted he was given a brown paper bag by Terry, who told him to put it in the fridge.

'The fridge?' I asked. 'What do you mean by that?'

'The safe.'

And where
is
this brown paper bag, Peter?'

'Er . . . it's still in the safe.'

'Well, go and get it and show it to me.'

Inside this brown paper bag was PS8,750 in cash. I went bananas, asking Peter why the hell, over one year later, it was still sitting there. He gave me a gormless look and told me he'd forgotten about it! It transpired that Venables had asked McLintock to return the VAT element of the PS58,750, as this was not part of the arrangement they'd made, and the money had been in the club safe ever since.

We suspected that Customs & Excise had launched an inquiry into Frank McLintock's company. At the time of the revelations, McLintock had not filed a VAT return showing the transaction, but once it broke in court at the Venables dismissal hearing (after his barrister blurted out all of the Clough
bung stuff), we believe he did so retrospectively. It was clear that when the shit hit the fan, McLintock tried to cover his tracks. I never found out what happened to McLintock - whether he got fined or reprimanded by the authorities - but one of the things that came out of all this was that the Inland Revenue now started to take an interest in football clubs in general; indeed, a task force was set up to hold an inquiry into football clubs' affairs.

The results of this inquiry were, of course, confidential. Nevertheless, the media managed to get hold of a lot of facts. Over the course of the following year, several clubs were clobbered with heavy fines and penalties. Indeed, Tottenham had to repay some taxes. Colin Sandy, who was a tax expert, did a good deal with the Inland Revenue on the basis that since it was Tottenham, and in particular Alan Sugar, who had decided to legitimise the football club, the new regime should not be punished for past misdemeanours. While technically the Inland Revenue could not accept this as an argument, I believe their settlement with us was reasonable.

The Clough investigation dragged on. Eventually, the FA decided, in their wisdom, that due to Brian Clough's ill-health at the time, it was not appropriate for him to be called to give evidence at any tribunal. But in August 1998 the FA did bring misconduct charges against Ronnie Fenton, his former assistant at Nottingham Forest, who seemed to take the rap over the bung. Really, the whole industry knew that Brian Clough was involved in the affair, but no one wanted to see a sick man punished. As a result of all this, I got a load of stick from fans, players, managers and ex-footballers, some of whom had taken on roles as media pundits. The attitude at the time was, 'Even if Cloughie
did
take a bung - so what? He's a great football manager, he's been great for football - who cares?'

Yes, he did achieve some great things, but still I found this attitude quite unbelievable. In this whole football litigation issue, one could say that I won the battle but lost the war. To anyone lower down than the chairmen and executives of football clubs, my name was mud. I had come along and upset the status quo. I had disrupted what was deemed
standard procedure
in football.

*

While the Tottenham litigation was going on, I was totally occupied with defending myself, spending much of my time dealing with lawyers. Even on holiday on my boat or in Florida, I'd constantly be reviewing faxes and talking to lawyers. Ann commented that I was becoming obsessed with this football thing in more ways than one and it was affecting me personally. I was
losing my sense of humour and becoming very protective. Whenever anyone spoke to me about football matters, I would clam up.

I started to become cynical, imagining that everyone who questioned me was looking for an angle. It was a horrible situation which came about from the constant harassment by the media. I even adopted this attitude with family, friends and Amstrad employees. It was better not to talk; it was better not to explain anything. I entered a bit of a miserable period - some might argue I'm still in it!

Even when I wasn't caught up in constant fire-fighting over legal issues, I had other affairs at the club to consume my time, including attending Premier League meetings. At one such meeting, the topic of discussion was once again the TV rights, which had come up for renewal. The first contract had one year left to run and by now the number of subscribers was rising rapidly. The gamble Rupert Murdoch had taken was really paying off. BSkyB had been floated on the London Stock Exchange and the share price was running away because its operating profits were really substantial.

At the meeting, I found myself in the situation where I had to wear
three
hats, owing to my support for BSkyB, the Premier League and Tottenham Hotspur FC. As usual, I declared a conflict of interests and told the meeting I would like to put my relationship with BSkyB to one side for a moment and focus on the interests of the Premier League and Spurs. I raised the point that the original deal was now looking too cheap. In my opinion, the meteoric success of BSkyB was mainly down to them acquiring the football rights - people were taking up the subscriptions mainly to watch sport. On that basis, the hundreds of millions of pounds' operating profit they were making was something we had to recognise. Like all good deals,
all
partners should share in a win-win situation. So my suggestion to the meeting was that we should not accept anything less than PS150m per season.

Everyone in the room started to laugh, telling me I was mad, I was crazy, I didn't know what I was talking about. Consider that many of these chairmen had lived through the era of ITV paying PS4m per season and had then seen the first deal with BSkyB, which represented a quantum leap. To them, hearing a figure like PS150m per season being bandied around was a joke.

I told them that they weren't looking at things logically. If, for example, BSkyB were making PS350m a year in operating profit, that profit was mainly from subscriptions to Sky Sports. I added, At the end of the day, if they pay us PS150m, they'll
still
be making a fortune. The fact is, without the Premier League rights, they don't have a business.'

While they were still laughing, I decided to tell them another joke. I
pointed out that
none
of the clubs had held on to any of the money they'd got from the first BSkyB deal to strengthen their balance sheets. A lot of them were still borrowing heavily and had just jumped on the bandwagon of buying players and overpaying them - based on the prune-juice effect.

'The prune-juice effect, Alan? What do you mean by that?'

'Well, you know what happens if you drink too much prune juice - it runs straight through your body. That's exactly what's going on here. The more money the TV company is going to give you, the more money you're going to spend on players. You are not repaying your debts or modernising your stadiums, you're just paying more for transfers and salaries.'

'So what's your suggestion, then?'

'My suggestion is that if, hypothetically, we got a hundred and fifty million a year, the Premier League should retain, say, fifty million each year and put it into a special trust that's governed by experienced people from the football industry, a trust that can be drawn upon to pay for things such as ground improvements, academy development, training grounds and so on. The trust would ensure there'd be no dodgy dealing - clubs would be prevented from drawing on their share of the trust under the guise of "ground improvements" when really it was to be spent on players.'

You'd have thought I was a cabaret act, some sort of stand-up comedian. This suggestion brought another roar of laughter. I told them all, 'You simply don't grasp the fact that if even we
did
get a hundred and fifty million a year, I'd have a bet with every single one of you that by the end the year, none of your clubs would have anything left in their pockets. We are hiking up the prices of players
ourselves
by competing with each other using the large sums available to us.'

The acquisition of Klinsmann, Dumitrescu and Popescu seemed to have kick-started a new revolution of foreign players joining the Premier League. In the past, players came from the local community, trained in the youth academies and had a real allegiance to the club. I reminded the meeting about this and how we were now being flooded by foreigners coming here for the money, simply because we were the richest league around. We were now attracting these Carlos Kickaballs who had no history with our clubs and would go anywhere for money. The Carlos Kickaball remark got more laughter. To this day it is quoted and remains in the football dictionary.

The trouble with me is, I get too excited when I'm explaining something. I come across as too overpowering and this kind of winds people up and puts them in defensive mode. To me, it was clear the industry was heading for disaster. Piles of money would be given to the clubs, some of which were run
irresponsibly by people who were no more than glorified fans, the last people on earth you should put in charge of finances.

I also failed to get my point across when arguing that no other broadcaster could compete with BSkyB. Their model was based upon Pay TV, whereas broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV were funded - in the BBC's case by the licence fee, in ITV's by advertising. I told the meeting that the BBC and ITV would never come up with a massive amount of money. If, hypothetically, ITV were to bid for the forty live games, each game would have a maximum of twelve minutes of advertising time (advertising time slots were regulated in those days and the pre-programme sponsor we now see on ITV was not allowed). The likes of Coca-Cola, Gillette or Nike would pay no more than PS15,000-20,000 for a thirty-second slot. It was simple maths: 40 games x 12 minutes per game = 480 minutes (or 960 thirty-second slots). At PS20,000 per slot - assuming we were only proposing to allow forty games to be broadcast per year - the total advertising revenue for the channel would only come to PS19.2m.