We're all well aware that nothing is going to happen immediately, it's just an interesting thing to talk about.
As we all know, the Kop is the main issue with the Lane, the vast majority of Championship clubs provide better facilities for away fans than we do for fans on the Kop, which is pretty poor. So for me that should be addressed as soon as reasonably possible, but the current plans don't do that in my opinion.
It would just be nice for the club to look at this long term rather than the "make do" attitude which seems to be always present. We should always aim to be the best we can be, so if it means spending more money but having a stand/stadium development which will provide great facilities for the next 50 years, that's got to be the way to do it. The short term developments are the reason it's currently difficult to expand the stadium without investing more than we should have.
I agree with you. The club doesn't have a "long term" plan. This much is clear from McCabe's responses from the High Court hearing in the last couple of weeks. The club has been run for many years now on the premise that survival is about generating more money from player sales than what we spend on player purchases. Topped up by money from the owners to stay afloat. That's the "business model" that we've operated to.
It's probably about 5 years ago now that I created a post on this - saying that the club should be run to a long term plan - and that plan should be shared openly with the fans. After all, this is the way that professional businesses operate. But we aren't a professionally run business - and that's the problem. And while ever we run the club in this "hand to mouth" way, we'll always have setbacks that prevent us from really establishing ourselves as one of the country's top football clubs and having a secure future.
In terms of priorities, the first priority for any business is survival. Plain and simple. How a club, (or a business) chooses to survive may vary, but whatever they do, they must ensure the club is able to continue in business.
So, for Sheffield United right now, the first priority is to make the essential updates to the ground that will allow us to take part in the Premiership next season. Because if we don't do that, then we can't play in the Premiership - it's really that simple. This is number 1.
Number 2 is - invest in the playing staff, so that the club has a realistic chance of remaining in the Premiership for more than one season.
Number 3 is - Increase commercial revenue streams for the club, through marketing, merchandising, developing new income streams, increasing match day revenues, (which includes increasing ground capacity), etc.
I don't think any of this is particularly difficult to understand. However, that doesn't guarantee we will be able to do it well. With number 1, we have no choice. That's not an issue. With number 2 it gets a bit more tricky. I don't know what level of ambition there will be to sign players who are capable of competing in the best football league in the world?
My fear is that they'll look at Wilder and think, "he's done well without much money" and expect that he can continue to do well, without much money. Don't get me wrong, I am sure, whatever happens with the ownership issue, we'll see the club breaking our transfer record fee on new signings this summer. But will we really equip him with sufficient funds to really compete at this level? I honestly don't know. I don't know if our owners have got any idea what kind of investment is needed on players at this level? And even if they do, will they release those kind of funds - or will they expect Wilder to do it on a shoestring, albeit a longer shoestring than he had before? Put it this way - if they short-change him in this department then we'll be heading back to the Championship at the end of the season - and that would be a huge blow to the club's "long term" ambitions.
The trickiest one of all though, I think, is number 3. Because I don't think that we have the skills and expertise within the club to truly market it as a global brand and develop all these necessary additional income streams. I'm sure we're capable of adding more seats - but keeping them filled is another matter - and it's dependent on doing 2 and 3 really well.
