Once upon a time you used to catch a bus to places proudly displayed on the destination board like Old Ford, Enfield Lock and Carterhatch. These days you see buses with destination boards like Retail Park, Asda Superstore (or more frequently, Rail Replacement Service). A sign of a more accessible society perhaps but somehow to me it takes away some of the charm of travelling to some destination that has a history.

In a similar vein in days gone by Football Directors were the mysterious gentlemen in the suits sitting in the front row of the posh seats. You didn’t know anything about them but you felt there was a historical reason for them being there as custodians of the club you adored. There was always the feeling that they had the best interests of the club at heart and publicity tended to be something they shunned preferring instead to bask in the reflected glory of the team in the safety of the oak panelled boardrooms.

Often they tended to forget the ordinary supporter as the facilities provided at the grounds were in the most part, dreadful. Toilets that resembled open sewers and refreshment stalls that catered for the working man at their most basic level but as supporters you put up with it as the money that was available was used to fund that new signing that made your team the talk of the back pages.

There were always a few ‘characters’ running clubs but they were often seen as being eccentric old men whose Saturday job was a football club. You may have known the name of your Chairman but I bet most fans would not have been able to name any of the other directors even if they cam from the same family as the Chairman, as was often the way.

Then money came into the game and things changed. A new breed of men started to invest in football believing that there was money to be made. To be honest a number of these could be viewed as eccentric as well but change it was. Here at Spurs the first real change of this type came when Irving Scholar became our chairman and took us into the public world of the Stock Exchange and public ownership. He allowed us to buy part of the club and then diversified the brand that was Tottenham Hotspur and very nearly ruined us in the process. Was he a fan? He claimed to be but how can a fan then go on to become the chairman of another club.  Same could be said of Ken Bates. Whatever happened to the likes of Charles David Roberts, the longest serving Club chairman in Spurs’ history - from 1898 until his death in 1943.  

A new breed of self serving publicity seekers started to get their names splattered all over the back pages (remember Michael Knighton) and the hiring and firing of managers became ever more frequent as they tried to recouperate some of the money they piled into their ‘hobby’.

It took the situation at Spurs to make some people realise that big clubs needed real businessmen running them. They were not just football clubs anymore. Alan Sugar heralded a new breed of Club Chairmen. Willing to invest but always looking to ensure they did not lose money should they choose to bale out at any time.

But have we gone too far in the wrong direction. The foreign investment we now see in the game is not born out of lifelong support. There are no local affiliations so the motives have to be different. For some it a plaything of the very rich and for others it’s an expensive hobby (but always making sure the balance sheet is healthy of course – just in case a good offer turns up) but I suspect for most that invest the new money it’s a chance to get their hands on the filthy lucre being thrown at the game by sponsorships, advertising and television. These Chairmen profess to have the interests of the club they buy into at heart but one wonders how true that is. Us ordinary punters that travel the country on freezing cold Tuesday nights in the deep mid winter know what loyalty to a club is but how can that be true of the ‘New Chairmen’ who travel back from their yachts in the South of France on a private plane for drinks with a good friend who happens to be the Chairman of another club.

Which brings me to the events of the last few weeks at Tottenham. We have seen fifteen or more years of mediocrity at White Hart Lane going back in my opinion to the days of the aforementioned Scholar. A level headed businessman then came in and made us a saleable asset and a media company stepped in with the offer that was too good to refuse (media companies only get involved if there is money to be made). A company headed by one of the worlds richest men and a Chairman who professes to be a lifelong Spurs fan. Others on the board profess to lifelong Spurs fans yet one has to question the motives of whatever it is that has actually been happening behind the scenes.

Are we being fattened up for a sale? Are the interests of the club truly foremost in the minds of  those making the decisions? I really fear for the future of  Spurs at the moment. We are on the brink of a return to being one of the top teams in English football and possibly in European Football as well but it could so easily all be thrown away in the next few months if the wrong decisions are taken at the top and the only people that will suffer from those wrong decisions will be us – the supporters.

How I long for the good old days when you did not know who the chairman was – you just knew he looked after your club.

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