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.
Results 1 to 17 of 17
Thread: Lord Sugar Tackles Football
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09-05-2011 08:43 AM #1
Lord Sugar Tackles Football
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09-05-2011 09:24 AM #2
Interesting to note that one of his 5 tips for turning things around was to spend much less on wages and invest in infrastructure
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09-05-2011 09:50 AM #3This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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09-05-2011 09:55 AM #5This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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.
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09-05-2011 10:25 AM #6This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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09-05-2011 11:00 AM #7
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.
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09-05-2011 12:14 PM #8This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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?
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09-05-2011 12:25 PM #9This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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.
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09-05-2011 12:46 PM #10
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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
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09-05-2011 01:21 PM #11
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.
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09-05-2011 01:23 PM #12This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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09-05-2011 02:37 PM #13
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.
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09-05-2011 03:19 PM #14This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
"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.
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09-05-2011 04:20 PM #15This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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
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09-05-2011 08:07 PM #16
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!
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09-05-2011 08:13 PM #17This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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