1986: The BUSINESS behind LUTON TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB | The Money Programme | BBC Archive
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- čas přidán 9. 08. 2023
- From 1982 to 1992, Luton Town were in English football's top tier and particularly famed for the plastic pitch. In 1986, The Money Programme went behind the scenes at Kenilworth Road to meet the people trying to ensure this footballing David could compete against the bigger, richer and more appealling Goliaths of the old Division One.
Clip taken from The Money Programme, BBC Two, 23 February 1986.
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luton just barely missed out on the premier league's huge influx of cash
This video is interesting to me on multiple levels. For those who might not know, Luton will be playing in the Premier League in the upcoming 23/24 season.
Unfortunately, they won't be playing any home games at Kenilworth Road for a while.
@@scsutton1September 1st against West Ham
@@carrauntoohil86I do hope the ground's ready by then.
@@scsutton1our CEO gary sweet said a couple weeks ago that the work is on schedule but they decided to postpone the first home match as a precaution as the minimum notice to the PL is a month. if you look at videos from people tracking the renovation we just need to resurface the pitch and it's pretty much done
@@scsutton1 I must have imagined last night's game then.
Wow real football I miss this down to earth normal running of a club with just normal people football has changed so much and has lost so much personality I miss the old world
Fascinating for a whole host of reasons. You can appreciate the multi use thinking regarding the much hated plastic pitch at the time, it just seems rather ironic that such a progressive attitude depicted in the mid 80s' resulted in less than £5 being spent on the stadium ever since.
Other than the £12m spent this Summer, that is.
@@magichatter69 Only because they had to.
Definitely not 1978. Luton were not promoted in the first division until 1982.
Yeah, the title is incorrect, the description says it’s from 1986.
Correct. They were promoted as champions,in front of runners-up Watford and 3rd-placed Norwich in 1982. They had a bright start in their first season back in the top flight but in a highly entertaining mix the attacking talent and flair of Messrs Stein,Walsh,Hill and company soon became counteracted by vulnerability at the back despite the efforts of Donaghy and his colleagues. By the mid-winter they'd been drawn into a close-fought relegation melee that involved more than half a dozen clubs in an oft-changing order. In the end it came down to the last day of the season,Saturday 14th May 1983,when Raddy Antic's late strike saved them and relegated their hosts Manchester City. Clue David Pleat dancing across the Maine Road pitch in that suit.
They had a very good first half to their second season of top flight football in 1983-84,getting as high as 3rd at one point before Christmas but subsiding after that to tumble down the table and eventually finish 16th.
In the next campaign they started off OK but fell into deep relegation danger as the campaign wore on. They were actually one place off the bottom at 21st out of 22 in the table at the time of the notorious Millwall riot at a rescheduled FA Cup 6th round tie on the night of 13th March 1985. Luton won that tie,overshadowed as it was by the rampage on the pitch and in the town and the ongoing national debate about hooliganism it heightened,and earned themselves an FA Cup semi-final day out against the eventual league champions Everton. The Hatters lost that by a couple of goals,but were galvanised somehow in the league as they pulled up to a final placing of 13th with strong form in the closing weeks.
The plastic pitch arrived in time for their 1985-86 campaign,and they soon proved a formidable adversary on it,signalling their new-found confidence with a 7-0 mauling of Southampton,England goalkeeper Peter Shilton and all,in October 1985. By the time of this edition of the Money Programme from Sunday 23rd February 1986 the Hatters had evolved into a far tougher side to beat,riding high in the top 10 all that winter as the likes of former Brighton captain Foster had stiffened up their defence while they were still capable of scoring plety of goals at the other end. As the executive boxes replaced thew old Bobbers Stand along one side of the Kenilworth Road pitch and they responded to the Millwall debacle with the introduction of a members' scheme and,for a while,a controversial ban on visiting fans,several years of flying high in the top division were under way.
The Money Programme was great. I think it went out on a Sunday night in the 80s and most teen kids thought it was boring, not me. And for a poor boy in a single parent family in a small northern economically depressed town I watched The Money Programme religiously. I ended up working in the City of London in the investment banks in the front office, JP Morgan, Merril Lynch, ABN Amro (RIP), Credit Suisse, Bank of America etc etc. I live abroad now but is there a TV Show in the UK these days like The Money Programme ?
That's really nice to hear. 'The Money Programme' began in 1966 - the year after 'Tomorrow's World' (both with fantastic theme music, IMHO).
It was indeed on Sunday evenings,on BBC2. I used to watch it sometimes,and so did my Dad. Before it was on I'd have the Top 40 show on Radio 1 on upstairs while Sunday roast dinner was being cooked downstairs.
I'm so glad you live abroad and did soooo well in the front offices of the investment banks.
Just think, you could still be living in the UK and voting Brexit...
@@rjjcms1 simpler times don't you agree ? harder to get things done and less choice but certainly simpler.
@danslider9014 , LOL
re : Brexit
If you speak to residents in Hemsby Norfolk I can tell you straightaway there feeling that part of the UK is getting ever so close to Europe with all the coastal erosion.
So whichever side of the Brexit debate you fall on spare a thought for Hemsby.
Nigel Farrage *******££%%£#£
Does anyone know where that is office is at 2 mins. I have a very faint memory of it but can place what road that is.
This episode is from January 1986.
This was 37 years ago
They had grand plans back then, but they didn't keep up with the upgrades to the stadium.
They were having a whale of a time in the later half of the 80s,coming 9th,then 7th,then 9th again in the league (old First Division of course) with a very strong record on that plastic pitch of theirs. They also won the League Cup against Arsenal at Wembley Stadium in 1988. Though they reached the League Cup final again the following year,losing to Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest,at that very same time a downturn in their financial fortunes started to bite,manifesting itself in a brief flirtation with relegation danger that spring as frequent player sales eased a gathering drain on their coffers at the cost of slowly but surely weakening the team. That situation progressively undermined their ambitions,resulting in three increasing desperate relegation battles in a row at the dawn of the 90s. They survived the first two,but succumbed in 1992 - the same year the enormously lucrative Premier League was launched.
Have you been to their ground? Impossible to expand and upgrade
Yes I have,and I know.
Gareth Owen had more hair back then!
03:47 - I jokingly said this guy looks like a corrupt tory mp - and the someone said about 10 years later he was !!
You can just say "Tory MP". That covers the corrupt bit.
He (David Evans) was a hard man,a self-made businessman from humble beginnings who started out scrubbing floors to make a living by all accounts. He was the MP for Welwyn Hatfield and vehemently on the right wing of the Tory party. I never heard of him being involved in any corruption. At the same time the MP for Luton North was John Carlisle,another character on the hard right of the Tory party and a man who made it his mission to advocate FOR the upkeep of economic and sporting links with South Africa's Apartheid government.
This is more like 1984 Steve Foster is playing, thought this more like the 80's than 70's.
Please correct this BBC
The Aston Villa fixture at the start of this was played on 18th January 1986. Luton winning 2.0.
Didn't Steve Foster play for Luton between 1984 and 1989?
History repeated