An indifferent night for Sugar

"This is a sad end to 10 years," he announced, without specifying by whom the aforementioned sorrow might be felt. "It is unfortunate you often get stuck with a label in life. One person wrote early on that all I was interested in was money, and that has stuck."

What a very remarkable trick this is, shared by famous people everywhere.

Perhaps you have observed it before - the ability to blame one person, usually a journalist, for year upon year of unflattering public perception.

The idea that the unflattering public perception might in some way be partly connected with the actions of the celeb himself seems never to arise.

"The most important thing is to pass the club over to the person who has the wherewithal and clout to support it," continued the Reverend Sugar's sermon. "I will always be around to offer my assistance, and I will continue coming to watch Tottenham."

As soon as he uttered those words, a great cheer broke out beyond the Press room door. Outside thousands of the Spurs faithful were straining to hear the beloved chairman's every syllable, and as he pledged to continue attending matches, the fans cheered their loving appreciation.

"Three cheers for that awfully nice Alan Sugar!" cried one. "Hip, hip, hurrah!"

Oh, all right, then. That didn't happen. Yet one wonders what effect Sugar imagined his words would have. Did he truly believe his successor will readily grasp his offer of "assistance"? More intriguingly, did Sugar expect to be accepted suddenly by his detractors as a true Spurs fan by promising to continue watching the club? Did he expect slaps on the back and cries of: "Al, we done yer wrong?"

Impossible to say. As so often during Sugar's tenure, his intentions were unfathomable. What can he have hoped to gain by making such a big deal of going to the match, for example?

It looked very much like an act of bravado in defiance of the fans whose hatred helped pave the way to his departure. It was as if he thought that the fact of his imminent exit, combined with the importance of the occasion, would add up to make him the most significant person in the ground.

In reality it did the opposite. On such an occasion few seemed to care whether he attended or not. Anyone expecting banners and chants celebrating his longed-for exit were wrong. Sugar was not even a sideshow. He was an irrelevance to some of the fans. After all the vitriol hurled his way, it was the ultimate insult - the more so because it wasn't even calculated. The Tottenham fans could have chanted a thousand slogans of loathing at him, yet they chanted none at all. They were, in short, indifferent to him.

You wondered what he must have made of it all last night. All around him White Hart Lane seethed with the mania of the occasion. What did he feel? The same kind of love as everybody else present?

Hatred? Improbable. Puzzlement, most likely, at the sheer scale of feeling.

Did he live and breath the match? Could his heart have leapt with Rebrov's goal, lurched with every goalmouth incident and plummeted with Vieira's equaliser?

If he feels love for the club, he did not declare it in his pre-match homily. All that is left is indifference. The ultimate killer.