A lot of interesting stuff on here, and a lot of absolute shite as well, it must be said.
To give everything a sense of context we need to look at where was in the days before Kevin McCabe became involved with the club. As it happens I've recently re-read the excellent Fit and Proper book and it brought back memories of some other dark days, with a cast list of incapable, the dishonest and the avaricious, with a cast containing the likes of Reg and Len Brearley, Sam Hashimi, Stephen Hincliffe, Mike McDonald, Charles Green and Carlo Colombotti, presiding over numerous shambles and unmitigated disasters such as selling Brian Deane, and then replicated the same mistake with Deane and Fjortoft on the same day, boardroom wars, United even being unable to pay a newspaper bill, having a three sided ground for a couple of years in the 1990s, and countless other embarrassments, that made us for a time the biggest basket case in English football. It is also well worth noting that during the 1999-2000 season which was also heralded the season that Kevin McCabe became the chairman of United, at Bramall Lane we was also experiencing sub 10,000 crowds at Bramall Lane during a time where football was going through a real boom area.
During Kevin McCabes time in charge, we have developed and progressed as a football club to such a degree that we are a totally different club than we was in the 1990s. Bramall Lane looks a lot better than it did back them, thanks to a series of developments and renovations, that make it a ground that would be fit for purpose should we make it to the Premier League. The training ground is a top class facility that develops some outstanding players, and is a facility that is very beneficial to our own squad of players. It is worth casting a less than envious eye to the homes of Leeds United and Sheffield Wednesday that are both aging facilties, become more outdated and dilapidated as time passes. It is also a well known fact that Chansiri and Wednesday come knocking at Uniteds door every winter begging to share our training facilties, only to be told where to go every winter.
I also think that the way United are run, might not pander to popular appeal, often openly bringing out dissent from the supporters from the perceived lack of investment in the first team squad, but this same pragmatism also insulate us against fallow spells, we've recently survived 6 years at the third level of English football, and come through that a lot stronger and a lot more stable. Many clubs of a similar stature and ilk to us would have found it a lot tougher, and it would have brought about administration, new owners who may have had less than honorable intentions. A few years ago we survived the ITV digital collapse quite comfortably due to the way the financial situation of the club was managed, a big achievement considering at the time we was on our own way out of a financial black hole, and should there be another footballing recession, with the way the club is run, i think should there be that recession we a lot better placed to ride that out than 90% of other clubs.
I also think Kevin McCabe can also take great credit for the way he has looked after the supporters. During the last 10 years he has kept the prices reasonable, and encouraged the support to keep on backing United, incentivised by good deals on season tickets and matchday tickets that have kept people interested and coming through the turnstiles to the extent where our level of support during the 6 seasons in the third tier has been unmatched in terms of size and loyalty, and this has left us with a large and loyal fan base, that was grown and developed over time and by and large has been retained.
Kevin McCabes biggest folly to my own mind came during the mid 2000s, which was a real boom time on the pitch as all the hard work over the previous years came together, and in 2007 in terms of finances and momentum we was ideally situated to capitalise and become a settled side in the top flight along similar lines to how Stoke are now. Where he went wrong was effectively handing over all responsability of the footballing operations to Terry Robinson, who made a disasterous appointment in Bryan Robson which was also compounded by the biggest spending spree in the clubs history on players who didn't deliver value for money. At the time we signed Lee Hendrie for £20k a week, but we was also interested in Wes Hoolahan and Graham Dorrans at the same time who we could have got at the time, and for a combined fee of a lot less than we spent on the Hendrie package. This left us massively over-budget at the end of the 2000s, and we had to cut costs quite dramatically, and this ended up with a relegation to the third tier, which to my mind was a consequence of the dire Robinson era.
I would probably say that on the field, we have struggled as Kevin McCabe has had a lot of bad luck. The relegation in 2007 was poor and to be honest we was mugged off that the powers that be, not taking the correct decision in deducting West Ham points for a clear and calculated breach of the rules that enabled them to profit by surviving in the Premier League. With the exception of Robson, and maybe Wilson as well who was an unpopular choice, his managerial appointments have been universally well received as being the right man for the job at the time. I can't recall many arguments against the full time appointment of Blackwell, the appointments of Adams, Speed, Weir, Clough and Adkins who for a multitude of different reasons couldn't achieve what we wanted them to set out to do. The appointment of Wilder was also a clearly well thought out decision and was the one that did actually turn out to be the right decision.
I think on the whole the Kevin McCabe era has represented stability and in many ways if he did leave us tomorrow, he would have left us in a lot healthier than in the state that he found us. He has built up the infrastructure of the club to that of one that wouldn't look out of place in the top flight, but he has also made some very poor footballing decisions and i think that is why we haven't made the progress that he, and us would have wanted during his 18 years in charge, and i would imagine that he would also be the first one to admit that failing as well.
