Programme: Farewell Sir Alan

Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) Football Club is located in North London. The club is also known as Spurs. Tottenham's home ground is White Hart Lane. The club motto is Audere est Facere (To dare is to do).

Today’s game is Sir Alan Sugar’s last as Chairman of Tottenham Hotspur. In bidding him farewell, we wish him well for the future and thank him for his sterling efforts on our behalf over the years.

Sir Alan took over the club in 1991. Although we had just won the FA Cup, we were deep in financial trouble at the time and facing possible bankruptcy.

With Sir Alan at the helm we gradually returned to a position as one of the Premiership’s most financially healthy football clubs and he leaves us in an excellent state of well being as we face the future with confidence.

The current excellence of our White Hart Lane home is tangible testimony to his efforts during his stewardship here and plans are in hand to further increase capacity in the future. Both North and South Stands have been re-built with major refurbishment on the East and West sides.

There has also been major spending on ongoing team re-building during the past decade with a record fee of £11million spent on Sergei Rebrov in the summer taking our investment in players in Sir Alan’s time to £90million.

We also have an excellent new state-of-the art training headquarters at Spurs Lodge where our successful Youth Academy is based, a far cry from the basic rented facilities our players endured when Sir Alan took control.

As a result, Sir Alan Sugar’s legacy to this club goes far beyond our Worthington Cup win of 1999. He hands over a solid foundation from which we can strive for even greater success under the direction of our new owners ENIC in the future.

All at the club wish him well. He will always be a Spurs fan and we hope to welcome him here regularly for future games.