Is Kevin McCabe the best chairman we've ever had?

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He is fit and proper, whatever that means these days.

So we could do a lot worse.

UTB
 

I'm not splitting hairs but KM is co-Chairman and 50% owner of the Group. Jim Phipps is the other co-chair

David Green is Chairman of the football club.

Maybe the OP is about owners rather than chairmen. KM has not been a chairman for long periods since he became the main owner.

I think the vital point for us all since September 2013 is how good an owner the prince is and how good his man Phipps is as chairman, adviser and right hand man.

It's my view that all further investment since the prince joined the club has been from him and he'll gradually buy out KM over a period, that's logic and guesswork, not stated fact. In any case, surely the prince is the main man these days.

Since the prince arrived we have sacked Weir, appointed and sacked Clough and appointed Adkins. Fair to say his appointment decisions have shown ambition and better quality than when KM was sole owner.
 
LoughboroBlade said:
Useful insight. Our continued stay at Bramall Lane is a big thing for me. We make a lot about the history of football in Sheffield, and it would be an enormous shame to trade that in. I've no doubt financially it would still probably be an attractive proposition to sell up and move us, but for me we have an ideal stadium that feels as though it's got history while managing to mostly keep up to date. Find a way to get rid of the Kop pillars and there's not a lot left to change – capacity wise we don't need any extra.
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The problem at one time with the proposed redevelopment of the kop , is that a piece of land behind the kop , constituted as a " ransom strip " owned by a previous chairman .

Moving the kop pillars would vastly improve the kop , and give the finnishing touches to a modern proper football ground , with already boat loads of soul.

UTB
 
We probably would be better off now had we actually gone into administration. Like its already been said, hasn't done Leicester any harm
 
LoughboroBlade said:
Carlo "The Count" Colombotti. I think I was at the game he was paraded on the Bramall Lane turf. In fact I think it was before the 4-0 mauling to Sunderland in Steve Bruce's last professional match (which he largely spent on his arse).
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Bloody hell Colombotti, there's a blast from the past. He only stuck around for about a week didn't he?
 
I wish as a property developer that was trying to develop alternative income streams the club had bought some of the land around the ground such as the land filled by the student flat development (and we then put the student development on it) by the Sheaf pub or the Laver land. Then developed it in to a long term income stream, for the club. He could have made a bit from winning the tender to build and built a legacy. Instead we've seen bits of the football club land get carved off for the benefit of his family, namely the enterprise centre and the hotel. These actions will always smart a bit with me.
 
Mccabe is the only chairman ive ever known, so I can't comparison but we have got give Mccabe some credit so many clubs have dropped us down the leagues like us & ended up in severe financial difficulties & or administration we have never been near that

& he did find this prince whooing him over 4/5mths convincing him this was the best place
 
Tyler Durden said:
Bloody hell Colombotti, there's a blast from the past. He only stuck around for about a week didn't he?
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Tbh, my memory of the whole ordeal has started to fade. He came in, with lots of promises of investment, and then all of a sudden we're having to sell Holdsworth & Stuart in a panic sale. There was a big falling out with him & McDonald, then all of a sudden new promises of funding, then a bid for Kinkladze, then an all out collapse of things off the pitch, ultimately leading to Dooley & McCabe stepping in.
 
At least our owner is a local lad done good.

Granted he has made some mistakes, but this has cost him a fortune. It is simply ridiculous to think our majority shareholders do not want success for our club. It beggars belief that some folks actually believe this. Why?

I would have Kev any day of the week over some Russian oligarch, Italian mobster, far eastern tycoon or American sports mogul.

Stop trying to lay the blame somewhere. It all comes down to the eleven blokes on the pitch and in recent years we have not been good enough, but not for the want of trying at all levels in the club, from top to bottom.

At least now we might just be turning the corner.

We will look back on some of these posts come May and a few people will look a bit silly. Hopefully not me.

HH
 
He's made the wrong decisions for the right reasons. Been unlucky and ill advised for the managerial appointments.

He's chucked huge amounts of money at the club - look at the accounts. There's no bone fide advantage in terms of return from the offices, etc around the ground. The return is fairly pitiful compared to the written off loans.

Backing for me is 8/10. Decision making is 5.5/10.

Having said that I'm a massive Blade but with £100s of million I wouldn't go near SUFC. You've got to be mad to put money in a football club.

Fundamentally for me, we're really on the cusp of great things. The ground, after all the investment, is Premier League class. The Academy is absolutely top drawer and punches well above its weight. We've got a superb manager. Commercially SUFC is well respected and from a corporate perspective is a different class to what you get at Leeds or Hull. All we need now is to get out of L1 and establish ourselves back at Champ level and beyond.

The sky's the limit; so COME ON YOU RED AND WHITE WIZARDS!.
 

Hartley Hare said:
At least our owner is a local lad done good.

Granted he has made some mistakes, but this has cost him a fortune. It is simply ridiculous to think our majority shareholders do not want success for our club. It beggars belief that some folks actually believe this. Why?

I would have Kev any day of the week over some Russian oligarch, Italian mobster, far eastern tycoon or American sports mogul.

Stop trying to lay the blame somewhere. It all comes down to the eleven blokes on the pitch and in recent years we have not been good enough, but not for the want of trying at all levels in the club, from top to bottom.

At least now we might just be turning the corner.

We will look back on some of these posts come May and a few people will look a bit silly. Hopefully not me.

HH
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Well, I really hope it comes off for him. Because for all his failures, he really deserves some success.

UTB
 
Rodley said:
He's made the wrong decisions for the right reasons. Been unlucky and ill advised for the managerial appointments.

He's chucked huge amounts of money at the club - look at the accounts. There's no bone fide advantage in terms of return from the offices, etc around the ground. The return is fairly pitiful compared to the written off loans.

Backing for me is 8/10. Decision making is 5.5/10.

Having said that I'm a massive Blade but with £100s of million I wouldn't go near SUFC. You've got to be mad to put money in a football club.

Fundamentally for me, we're really on the cusp of great things. The ground, after all the investment, is Premier League class. The Academy is absolutely top drawer and punches well above its weight. We've got a superb manager. Commercially SUFC is well respected and from a corporate perspective is a different class to what you get at Leeds or Hull. All we need now is to get out of L1 and establish ourselves back at Champ level and beyond.

The sky's the limit; so COME ON YOU RED AND WHITE WIZARDS!.
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Think that's about right Rodley.

McCabe's spent poorly overall, made equally poor decisions, so it's to his advantage that we should now have a manager who might just turn around the fortunes of this club. For wealthy men football club's can appeal to their vanity. We've seen it at Newcastle, where an otherwise successful businessman, Mike Ashley, couldn't grasp that professional football is a financial black hole. It's taken Ashley about 8 seasons to go through various managers, a huge number of players, and the continual disquiet of the Newcastle supporters, to just realise what's involved in running a club.

Whatever lessons McCabe has learned, he'll be a lot less wealthy than when he entered as chairman. Perhaps it's the fact that he owns the hotel, reportedly, that provide a financial reason for his continued involvement. Or possibly the thought of returning to the Premiership spurs him on, but whatever his reasons for remaining, those vanity issues I referred to have taken their toll on a man whose nous in other business areas is sufficient to provide him with a better than average quality of life.
 
As has been pointed out above the question does not ask whether he is a great chairman merely the best that Sheffield United has had. It would be pretty tough not to figure highly in that list considering some of the crooks, incompetents and misfits we have had to endure in our history.

I am not a McCabe fan, but as with most things there is not a black or white, yes or no answer to the OP.

He has done some great things, he has done some bad things and he has made some frankly awful decisions.

Our ground is a million miles ahead of where it was, he has used his development skills well and I am proud of the Lane (just please repaint the bits that are fading to pink and get some new seats).

We have a fabulous academy with great facilities.

We had a season in the Prem and we have to acknowledge he backed NW to get us there. He also showed patience with NW and gave him the time to do the job, something regrettably he has not repeated since.

He has played financial games with property around the Lane including the supposed revenue generators such as the hotel, that were supposed to finance the football club and the freehold of the ground?

He talks about making decisions based on gut instinct. I call them knee jerk and they have been disastrous. The sacking of Blackie (love him or loathe him) started a death spiral, the timing of the wilson sacking with no plan B was incredible and not the actions of a professional director.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs in recent years we have seen an annual fire sale of any player of value that threatened us, Pre Prince, to end up doing a Portsmouth due to the lack of any remaining quality in the squad.

I honestly think the Prince has saved this club not McCabe. McCabe reminds me of Ken Bates at Chelsea, it was all about to go tits up and Roman appeared and saved them from imploding. McCabe had had enough and we were stagnating with a danger of financially melting down Pre Prince. I would suggest recent investment is coming from that source not KM, however Km does appear to have got his Blades mojo back.

My biggest beef with McCabe is a simple one. Stop the bloody spin doctoring, he has lost the trust of many fans because of the many statements he has made that were frankly bullshit. Di Matteo and his text messages, Beattie's flu, Gascoigne, game changing investment etc etc. Just tell it the way it is and more people will back you. Even if it is bad news, people will accept it and move on. If we have to sell players to balance the books cest la vie, but just tell us that. There is a direct correlation at the Lane, as bad news happens, there is a high likelihood of some Kev spin.

When we got to the Prem, I could see 10 years of dominance over Wednesday who were floundering, if somebody had told me that we were about to head for 5 years in the 3rd tier I would have laughed. So we have had highs, but ultimately we have had one of the worst periods in the clubs history.

So in summary, the best? Probably not, but equally not the worst.

Regardless let's hope we don't even need to ask the question in 5 years time, because we are all of one opinion and United behind HRH as the man who rebuilt SUFC.
 
I'm glad that the majority seem to feel he's been decent albeit having made a few dodgy decisions. I think he deserves some respect if nothing else for the club maintaining some financial stability after a long period of uncertainty about who even was running the club.

Let's face it, it's a thankless position to be in and you're not in it to make a profit.

When I look back, I remember before the promotion season in 2005/06 and Warnock basically asked him for more money to have a tilt at promotion. This was agreed and we were promoted. I fully blame Warnock for getting us relegated again, although I think he was then sacked too hastily and of course we ended up with what was probably McCabe's first biggie - Bryan Robson!
 
coaxingstar71 said:
I'm glad that the majority seem to feel he's been decent albeit having made a few dodgy decisions. I think he deserves some respect if nothing else for the club maintaining some financial stability after a long period of uncertainty about who even was running the club.

Let's face it, it's a thankless position to be in and you're not in it to make a profit.

When I look back, I remember before the promotion season in 2005/06 and Warnock basically asked him for more money to have a tilt at promotion. This was agreed and we were promoted. I fully blame Warnock for getting us relegated again, although I think he was then sacked too hastily and of course we ended up with what was probably McCabe's first biggie - Bryan Robson!
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Thanks Coaxingstar, i had almost managed to obliterate Robson from my memory banks!!
 
Promotions under Brearley: 4
Promotions under McCabe: 1

Relegations under Brearley: 1
Relegations under McCabe: 2

Permanent Managers under Brearley: 3
Permanent Managers under McCabe: 9

Seasons spent in third tier under Brearley: 3 (2 promotions)
Seasons spent in third tier under McCabe: at least 5, with no promotion yet
 
Have I missed something here, we seem to be forgetting a real bona Fide crook we had at the helm,
What about hinchcliffe. In that list of rogues I'd place him in the top 2 of blades butchers.
Blades blade aparantly but in my mind he was the real start of a large well rooted decline.
 
Very good OP. I haven't read all the thread but there was a post on here the other day saying something like:

I don't care if we have to pay over the odds for a centre half and a centre midfield, just spend the money.

:eek:

This is real money that really belongs to real people.
 
Revolution said:
Is McCabe the best? Hell no.

I think there is a decent argument that Reg Brearley was a better chairman.
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weve had to pay a million for a new pitch due to him forever landing a helicopter on our pitch , he was all about self promotion , it was the only promotion he ever brought to the Lane
 

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