Time for a commercial break at Spurs

Manchester United are the brand leaders but Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal are not far behind. They are now totally lopsided. So much energy, so many staff, so much time and money gets put into flogging merchandising - Spurs now have three club shops at White Hart Lane.

Each week at Spurs I groan when I open the programme and see it is little more than a mail order catalogue. They even have a whole page which lists the firms with executive boxes. In a football prog, we want football info, not marketing arselicking.

I sit down cursing, only to swear even more when I have to stand up 10 minutes into the game to allow some drunken, red-faced idiots wearing badges to the hospitality suites to barge past, looking for their seats, not sure where they are going, what day it is, or what those funny white wooden poles are.

It has been said in his defence that Levy is a Spurs fan. Well, good for him. Irving Scholar used to say the same and soon many of us hated him.

What does ENIC mean, by the way? Is it a form of enema or an acronym for Every Nasty International Company? On the internet, supporters of the various clubs in which ENIC have invested, such as Rangers, Vicenza, AEK Athens, Basle and Slavia Prague, have been telling Spurs fans to expect nothing. There will be no star signings.

So why are they in it? To make money of course. Football to ENIC (of course, I do know it stands for English National Investment Company) is an investment. The object is to take out not put in. This was inevitable, once Football Plc arrived and who was the first English club to go public? Don't talk about it.

I have my 100 Spurs shares certificate framed on my bathroom wall. I bought them in November 1983, the moment they went on sale, out of affection and loyalty. The cost was £100. Last time I looked they were worth about £52. Luckily, I see them as memorabilia not an investment. By the same milk token, I consider £789 for my Spurs season ticket as charity.

I can see ENIC's thinking, with the trillions swishing about in football today, all that TV money flooding in, but they won't make the sort of killing Martin Edwards did at United. They've missed the boat.

What will increase the income and the share price is the team doing well, getting in the top three, into Europe, and for that we need new players. In football, success comes first, marketing then follows. Not the other way around.

When they eventually find a new chairman and chief executive, for which they are head hunting in the City - doesn't that give away what has happened to football? - it will turn out to be some boring suit, a lawyer or accountant by training, who will go tut tut at the very thought of lashing out on new players. Haven't we got enough, haven't we got 34 already?

I never dreamed about our own version of Jack Walker coming along, some football daft mega-rich Spurs fanatic who would pour his own wealth into the club, regardless of share prices. That was pure fantasy.

On the other hand, I never thought I would be thinking fond thoughts about Alan Sugar even before the new lot have taken over.

In the past two years, George Graham has been able to spend £34 million on new players. Whether the manager bought wisely or not, and most fans think not, Sugar in the end did allow it. Will ENIC spend that on players in the next two years? No chance.

Many Spurs fans, the ones shouting loudest to get Sugar out, have welcomed ENIC. I fear they've been taken in. We're out of the frying pan into a world of dodgy mince pies, off-shore mulled wine and tax-free hospitality.