So tell us about ‘A Night with Steve Perryman’ in Dublin on 18 June. How did it come about? What can fans expect?

I’d been invited to Belfast and I think it’s one of a number of events with Spurs people. It’s a tried and tested formula.

My wife travels with me. We’re out of season. I work at Exeter City [as Director of Football]. My wife’s never been to Dublin, so I just phoned someone and said if you can arrange something, maybe I can do one in Dublin.

I suppose it would be a night mainly for Spurs people, who have an interest in my career — the career of a professional footballer through the 60s, 70s and 80s. I was lucky enough coming in when Bill Nicholson was winning the double and all that. I ended up in his team.

Through the 70s and 80s, which was Keith Burkinshaw’s era, I was captain of the team. And then I worked there with Ossie Ardiles and the management team in the 90s under Alan Sugar. So I’ve been at Tottenham through four decades and people are interested in how the club has changed over the years.

It’s such a different game these days, but sometimes people like to look back and listen to the stories. So that’s what they will get a flavour of.

You’re a Spurs legend and you were even caretaker manager briefly in the 90s. How did you find this experience? 

I was caretaker for two weeks when Ossie lost his job. We lost 2-0 away at Blackburn, who turned out to be the champions that year. They brought in Gerry Francis and I was fired by [then-chairman] Alan Sugar.

I could see the writing on the wall and as much as I loved that place, I fell out of love a little bit in terms of the way the club had changed. The driving force when I joined was Bill Nicholson. But it developed to the point where the chairman was the big man, and that didn’t really sit well with me. So I should have been devastated to leave Tottenham when I did. But number one, I sort of left in support of Ossie and secondly, it wasn’t the club it had been when I joined, so I went to manage in Norway (with Start) and the Japan (Shimizu S-Pulse) and had great success there. In a way, it pushed me on to better things.

Is Alan Sugar as daunting in real life as he comes across on his TV show The Apprentice?

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When he’s talking about business [on TV], you listen and learn off him. My problem with him is that I wasn’t going to listen to him on football matters. I didn’t quite see the point of employing football people and then telling us what we should be thinking in the football arena. A man that powerful doesn’t like people who don’t listen, so that was a problem between us.

How would you assess the current Tottenham side?

Well I’m now back in love with Tottenham. It probably helped with Alan Sugar selling his part of the club. This season, I think the manager [Mauricio Pochettino] has done well. He’s had to deal with a group of players that are not really his. I’ve seen them live twice and win twice — against Everton and Hull. My impression is that they lack a leader on the field.

I know they ended up with Harry Kane [as captain], but I think it’s a bit too much to ask the main goalscorer to lead the way in terms of what I think a captain is and should be. And Lloris is a magnificent player, but that’s an interesting subject about goalkeepers being captain.

In general, they lack a little bit of leadership. I’m fully aware of what Tottenham have got in them going forward. I think they can be a match for most teams. They got a magnificent win against Chelsea at home in the league, but they just couldn’t match that against the other top teams.

It’s there in an attacking sense, but I’ve seen some defensive frailties that they’re going to need to work on. When you talk about leadership and communication, they would be some frailties that they have. So they’ve made progress under a new young manager, but I’d wait to judge him until he’s had a few windows to make Tottenham his own team.

Are there any Tottenham players from over the years that you’d have loved to play in the same team with?

Gareth Bale, what a player! I’m not really surprised it’s taken him some time to settle at Real Madrid. It’s a bit like going from junior school to senior school. You’re the top player and then you go to the upper school, and you’ve got to re-establish what you are. He’s struggled [with the pressure] to an extent.

But his goals carried Tottenham for three or four seasons. I heard he wasn’t really rated at the beginning of his Tottenham career and all of a sudden, he turned it around and became one of the greatest players the club have ever seen. That’s no mean feat when you think of players that have graced White Hart Lane.

And what about former Spurs striker Robbie Keane — how highly did you rate him?

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I always thought he was a player that absolutely gave his all for the club. And he was trying to find where he fitted, and I think Tottenham was the place where he found his home.

I thought he was at one with the crowd — that’s part of being a great player at Tottenham. You have to earn the right to be a crowd favourite, and he did. It was tough as a frontman but I think he led a lot of the good things that were happening when he was there. He looked as if he had a desire about him and an energy that others looked at and followed.

Speaking of Robbie, the Ireland-England game is coming up. What’s your take on this match, as a former England international?

I remember when Joe Kinnear would return from international duty, the English lads would say ‘you’ve been away for a bit of a holiday there’. But that was when England had greater players. So a lot of the so-called smaller nations have caught up.

For example, Norway have been ranked in the top 10 of the Fifa world rankings. I didn’t like the way Norway did it, but you’ve got to take short cuts. I see Ireland in the same manner. Of course you’re going to have down periods, but when you get a particular band of players together, then they can be a match for anyone.

So Ireland are capable of producing world-class players, like Ray Houghton and John Aldridge, who I played with at Oxford. So two out of four times England would win [against the Irish], the third one could be a draw and the fourth could go either way.

England have had to pick fairly low-profile players like Jamie Vardy of Leicester in their squad recently. What’s your take on this?

There was the odd one in my era. I remember Peter Taylor getting picked for a very tough game away to Scotland when he was with Crystal Palace in the third division. But that really was rare with squads, and certainly in the starting XI.

I just think the England manager has to have his eyes and ears open to every eventuality. Players can pop up from anywhere. The lad that’s been relegated with Burnley [Tom Heaton] could be playing for Arsenal in two months’ time — what’s the difference between those two months?

I’m always trying to say to Spurs people — don’t undersell homegrown players. If you think back to it, Eusebio, Messi and Pele were all homegrown somewhere. So don’t de-value them, as they could be playing for the best team in the world in a year’s time.

I look at Tottenham and for all the talent they’ve brought in from outside, tell me a better, more gifted player than Glenn Hoddle. So don’t undersell a homegrown player or someone from a lower league. My club, Exeter City, we’ve just sold a player, Matt Grimes, to Swansea. He hasn’t featured yet, but this kid’s going to be a player. And he’s popped up from little Exeter City in the South-West, which is supposedly rugby territory. I hope I’m not putting too much pressure on him, but this kid is going to be a player.

It was also the case with an Irish player, Chris Hughton. In a way, he was never going to be pushed into the team. One day, [then-Tottenham manager] Keith Burkinshaw said to me: ‘Steve, we’ve all these injuries, who’s going to play left-back?’ And I said ‘we’ve only one option: Chris Hughton,’ who was a right-back. So he played at left-back, I think we won the game and he never came out of the team. He hardly ever played right-back again.

So it just shows you what can happen if you give someone a chance and maybe it’s what England are doing. Chris never showed on the reserve stage the way that he was capable of handling it on the first-team stage. And that can apply to a lot of so-called ordinary players at Premier League level in international football. How can you tell if you don’t give them a chance?

We were talking about up-and-coming players earlier — what do you, as a Director of Football, make of the Raheem Sterling situation?

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I think a player has got to earn the maximum he can from his career. If someone wanted to buy Sterling and he’s worth £50million, in a way, his wages should reflect the fact that he is worth £50million. I don’t care if that’s a 21-year-old or a 17-year-old or whatever. But if a player gets so much money too early, it could inhibit his career. I’m not saying he’s worth £50million, but that player deserves to be surrounded by top-quality advisors.

So why shouldn’t a young man pick the top advisors? To handle that money and make sure it doesn’t inhibit your performances as a player is an unbelievable set of circumstances to all get right at one time.

I just hope this lad gets the absolute most out of his career, and I’m talking about as a footballer as well as money. No one gives you money when you stop playing. All these clubs want to talk about loyalty, but there’s no loyalty when they want you out the door, and there shouldn’t be.

Spurs supporters try to use my loyalty against Sol Campbell leaving. As a Spurs man, I don’t like the fact that he chose to go to Arsenal. But that said, the club I joined was led by Bill Nicholson — he was going to help get as much out of my career as he could. But if I had been a player when Alan Sugar was the main focus of the club, I don’t think I’d have stayed as long as I did (19 years).

Finally, we were sorry to hear that your friend and Tottenham legend, Jimmy Greaves, suffered a stroke recently. What’s the latest you’ve heard on his condition?

All I’ve heard is that he’s improving, but it’s going to take time. Some wonderful people have been in touch to help. Some very big judges in that world are aiding his recovery. So they’re all good messages. We want him to be better tomorrow, but you don’t find yourself in the situation he’s in and then recover the next day.

Of course, I wish him well. He’s a great man. He was with me on the Thursday before it happened. He was bright, he was vibrant, he was witty — all those things we know of him from TV and as a football player — so to hear about what happened on the Sunday was just amazing.

‘A Night with Steve Perryman’ takes place on Thursday 18 June, 8pm to 11pm, in The Regency Hotel, Drumcondra hosted by PC Sports and Promotions in association with The Spurs Poet with Richard Cracknell as MC. Tickets available through www.pcsportsandpromotions.ie.

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