Sugar may buy out Spurs to end feud with Venables

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR'S chairman, Alan Sugar, is considering taking the troubled football club private in a move aimed at ending the now open warfare with Spurs' chief executive, Terry Venables.

Mr Sugar, who invested part of his Amstrad fortune in buying 47 per cent of Spurs, sacked Mr Venables, a 22 per cent shareholder, at a dramatic board meeting on Friday morning. But by the evening Mr Venables had obtained a temporary injunction blocking his dismissal.

'I asked Mr Sugar if he planned to take Spurs private and he told me that he might have no choice,' said a supporter of Mr Venables this weekend. 'I think Mr Sugar feels his style of benevolent dictatorship would work better if Spurs were a private rather than a quoted company.'

Sources close to Mr Sugar do not deny that before sacking Mr Venables he offered to buy his holding, but they maintain that a buyout is unlikely.

Mr Venables, who borrowed some pounds 3m to buy his Spurs shares - some of it via unusual leasing deals on pub fixtures and fittings arranged with the bust finance company Landhurst Leasing - is under financial pressure and might be tempted to sell if unable to maintain a leading role.

Some of his private business ventures have proved disastrous. His Transatlantic Inns company recently went under, and two weeks ago Grand Metropolitan obtained a repossession order on an Essex pub run by another of Mr Venables' private companies.

Mr Venables has also had to come up with an estimated pounds 50,000 to settle a long-running dispute with former shareholders of Scribes West, his Kensington club, where he holds court most evenings to a crowd of business and football associates.

Mr Sugar and Mr Venables, who combined to rescue Spurs from financial ruin in 1991, have been warring for months. The Amstrad boss disapproved of the presence at Spurs of Eddie Ashby, an undischarged bankrupt brought in by Mr Venables as a consultant.

Mr Sugar, the money-man, and Mr Venables, the idol of the Spurs fans - a combination Mr Sugar described as the 'dream ticket of two East End boys' - also clashed over their roles. Mr Sugar felt he had 'kept his nose out of the football' while Mr Venables was increasingly involved in the club's commercial affairs without consulting Mr Sugar enough.

Mr Venables felt his role was more than mere football manager. By becoming chief executive he fulfilled a long-held ambition of moving from the bench to the boardroom, with executive powers to match.

The feud is likely to prove expensive. If Mr Venables, paid pounds 250,000, is forced out, he seems entitled to up to pounds 750,000, since he has three years left on his five-year contract.

(Photograph omitted)