Terry Venables has defended his financial and business record and rounded on investigative journalists who he says have been harrying him.

The former England coach agreed last week in the High Court to an order, brought by the Department of Trade and Industry, banning him from holding company directorships for seven years.

But speaking on the Breakfast with Frost programme on Sunday he insisted he had no regrets about sharing his time between the dressing room and the boardroom.

Nineteen specific allegations

Mr Venables, who relinquished control of struggling First Division Portsmouth last week, decided to admit or not contest 19 specific allegations of serious misconduct made against him by the DTI.

He told Sir David Frost: "I decided to do a deal with the Department of Trade and Industry so we don't have a court case.

"What happens there, is there are certain charges and you hold your hands up to things you have to accept and things you don't, you don't."

Mr Venables said: "We came to an agreement where they said `you as a director should have known this, you should have known that' and I said okay, fine I accept that.

"And there were some things said about dishonesty and I said `well I will go to court, I will not accept this, because I have not done that' and that was deleted."

Not serious charges

He claimed the charges were not as serious as they had been made out by the press and said: "There has been a set of newspapers -- a tabloid, a middle market one and a broadsheet -- who day after day tried to heap this on me.

"I think if you look at my business background of what I have done it has been very successful.

"I go to Tottenham where this all started and I took Alan Sugar with me. Now I don't think you'll find Mr Sugar has lost too much money out of that deal and when I left Tottenham it was in a very, good condition on the field and off the field."

The Scribes drinking club in London was at the heart of Venables' business dealings

The court case arose from alleged mismanagement of four companies: London drinking club Scribes West Ltd, Edenote plc, Tottenham Hotspur plc and Tottenham Hotspur Football and Athletic Company Ltd.

Club in excellent shape

Mr Venables also defended his time as chairman of Portsmouth, the club he took over for £1 before leaving with a "performance-related" bonus and a six figure pay-off with the team bottom of the First Division.

He said: "The club is in excellent shape and I took £200,000 for my 51% and the club is worth a lot more than that and that comes from the Gregory family, not Portsmouth Football Club."

Mr Venables said that during his time at Fratton Park the club had gone from losing £175,000 a month to making £400,000 and had reduced a £2.8m debt to £500,000.

Portsmouth's board claim they are losing £150,000 a month and in November they were unable to pay the players' wages.

But Mr Venables said: "In the immediate future there is no doubt a cash flow problem but if people just solve that initial thing you have got an incredibly good asset there."

The former Spurs, QPR and Barcelona manager said he had been offered an extension to his contract as coach of the Australian national team and was thinking it over,

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