THOSE NEARLY, NEARLY GLORY, GLORY DAYS

Some statistics are damned truths. And Tottenham Hotspur being comfortably the highest-placed club in the Deloitte Football Money League never to reach the Champions League is as damning as they come.

Those running Tottenham in recent years might regard Spurs’ 11^th place in that league as a badge of honour – possibly more than an equivalently-exalted Premier League position. Which is as big a part of Spurs’ problem as the enduring but misguided belief that Michael Dawson is any good.

These days, it isn’t just Alan Sugar struggling to recall “the double.” Kids of today (and some adults) think it’s something Arsenal win from time-to-time and something which doesn’t really concern Spurs. And they’re right. Spurs’ glory days are strictly black & white telly, with only cups to keep the faithful happy since. And until recent victory over a mercifully Joe Cole-free Chelsea, even they’d dried up.

The headlines were ‘first trophy in nine years’ (and am I alone in thinking a late Allan Nielsen winner against Leicester barely counts?). But it’s only their third in twenty-four, since Tony Parks saved Anderlecht’s last kick almost at the taker’s feet in the UEFA Cup Final penalty shoot-out.

So much under-achievement made it difficult having Alan Gilzean as a childhood hero. Or having the programme whipped from your hand by Ralph Coates’ comb-over as he ‘sped’ past – all in lieu of memories of actual league titles. And even though current owners English National Investment Company (ENIC) installed “the king of White Hart Lane” as manager early in their tenure (Glen Hoddle, younger readers may be astonished to learn), signs that they could instigate a Spurs breakthrough, or even that they had a clue, have been long in coming.

It’s another sign of football’s brave new world that America’s latest ‘biggest-ever’ financial crisis, the collapse of investment bank Bear Sterns, should garner sportspage column inches. ENIC’s owner, one-time currency dealer Joe Lewis, spent most of 2007 buying Bear Sterns shares at ever-decreasing prices, waiting for the inevitable upturn which never turned up and now forced to sell at the most decreased price of all.

There’s puzzlement in financial circles at Lewis making such a big mistake so often. He’s lost $1billion, though he has $4billion left, so put the collection tins away. But Spurs aren’t, yet, directly troubled. Apart from ENIC underwriting a 2004 share issue, Spurs have operated independently of Lewis’s fortune. And Lewis’s people quickly emphasised that his Tavistock business empire, including Spurs, was unaffected.

However, Lewis appears desperate to claw back as many of his multi-millions as possible. And, as Private Eye noted with its usual perception: “Tottenham may be more saleable than 8,000 acres of Florida.” Just when ENIC looked like getting it right after all these years.

When Lewis and, more prominently, current Spurs chairman Daniel Levy spoke of their “excitement” at getting involved in football late last decade, “the experiment was purely the gamble to earn millions” (Tom Bower, Broken Dreams). However, though football was sport’s “biggest money-spinner” (Levy), ENIC’s gamble, building a pan-European portfolio of clubs, foundered on UEFA’s ‘common ownership’ regulations, seen as preventing unwanted ‘conflicts of interest.

Spurs were ENIC’s English choice, the last club with which they got involved and, alongside a fast-decreasing interest in Slavia Prague (to the extent that UEFA allowed Slavia to meet Spurs in the last two UEFA Cups) are the last remnants of this pan-European portfolio.

ENIC had critics from almost day one at Tottenham. Speaking from apparently bitter personal experience, AEK Athens chairman Cornelius Sierhus warned: “Investment of ENIC in Tottenham does not bode well.” And with the team discovering that none of Hoddle’s class as a player had transferred to Hoddle the manager, ENIC were a target long before an embarrassing Stock Exchange announcement of the afore-mentioned share issue.

Part of ENIC’s sales pitch was Spurs being “still in the FA Cup, drawn to play Crystal Palace in the third round” shockingly ignorant of Spurs only joining the Cup at that stage. Perhaps ENIC knew how bad Palace were and that a fourth round place was virtually assured. But perhaps not.

The scheme was designed to raise the quaint sum of £15m for new players – 90% of a Darren Bent at current prices. And it met with considerable opposition from those claiming smaller shareholders were being ripped-off (sound familiar, Coventry fans?) and that ENIC were trying to get a controlling stake in Spurs on the cheap, having been allowed to by-pass company laws requiring them to make a market-rate offer for all shares once they’d passed 30% (they’d come into Spurs by buying 27% off Alan Sugar for £25m).

They just managed to get the required support for the scheme, 77% support for proposals requiring 75% and 57% for those requiring 50%. Not the united front they’d have liked, despite Levy’s claim that the figures disproved the notion that “the shareholder base was in disarray.”

But with the subsequent appointment of Martin Jol as manager – after the Jacques Santini debacle which was only partly ENIC’s fault - Spurs turned a bit of a corner. From being a team “in transition” since Martin Chivers’ perm was fashionable to European regulars again, primed for the Champions League breakthrough. Indeed, they were a dodgy hotel meal from that breakthrough in 2006. And that “success”, allied to impressive financial results to June 2007, came multiple takeover rumours – foreign takeovers being de rigueur at the time.

ENIC bought Alan Sugar’s remaining shares, taking their total to 82%, in a move seen by City analysts as “fattening up” Spurs for sale. Rumours abounded of interest from Far East consortia and, naturally, an Azerbaijani oil magnate. That most sturdy of reference points, a Harry Harris source, made seven out of two-plus-two, predicting that the resignation of Spurs vice-chairman Paul Kemsley was somehow a step towards Kemsley’s friend and alleged-Spurs fan Mike Ashley buying Spurs – weeks after Ashley had spent squllions buying Newcastle.

All such rumours were unfounded. Rumours of disaffection between Jol and Kemsley and Jol and ‘sporting director’ Damian Commoli were founded. Commoli’s public spats with the popular Jol made him the public face of Spurs’ inadequacies, not unfairly.

Hired from St. Etienne where he’d been director of football, Commoli had a much-trumpeted past as a scout at Arsenal, although he might as well have been in a scout troop in Arsenal for all the influence he actually had there. And his remit, to unearth top, young European talent, seemed to preclude him from considering any ‘talent’ which wasn’t young or European – some of the ‘talent’ unearthed suggested that not being ‘top’ wasn’t a barrier. Ricardo Rocha or Kevin Prince-Boateng, anyone? Thought not.

Major errors included letting Michael Carrick join Man Yoo, without Jol’s knowledge or approval, because Commoli thought ‘his’ player, Didier Zokora, was an adequate replacement. £18.6m for Carrick was scant consolation, especially when £16m went on Darren-bloody-Bent…at £94,000 per week, BTW. And then there was Martin Petrov. Last August, I wrote: “If Spurs can’t outbid Manchester City for Dimitar Berbatov’s best-mate, fifth will be a mountain” little realising Commoli and Kemsley simply thought Petrov too old…at 28! Almost glad City won the two clubs’ recent clash. Pity Petrov didn’t play and score the winner.

Other board members have scarcely been better. It was said of Donna Cullen: “When it comes to football and publicity, she just doesn’t get it”, damning even if she wasn’t Spurs’…communications director. And Levy himself regularly betrays lack of football passion or expertise. Agents dislike him, so he’s not all bad. But his negotiation skills have often been lacking, Carrick one example of many. Even Spurs’ purchase was botched, their share price halving within months of ENIC’s investment. He was owner of clothing-chain ‘Mr. Byrite,’ the ultimate irony for many.

Nothing exposed Levy like Jol’s dismissal. Even on the night, I seemed to know before Jol and I wasn’t even watching Jol’s last match on the telly. Ultimately, the right footballing decision, Jol was good, Ramos is very good. But handled abysmally. And signs are that Spurs’ long-mooted new stadium project could be similarly protracted and embarrassing.

After such incompetence, it’s amazing Spurs are a football force at all. That’s thanks to players like Robbie Keane and, of course, Berbatov – a modern-day Gilzean…only better. Ramos’s early transfer-dealings have been encouraging, partly because they suggest a waning Commoli-influence (and Newcastle are more welcome to Kemsley by the day, despite Sunday’s result).

But Ramos will have to become the dominant personality, like Ferguson in his early Manchester days, for Spurs to fulfil their potential and become the 11^th-best, not just 11^th-richest, football club.

NEXT WEEK: Liverpool fans may disagree. But they’re wrong. The last fortnight at Mansfield Town has been the nuttiest at a football club…ever. And down at Southampton, Rupert loves Michael again, Michael doesn’t like Leon anymore, Leon hates everyone, everyone hates Rupert, except Michael, possibly. You want to know more? I don’t think you do,

Mansfield and Southampton are in relegation trouble. This is not thought a surprise.

‘MotorMurph’ is written by Mark Murphy

Entry Filed under: MotorMurph Column

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