I was close to completing Tottenham takeover with club legend - but my backer disappeared

Boxing promoter and lifelong Arsenal fan Frank Warren says he was close to buying Tottenham Hotspur before Sir Alan Sugar landed a deal in 1991.

Warren has often shared his love for the Gunners over the years but once came within a few strides of taking over rivals Spurs, only for a key funder in the deal to drop out and change tack at a late stage to scupper the prospect.

He has outlined how he had teamed up with the late former Tottenham player and manager Terry Venables in the deal, and had audaciously drafted up his bid in his old box at Highbury Stadium.

Sir Alan eventually secured a purchase of Tottenham in his wake, before selling a majority stake to ENIC in 2000 and offloading his final shares in 2007. Warren, who is promoting Tyson Fury’s heavyweight title unification bout this month, explained what happened while appearing on the Peter Crouch Podcast .

"I nearly did, I nearly did with Terry Venables years ago," he said when asked about taking over a club. "I actually got the thing together for him to get involved with Spurs. We did that in my box at the old Arsenal Stadium.

"We sat down and we were going to do the deal with Irving Scholar and Tony Berry, who was a director there at the time. We were quite close and the person who was going to fund it literally disappeared and he went and done the deal with Alan Sugar."

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Sir Alan employed Venables as chief executive of Spurs for two years between 1991 and 1993, before he famously became the England national team manager a year later.