By Byron Butler

The Daily Telegraph
October 16 1996

What are we going to do about Alan Shearer? Clearly he can’t be allowed to go on breathing common air, eating anything riskier than low-fat ambrosia or driving a car on roads full of wannabe Damon Hills.

His worth to the nation, and probably to the future of the universe, is now so apparent that the pleasures and pitfalls of being ordinary are no longer among his options.

Shearer’s extraordinariness, of course, is beyond question. His two goals against Poland a week ago put England on top of their World Cup group. His goal at Derby on Saturday shot Newcastle to the top of the Premiership. His next game is against poor old Manchester United.

The world’s most expensive player was Euro 96’s top scorer and now he is England’s 100th captain. Blackburn, with Shearer, won the Premiership. Without him, they are bottom. He was an outrageous steal at £15 million.

You don’t have to take my word. Other organs of absolute truth have described Shearer as Mr Perfection, Captain Marvel, the best striker in the world and even the best England have ever had. This places him ahead of Dixie, Tommy, Nat, Wor Jackie, Jimmy, Bobby, Geoff and Gary.

Shearer is also, importantly, the Patron of the Royal Academy of Football Headline Writers. He is everything from ‘Shear Gold’ and ‘Shear Class’ to ‘Shear Delight’ and ‘Shear Relief’. Nor forgetting ‘He’s My Shearo’. At 10 minutes to edition time, the man’s sheer manna.

His well-being thus demands special attention. Shearer should immediately be listed as a grade one asset of national importance and - between games - be consigned to a bank vault with all mod cons. He should also have a couple of bodyguards who never leave him. Even on the pitch.

Sugar has worked it out that Shearer is costing Newcastle £5.5 million a season

There is, naturally, an alternative view. Alan Sugar - another headline natural: ‘Sugar Sweet’, etc - believes Shearer is a ‘Shear waste of money’. The Tottenham chairman, however, is a man who has so much money that he can afford to look unhappy.

Sugar has worked it out that Shearer is costing Newcastle £5.5 million a season. “I may be missing the plot,” he says, “but this is money they will not be able to recoup even if they win every trophy going.”

He would be right, of course, if selling football was like selling shoelaces or egg-whisks. Anybody can make a million by churning out a half-decent product, cutting costs, hounding the workers, wrongfooting the taxman and swallowing the opposition.

Football, though, is a dream factory. It peddles hope and fantasy. This doesn’t mean that the basic principles of business can be ignored. Some clubs have tried this: it doesn’t work. But it does mean that league tables are more important than statements of account and that fans matter more than shareholders.

Sugar reports that Tottenham made a profit of £11.9 million last year. His turnstile customers would rather he’d bought 80 per cent of another Shearer. Alex Fynn, in Dream On, a perceptive and provocative book on a year in the life of Tottenham, recalls that he once told Sugar: “Your promise to Bill Nicholson about winning a championship won’t be fulfilled in your children’s lifetime unless you have a deficit in the transfer market.”

Sugar’s eventual answer was illuminating. “Bill Nicholson can hold me to that if he wants to. I’m pretty damn sure we’re going to do it. And I’m going to demonstrate how to do it without irrational cheque book madness, by demonstrating skills in man-management, team selection and squad-building.”

Now, however, Sugar is admitting that he might have been ever so slightly wrong. “We’re six months behind the game in buying players,” he is saying. “We should have been a bit more clear-thinking.”

Sugar would be doing football a favour if he could make his parsimonious principles work. But Tottenham are currently in the bottom half of the table, and their fans are not convinced by the promise that the championship pennant will be fluttering over White Hart Lane in “two or three years’ time”. A spoonful of Sugar is not exactly ‘Shear Delight’.