What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (86 page)

During our search for a manager, a lot of names were thrown at me. Even David Dein, who was quite friendly with me socially, told me at one Premier League meeting that he knew he shouldn't be helping Tottenham out, but was
aware we were in a dire situation. He was sympathetic about all this stick I was getting when a lot of Tottenham's problems had nothing to do with me and he told me that Bobby Robson was free to leave his job in Spain. Andy Gross, Klinsmann's agent, suggested Leo Beenhakker and another guy by the name of Christian Gross, who was doing a fantastic job in the Swiss league at the club Grasshoppers. There was also lots of advice coming from so-called experts Tony Berry and Douglas Alexiou.

So there were many names flying around, but at this stage of the season, most of them were employed and were certainly not going to be prised away from their jobs to come and join what was considered an ailing club.

The media was having fun rubbing it in. They implied that the team was going nowhere and that the culture of the club came from its chairman, Alan Sugar, who had no ambition whatsoever and was only interested in money.

Daniel and I flew to Zurich to meet Christian Gross and we ended up agreeing to sign him, along with fitness coach Fritz Schmidt, who was an integral part of Gross's training plans. We explained to Christian Gross and Andy Gross, who was also Christian's agent, that we would hold a press conference at White Hart Lane and we gave Christian specific instructions to turn up at a certain time at this hotel in Waltham Abbey, whereupon Daniel would escort him to the ground in an orderly fashion.

Unfortunately, the press had already made up their minds about Christian Gross, as the appointment had been leaked to the media beforehand. The tone had been set by ex-Tottenham player turned football pundit Alan Mullery, who at the time was dragged out by the media whenever a comment was needed about the affairs of Tottenham Hotspur. They had obviously caught him very early in the morning when they asked if he had any comment on Spurs' new managerial appointment, Christian Gross.

'Christian who?' was Mullery's answer. Cannon-fodder for the media.

'CHRISTIAN WHO?' was the headline the next day. The great Spurs expert Alan Mullery had spoken.

Regrettably, this 'Christian who?' thing seemed to permeate down to the players, some of whom were not blessed with too many brain cells and tended to follow the lead of the sports journalists in the tabloids. In simple terms, players have admiration for a manager if they know what he's achieved. However, if a manager comes in whom they have no knowledge of, irrespective of what his achievements might be, then as far as they're concerned, he's no good. The day Gross turned up at White Hart Lane, some of the Tottenham players simply disregarded him, thinking he was a waste
of space. To be fair to the sensible and intelligent players, they
did
give him an opportunity.

The press conference was a total farce. We were all assembled and I was waiting for Daniel to tell me where Christian Gross and Andy Gross were. Daniel phoned to say he was still waiting for them at the hotel in Waltham Abbey, but there was no sign of them. A minute later, the receptionist at White Hart Lane called me to tell me that a Mr Christian Gross and another chap had arrived. I was very confused. We rushed him up to an anteroom next door to where the press were gathered and I asked what the hell he was doing. Why hadn't he gone to the hotel as we'd agreed? I couldn't quite grasp the answer he babbled to me. The person he'd brought with him - some sort of PR guru - said there had been a misunderstanding.

Finally, we entered the press conference and Gross took his seat next to me. I introduced him and advised the room that Schmidt would be his number two and that David Pleat would be director of football. The floor was then open for questions.

The first question to Gross came from a journalist, along the lines of, 'What do you think of the current squad at Tottenham? Will you be adding any more players and if so, who will be your targets?'

Gross totally ignored the question and from his top pocket pulled out a tube ticket and declared, 'This is my Underground ticket. I came like the normal people come to the football club. I travelled like the normal people on the Underground.
That
is how I came to Tottenham.'

We were flabbergasted at his opening statement. This little speech was the brainchild of his PR guru and it had taken us all by surprise. The press managed to get pictures of me looking at Gross with a stunned face. What with Mullery's 'Christian who?' comment and this pathetic PR attempt, I knew from that moment that Gross was dead meat.

Christian was a very nice fellow. He tried to implement professional ways at the club, but basically some of the players were taking the piss out of him. They didn't perform on the pitch and his first home game ended in a horrific defeat to Chelsea. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was as if some of the players wanted him to fail.

He lasted about nine months. It really was an untenable situation and eventually I had to let him go. David Pleat again took over the managerial reins temporarily and did quite a good job while we searched for a permanent manager.

During my time at Spurs, I had started off with Terry Venables, then employed Ossie Ardiles, Gerry Francis and now Christian Gross. We had
spent an enormous amount of the club's money trying to accommodate all these managers' requests and still we were getting nowhere.
And
I was getting a load of stick from the fans, mostly fuelled by the media.

George Graham, God's
other
gift to football, who'd successfully managed Arsenal for many years and won a lot of trophies, was a name that kept coming up for the position. I realised that appointing him might be seen as a smack in the face for Spurs fans, but I really
must
have been losing my marbles by then, because I considered it!

Arise, Sir Alan - The Nightmare Is Over

1998-2001

It was a sign of how desperate I was to bring success to Tottenham that I signed George Graham at the end of September 1998. Why did I do it? Well, Tony Berry and Martin Peters, an ex-Spurs player and board member, had insisted he was the
only one
with the credentials to do the job. David Pleat had kind of whispered the idea of Martin O'Neill, but he hadn't put his point across strongly enough. In hindsight, O'Neill was someone we should have pursued most vigorously.

Graham was manager of Leeds United at the time, though he still had a house in north London. From what I'd heard, he was interested in working down here, as travelling up to Leeds each day for training was not really his cup of tea.

David Pleat and Berry warned me that if I
did
appoint George Graham, it would open a can of worms. Not only would I get a load of stick from the media, simply because Graham was considered the arch-enemy, but also he'd been involved in an alleged bribe scandal when he was Arsenal manger - in cahoots with the agent Rune Hauge - and was eventually dismissed by Arsenal and fined by the FA. I took that onboard, but at the same time, everybody was singing his praises as being in the same league as Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger.

My line was, if he's a true professional, given the players and the backing we have at this club, theoretically he should be able to bring us success and trophies. It seemed the players would
at last
have someone who commanded the utmost respect in footballing terms, on the basis that he'd achieved so much - as I've said, this is the criterion upon which a player decides in his mind whether he's prepared to put himself out and play really hard for his club. I also cited the fact that in business the CEO of an arch-competitor is often head-hunted. Giving the job to George Graham was no different to me
head-hunting a bloke from IBM to run my computer business. And while the fans
were
divided initially and some saw him as the arch-enemy, the rest respected him as a good coach and accepted him on the basis that he would do for Spurs what he did for Arsenal.

During his stint at the club, under my chairmanship, Graham spent a hell of a lot of money on players, but didn't actually do much on the pitch, though we did win the Worthington Cup, thanks to an Allan Nielsen header against Leicester at Wembley.

Graham's contract was geared towards personal achievement - he would get bonuses if, for example, we ended up fifth in the league or did well in one of the cups. A big bonus would be payable if he won the Premier League but, according to Graham, that was a pipe dream with the team he had.

The day after we won the Worthington Cup, he phoned the finance director of the club, demanding his bonus payment. The finance director then called me, nervously asking what he should do. Under normal circumstances, bonuses like this would be paid out at the end of the season, in a couple of months' time.

Everyone was kind of frightened to talk to Graham. He was an unapproachable person who had a certain air of authority about him. No one was prepared to question him or say anything that might go against his principles.

I called Graham and asked what he thought he was doing phoning up the finance director and intimidating him the day after we'd won the cup. I told him he was being ridiculous and that it was an insult to me and the club to be asking for his money straightaway. I said it was clear in his contact that all payments would be made at the end of the season. It was then that I realised Graham actually had no bottle. This must have been the first time someone had raised their voice and stood up to him.

'No, no, Mr Chairman,' he said hastily. 'You've got it wrong, you've got it all wrong. I was just phoning John to ask him what the bonus figure will be. Of course I know it's not payable till the end of the season. You've misunderstood what's gone on - I don't think John explained it to you properly. I'm sorry if you feel this way, but I was just
enquiring
about the amount. I only wanted to check what was coming.'

For the first time, I saw that if you questioned Graham and put pressure on him, he wasn't the tough guy he made himself out to be. I tried my best to maintain a professional relationship with Graham and bit my tongue for a long while. Certainly, he wasn't the type of person I would socialise with. He was there to do a job and that was it. He, like Venables, had a load of arselickers in the media. As far as they were concerned, Graham could do no
wrong. So much so that the media had had the audacity to make Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein the villain when the board had no choice but to dismiss Graham for taking dodgy payments which effectively came out of the Arsenal bank account!
How dare David Dein dismiss him for turning Arsenal over?
This is the type of problem you have with the football media - they pervert the minds of the fans.

It wasn't just affairs at the club that caused me aggravation as Spurs' chairman - the Premier League could be a real drain on my time. I got heavily involved in one particular row, thanks to my relationship with Sam Chisholm. Sam had called me back in October 1997 to tell me he was stepping down as CEO at BSkyB, saying it was due to health reasons, but from his manner I could tell there was more to it than that. I suspected (but never had it confirmed) that Rupert and he were no longer seeing eye-to-eye. Sam told me he was going to remain in England, do some pottering around, maybe take up some small advisory roles, and I took the opportunity of inviting him to join the board of Spurs. At the time, there was a lot of talk in the industry that the sale of TV rights might one day revert to the clubs alone, so with his wealth of knowledge in the TV industry, it looked like a smart move.

Earlier that year, Rick Parry had advised the Premier League that he wished to step down to take up a lucrative job as CEO of Liverpool FC. Barrister Peter Leaver would be appointed CEO of the Premier League, as Rick's replacement.

The most important topic at most Premier League meetings was always the sale of the TV rights. At one such meeting, shortly after Peter's appointment, he asked me in open forum whether I'd mind if the league seconded the services of Sam Chisholm as a consultant, to advise on the next round of TV negotiations. If Sam accepted, he'd have to resign from the board of Spurs, as there'd be a conflict of interests. I agreed that it was fine with me and Sam duly resigned from the Spurs board. Together with one of his old colleagues from BSkyB, David Chance, Sam met with Peter Leaver and the then chairman of the Premier League, Sir John Quinton, to discuss the appointment.

The next thing I knew, around March 1998, I was called by David Dein of Arsenal, who was ranting and raving that Leaver and Quinton had done a crazy deal with Chisholm and Chance. He asked me if I knew anything about the details. I told him I didn't have a clue, but reminded him that all the club chairmen had agreed it was a good idea for Chisholm to be appointed. Dein said he knew that, but his ranting was in relation to the financial arrangements which had been agreed. He couldn't tell me what he had learned, as this would be a breach of confidentiality - apparently, Leaver had insisted
that each club chairman had to sign a confidentiality agreement before they could see the terms of the contract with Chisholm and Chance.

Dein informed me that an emergency meeting had been called for all the club chairmen to discuss the contract and I should get down there immediately. When I arrived at the Premier League's HQ, I was greeted by a secretary, who invited me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she handed over the Chisholm and Chance contract. I waited with bated breath, expecting to get a half-inch thick document. Instead, she shoved a single sheet of paper across the desk.