The fallout
The reaction was furious, with the Big Five – bar Tottenham – livid at the lack of terrestrial coverage and ITV launching legal proceedings. Dyke admits he thought he had “been fiddled” but ultimately the High Court decreed that because Parry had drawn up and had signed a heads of terms agreement on the day of the bids, their injunction was to be thrown out. Yet relations remained toxic. Parry said: “We had a row over sponsorship, so didn’t have one in the first year. They [the remaining members of the Big Five] got QPR and Nottingham Forest to join them and form a voting block. I put the sponsorship, with Bass, to them and they blocked it. I remember thinking, ‘Sod it, I’m off, I won’t work in an organisation like this’.
“Then I heard footsteps echoing behind me. The other clubs had all walked out, saying we won’t be treated like this either. Suddenly we couldn’t even have a meeting.”
Once the football began, relations began to thaw – and the flow of money helped. Barry Silkman, an up-and-coming agent in the early Nineties, said: “It changed from a sport to a business overnight. The problem was you didn’t know what to ask for.
“Do you pitch a player to a club on £20,000 a week, £30,000? You didn’t know. I remember one manager left me with the contract of every player in the club to give me an idea. Overnight, a player went from being in a good job as a working man to a very wealthy working man. It was incredible.”