Lord Sugar Tackles Football

[Big Ed]

Anyone see this last night?
Sir Alan Sugar, former owner of Spurs, getting all dewey-eyed about the state of the Premier League in England.
The programme’s format was nothing if not predictable: the media’s favourite tycoon gets all sentimental about the game he loves and goes out to speak to people who are involved in the various aspects of the game before coming up with a plan. Unfortunately what happened was that every single person that he spoke to did a good impression of Pontius Pilate and blamed someone else. Each person that he spoke to was give a title: Alan Shearer was given the moniker of “The Player” despite the fact that he no longer plays professional football (it’s not as if there are no footballers to interview). Jerome Anderson (“The Agent”) spoke about how, when a player is under contract, the Club hold all the aces. I almost expected him to bite hard on his knuckles to stop himself from crying with laughter.
Other honourable mentions go to Karren Brady at West Ham, who with a poker face, announced on camera that despite being £100M in debt, the club would be turned around and be worth £500M (might want to check the League table this morning luv) and Richard Scudamore, Chief Executive of the Premier League, who put forward a less than brilliant set of reasons why the FA could not intervene in the activity of Premier League clubs.
All in all, a vicious circle of self interest, which, despite Sugar’s five point plan at the end, will continue until the bubble finally bursts.

[Stevie Reid]

Interesting to note that one of his 5 tips for turning things around was to spend much less on wages and invest in infrastructure

[matty_f]

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Interesting to note that one of his 5 tips for turning things around was to spend much less on wages and invest in infrastructure

don't tell tqm that!

[James70]

Obviously Rodders has been to the Alan Sugar school of excellence!

[OxoHibby]

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Anyone see this last night?
Sir Alan Sugar, former owner of Spurs, getting all dewey-eyed about the state of the Premier League in England.
The programme’s format was nothing if not predictable: the media’s favourite tycoon gets all sentimental about the game he loves and goes out to speak to people who are involved in the various aspects of the game before coming up with a plan. Unfortunately what happened was that every single person that he spoke to did a good impression of Pontius Pilate and blamed someone else. Each person that he spoke to was give a title: Alan Shearer was given the moniker of “The Player” despite the fact that he no longer plays professional football (it’s not as if there are no footballers to interview). Jerome Anderson (“The Agent”) spoke about how, when a player is under contract, the Club hold all the aces. I almost expected him to bite hard on his knuckles to stop himself from crying with laughter.
Other honourable mentions go to Karren Brady at West Ham, who with a poker face, announced on camera that despite being £100M in debt, the club would be turned around and be worth £500M (might want to check the League table this morning luv) and Richard Scudamore, Chief Executive of the Premier League, who put forward a less than brilliant set of reasons why the FA could not intervene in the activity of Premier League clubs.
All in all, a vicious circle of self interest, which, despite Sugar’s five point plan at the end, will continue until the bubble finally bursts.

Comletely agree the program was completely predictable and was an almost perfect circle of it someone elses fault guv.

At no point did the program consider the customer and expense to them for the "product" or the views of the customer.
There seemsto be a genuine belief that sky are the epls benfactor and is almost as if fans dont attend games on a saturday payinggreatly inflated ticket prices. They also seem ignorant to the fact that ulimately it is fans subscriptions to sky that pay the sky tv money.

[KeithTheHibby]

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Obviously Rodders has been to the Alan Sugar school of excellence!

I think it's the other way around myself

[Winston Ingram]

I thought it was really slanted towards his viewpoint.

When he said that the Premier League Clubs owe £3.3bn he neglected to mention that £1bn of that was Man U alone. Chelsea owe something like £700m Liverpool were over £300m at the time of the last accounts.

[Big Ed]

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Comletely agree the program was completely predictable and was an almost perfect circle of it someone elses fault guv.

At no point did the program consider the customer and expense to them for the "product" or the views of the customer.
There seemsto be a genuine belief that sky are the epls benfactor and is almost as if fans dont attend games on a saturday payinggreatly inflated ticket prices. They also seem ignorant to the fact that ulimately it is fans subscriptions to sky that pay the sky tv money.

TBF to the beardie twat: the question he asked at the start was; how does an industry which brings in billions of pounds a year, still have the majority of clubs making massive losses?
Sky would drop the Premier League like a stone if it wasn't generating any money for them. Their subscribers and advertisers are the ones whose opinion matters most to them.
The issue wasn't how much it costs to watch football; it was what do they do with the money that fans and Sky give them?

[Big Ed]

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I thought it was really slanted towards his viewpoint.

When he said that the Premier League Clubs owe £3.3bn he neglected to mention that £1bn of that was Man U alone. Chelsea owe something like £700m Liverpool were over £300m at the time of the last accounts.

It gets a wee bit complex here too. IIRC both Man. City and Chelsea have recently had their debts extinguished by their owners, both of whom are mega-rich enough to do that.
I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for Wigan chairman Dave Whelan, who bought his team's way into the Premier League by personally paying for the £70M that he admitted that they have overspent, only to realise that he had no credible business model and that he cannot afford to sustain it for much longer. Cue him appearing last night blaming greedy players, whilst fondly remembering the days when he got paid £20 for turning out for Blackburn.
Utterly cynical and, as you say, slanted.

[ScottB]

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I thought it was really slanted towards his viewpoint.

When he said that the Premier League Clubs owe £3.3bn he neglected to mention that £1bn of that was Man U alone. Chelsea owe something like £700m Liverpool were over £300m at the time of the last accounts.

But then it is all relative, those clubs take in vastly more money than the Wigans and West Hams. So while West Ham being £100million in the red as a figure is much better than Man Utd's debt figure, which do you suppose has a better chance of dealing with that debt?

The whole thing is ridiculous, with only Arsenal springing to mind as not being a total basket case waiting to happen, perhaps Blackpool and some of the other smaller teams are relatively sustainable, but that's about it.


Hopefully the coming UEFA regs bring a bit of realism to the game on both sides of the Border. I for one am looking forward to Hearts trying to prove they meet the grade

[pentlando]

I like the idea of a salary cap linked to turnover, therefore the money earned from television deals can be passed onto the people who need it the most, the fans. The quality of players doesn't really get that much better. There is no need for players being paid twice as much a week as the prime minister earns a year. Football clubs with lots of money just get silly with it.

Remember when Rangers paid 12 million pounds and god knows what on wages for Tore Andre Flo. They could've knocked plenty off ticket prices for probably far greater impact.

[pentlando]

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But then it is all relative, those clubs take in vastly more money than the Wigans and West Hams. So while West Ham being £100million in the red as a figure is much better than Man Utd's debt figure, which do you suppose has a better chance of dealing with that debt?

The whole thing is ridiculous, with only Arsenal springing to mind as not being a total basket case waiting to happen, perhaps Blackpool and some of the other smaller teams are relatively sustainable, but that's about it.


Hopefully the coming UEFA regs bring a bit of realism to the game on both sides of the Border. I for one am looking forward to Hearts trying to prove they meet the grade

If the current ways of working round Gorgie continues, meeting the grade financially may prove easier than attracting applicants for the soon to be vacant managers job!

[Dashing Bob S]

Sugar's an erse who couldn't run a business to save himself. He messed up Amstrad, Spurs...and at least one other company.

For this charlatan to call himself a businessman and others to buy the self-perpetuated myth is a joke.

He couldn't be trusted to run a florists.

[Big Ed]

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Sugar's an erse who couldn't run a business to save himself. He messed up Amstrad, Spurs...and at least one other company.

For this charlatan to call himself a businessman and others to buy the self-perpetuated myth is a joke.

He couldn't be trusted to run a florists.

There was a point early in the programme where he recalled his time as Spurs chairman and the time he was sent to a meeting with the other 21 First Division clubs...
"I was told it was a very important meeting, so I thought I'd better go..."
And there was me thinking that he were also CEO at Amstrad, the very company that made dishes for the new satellite TV company called Sky, who just so happened to be bidding for the exclusive and very lucrative TV rights, which was what the meeting was about; ****** me, you'd think someone would have told him, eh?
"So they had a vote to see if I was allowed to vote. Me: Alan Sugar. Ridiculous!"
Yeah Al, I mean who in their right mind would think that you'd want to gain any advantage for your company; you're only there for the love of the game.
Then when he was on about Greg Dyke and ITV turning up with a late bid of over £250M...
"I thought, that's not fair, so I called Sam Chisholm at Sky and told him to make a bid"
I suspect he didn't frantically run round asking if anyone had the guy's number.
So, in summary, you're bang on Bob.

[Winston Ingram]

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Sugar's an erse who couldn't run a business to save himself. He messed up Amstrad, Spurs...and at least one other company.

For this charlatan to call himself a businessman and others to buy the self-perpetuated myth is a joke.

He couldn't be trusted to run a florists.

He saved and then ruined Spurs. After Klinsmann left he refused to pay big fees or wages meaning Spurs slipped to and then solidified a position as a mid table team for over a decade. So while Arsenal, Man U & Liverpool started spending he refused and Spurs slipped back.

The most confusing thing about it all was the stadium. He actually shrunk the capacity and locked alot of ST holders out.

I'm no business genius but even I know knocking back customers and capping future income potential isn't exactly clever

[Dr Jimmy]

Thought the best bit was his face when he found out West Ham were operating at 91% wages to turnover. He would have had a stroke if he found out about the Yams % to turnover!

[IWasThere2016]

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don't tell tqm that!

I'm right behind Rodders' masterplan for the new 5th stand