Irving Scholar - Is He To Blame ??

[Destroyer]

Just looking back over the years & when i grew up Spurs was the team that everybody wanted to play for , & most certainly once they were here, they would never want to leave. We were never known as a 'selling club', like rivals such as 'West Ham etc' have been known for some years.

However, the poor running of the club back in the late eighties certainly had an effect in this clubs demise over the last 15 or more years. The first indication of this was the sale of Paul Gascoigne to Lazio for £5m, which was apparently to save the club from financial doom.

Now until this time, i had never known us to ever have to sell our star players, let alone for money. Were a rich club, i'm sure we are still in the worlds top ten rich list. But from the moment we sold Gazza, it was the benchmark for the future.

The man responsible for the demise over the last 15 years has got to go down to one man only and that is Mr Irving Scholar. The Former Tottenham Hotspur Chairman of the eighties wrecked this club - maybe Burkinshaw was right.

 

[Tickers]

Could be. But I've been reading SC for a while now, and I'm pretty sure all our problems are the fault of Jol/Levy/Comolli/Berba's agent/Hughton's clipboard (delete as applicable).

 

[worcestersauce]

All a bit simplistic to say it's all scholars fault.
Not really only joking of course it is.

Irving Scholar - Is He To Blame ??

YES!

 

[MattyP]

Weren't we in financial difficulty in the 1930s and early 1980s (before Scholar was chairman) as a result of ground redevelopment? Can we not blame the respective chairmen of that time?

Scholar actually had some good ideas to diversify the business to generate revenue that was not entirely reliant on attendance or footballing success (I did a thesis on it by the way, got a first class honours degree thanks to it).

They were just totally mismanaged, as was the building of the East Stand.

But given our relative financial strength, I'd say whilst he had an impact financially, Sugar for all his faults laid the foundations for our recovery, on which Levy and Enic have built on.

The real problem was the succession of poor managers and poor players in the 1990s which meant, at the time when the Premiership and Champions League came in, we lost ground compared to our rivals.

 

[PT]

We off-loaded Hoddle, Waddle and Lineker in their prime too. If the price is right and the deal provides for moving on in a different direction, every club is a selling club.

 

[hellava_tough]

Just looking back over the years & when i grew up Spurs was the team that everybody wanted to play for , & most certainly once they were here, they would never want to leave. We were never known as a 'selling club', like rivals such as 'West Ham etc' have been known for some years.

However, the poor running of the club back in the late eighties certainly had an effect in this clubs demise over the last 15 or more years. The first indication of this was the sale of Paul Gascoigne to Lazio for £5m, which was apparently to save the club from financial doom.

Now until this time, i had never known us to ever have to sell our star players, let alone for money. Were a rich club, i'm sure we are still in the worlds top ten rich list. But from the moment we sold Gazza, it was the benchmark for the future.

The man responsible for the demise over the last 15 years has got to go down to one man only and that is Mr Irving Scholar. The Former Tottenham Hotspur Chairman of the eighties wrecked this club - maybe Burkinshaw was right.

I suppose it depends whether or not you think Spurs is in the midst of a 'Doom and Gloom' period. Sure, we've had a bit of a ropey season, but there are still positives:

-Good squad
-Sound financially
-Playing in europe next season
-Fantastic Head Coach
-An astute Chairman

I think there are many other sets of supporters in all 4 leagues who would want what we've got.

And if we are in a 'Doom and Gloom' period, then it would be pretty hard to blame just one person (Irving Scholar). I mean, lots of people have come and gone since he was in charge, with most of them doing no better (or even worse).

I personally think that Spurs were unlucky enough to be experiencing a bad patch in the 90s, just as the mega-bucks of the Premiership was starting to flow. This extra revenue cermented further success for which ever team was at the top of the Premiership (Arse, Man U, etc), while making it difficult for other teams to catch them.

I do believe, though, that one day Spurs will win the league again - after all, nothing lasts forever, and this includes the supremacy of the so-called top 4.

 

[TheChosenOne]

Scholar/Berry/Bobroff.

Some unholy alliance that was, lots of grubby fingers in too many pies,lucky the club didn't go under.

 

[Destroyer]

Scholar/Berry/Bobroff.

Some unholy alliance that was, lots of grubby fingers in too many pies,lucky the club didn't go under.

:clap::clap::clap:

 

[mrboombarrakoomba]

that bastard scholar ruined everything. burkinshaw was on the verge of creating a genuine league challenging team. i'll never forgive that.

 

[MattyP]

that bastard scholar ruined everything. burkinshaw was on the verge of creating a genuine league challenging team. i'll never forgive that.

And three years later we were top of the league until the last few games, finishing what, third I think it was.

 

[SpursMadDave]

Every team is a selling team, how can anybody complain about the likes of Berbatov wanting to better himself just like Carrick and Sheringham etc before him when we do EXACTLY the same to the likes of West Ham, Wigan, Leeds and anybody else.
Thats the way football is and always will be, when you are at the top you call the shots, when you are in the middle like us you poach what you can and moan when your best players get poached... when you are at the bottom, well tough luck!

Trying to look for who to blame and why this is wrong is like sitting in a rocking chair.... it keeps you busy but gets you absolutely nowhere!!!

 

[Banjo]

Scholar,

It's too easy to blame one individual - certainly his board should also take some of the blame. As indeed some of the fans - especially those who got screwed over by the 'left on the shelf' incident - who were so suppine it was scarcely believable. But the Scholar period did leave an indelable mark on the club.

The floatation of the club on the stock market (the first major club to do so I believe) changed a lot of things. Not least is the logic of the insitution, with share holders interests becoming paramount. But there were practical effects with the travel company and Hummel going belly up - ostensibly they had been meant to help fund the football side. But we came under finanacial pressure and had to let top players go. Not just Gazza, but I think Hoddle and Waddle could come under that category. (To be fair Hoddle stated he wanted to go to the continent where he felt his style would be better appreciated.)

But would Hoddle have wanted to leave if Keith Burkinshaw had remained in charge? Who knows. However, on the football side the real damage to the team, and thus the club, was Burkinshaw leaving because of his disillusionment with Scholar's boardroom. Hence the famous 'there used to be a football club over there' comment.

A view that he and others, such as Steve Perryman still seem to subscribe to.

http://www.spursodyssey.com/articles/hofburkinshaw.html

Some of those issues still resonate today.

Indeed, forget this PLC lark, because some of us want out football club back!

 

[Teofilo-Stevenson]

Now until this time, i had never known us to ever have to sell our star players, let alone for money.

What did LOM pay us for Waddle then? £4.5m worth of food stamps? ;-)

Gazza may be the only sale we've made simply to stave off administration - but I'd rather see us getting top dollar for star players who want to move on that see them depreciate and move on for a free!

 

[steve]

We off-loaded Hoddle, Waddle and Lineker in their prime too. If the price is right and the deal provides for moving on in a different direction, every club is a selling club.

Not Lineker, he was coming to the end as his spell in Japan showed.

Waddle's last season was magical, he was truly truly world class and towards the end of that season (88-89) was winning games single handidly. If he'd stayed and played with the incoming Lineker and the maturing Gazza we would have won the league next season (or come very close). In the end we finished 3rd just above the A*se (happy, happy days). Ultimately Waddle went for the money (4.5m, a LOT in those days) which was never ploughed back into the team (due to our debts incurred during the East Stand fiasco).

Hoddle had ambitions to play abroad at least a year before he left and it was only Pleat who convinced him to stay for the 86-87 season by building the team around him and employing the 4-5-1 system for the majority of the season. But he wasn't sold willingly by the club for money as in the Waddle case.

Can't just lay the blame at Scholar's door though. Fact is if we'd employed the right manager during Sugar's time we'd be a top 4 team now. The A*se got Wenger and we got Ardiles, Francis, Gross and Graham. The other way around and things would be very different.....