Prince's - Saudi TV interview

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

CPB

Active Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2021
Messages
1,777
Reaction score
2,626
Firstly long time reader, recently joined.

Not sure if any of you have seen that the Prince has made a TV appearance on Saudi TV last night.

The translate feature on twitter does not translate amazingly well, that or the Prince is also a bit confused. Both of which are possible!

It's on this twitter account: https://twitter.com/nawaf__oga

There are some interesting and bizarre statements here.
I have my doubts over the Prince over how he wants to run the club, but going forward I hope we and he does well!
I am in the camp of that Wilder was maneuvered out, not necessarily pushed but more so bit by bit until there was basically no way to continue.
We now must draw a bit of a line under it of course, however here is what I think to his statements, i've given a tuppenth on them too.

"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): We have not succeeded in the winter transfer market this season."
Well essentially you gave up on the transfer window because you thought we were already down, kinda fair enough but had we managed to snag Lingard (Quite unlikely) could we still be in with a chance?
"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): Ramsdale is a good goalkeeper, but he needs experience. Dana Najib Martinez from Arsenal was at the same price. "
Why mention this again or individual players? This is not really fair on Ramsdale to again bring up. Also was Martinez same wages, probably not!
"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (Sheffield United owner): Brewster will be an influential player in the future. "
"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): Chris Wilder is the coach in charge of the transfers, we show 6 players in a certain position and he chooses. "
Final decisions were Prince's and co not his.
"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): When what happened in recent years was distinguished by the Championship, the league clubs are suffering because of the absence of the crowd, and this matter will be in our favor. "

"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): I am very proud of buying the French Buy Club. We got it at a price that is less than its value. The reason for their coming to us is because of the management’s reputation for success with the rise of clubs to the excellent level. "

"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): My team is a strong point, and they are partners with me. "

"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): We have a WhatsApp group that has 14 clubs other than the top 6 clubs in the Premier League. "

"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): The interview was settled after the dismissal of Chris Wilder because of the pressure on the new coach. "
I'm guessing he's talking about the Sky Sports one?
"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (Sheffield United owner): The resignation of Chris Wilder is that the whole city has turned on us."
Actually not quite, but Wilder had as strong a bond with the fanbase as can be. Certainly before this season. We won't get that anytime soon, but hopefully new boss does well!
"Prince Abdullah bin Musaed (owner of Sheffield United): The reason for the dismissal of Chris Weider is the previous transfer system. I want to put 5 options for the coach, and he is the one who chooses, not the coach who determines the name assigned. "
One of the big reasons Chris went.
He does not want the new manager or Wilder to pick targets. What he wants is for "his team" to pick a number of targets and have the manager decide on which ones.
Chris wanted to use the team he had to pick targets and suggest these to the board to sign. This had already started to happen with Coulibaly, signed without any knowledge to Wilder.
I also find it interesting he says the "dismissal" of Wilder. In the previous line it's resignation. Alan Biggs said all along that him leaving was very much "mutual".
I personally don't buy that the Prince had absolutely no awareness Chris wanted to leave in the times before he tried to resign.
 

And the key bit there is the last part about transfers. How many managers would accept that? And for all CW's faults, and mishaps in the transfer market, he's taken the club from League 1 to 9th in the PL. Now he's told he has to change his transfer market MO, and can't recommend players, only selecting from a list the board have sourced. Seems rogue to me.
 
And the key bit there is the last part about transfers. How many managers would accept that? And for all CW's faults, and mishaps in the transfer market, he's taken the club from League 1 to 9th in the PL. Now he's told he has to change his transfer market MO, and can't recommend players, only selecting from a list the board have sourced. Seems rogue to me.
That’s defo lost in translation. He wants the manager to give 5 options for a position. Not just one like Wilder did, namely with Ramsdale
 
If Wilder chose to sign Ramsdale and not Martinez that's his fault and he should be judged on that as a mistake.
 
And the key bit there is the last part about transfers. How many managers would accept that? And for all CW's faults, and mishaps in the transfer market, he's taken the club from League 1 to 9th in the PL. Now he's told he has to change his transfer market MO, and can't recommend players, only selecting from a list the board have sourced. Seems rogue to me.
Not really imo. if the plan is a "head coach" then this is standard practice.. there's nothing stopping said manager from saying "what about x y z"

Besides.. not to harp on about the past.. but if you'd seen the level of investment squandered on players not up to the standard, i think you'd be a bit.. .apprehensive of allowing someone to make very costly mistakes.
 
And the key bit there is the last part about transfers. How many managers would accept that? And for all CW's faults, and mishaps in the transfer market, he's taken the club from League 1 to 9th in the PL. Now he's told he has to change his transfer market MO, and can't recommend players, only selecting from a list the board have sourced. Seems rogue to me.
That's how normal clubs operate though. There's nothing in there to suggest that the manager couldn't be involved in the shortlisting either but generally speaking the recruitment and technical teams should be shortlisting players for the manager to choose from.

Wilder's recruitment at PL level was rank bad which is why we started the game against Wolves with 7 players who played in the Championship with us.
 
One of the big reasons Chris went.
He does not want the new manager or Wilder to pick targets. What he wants is for "his team" to pick a number of targets and have the manager decide on which ones.
Chris wanted to use the team he had to pick targets and suggest these to the board to sign. This had already started to happen with Coulibaly, signed without any knowledge to Wilder.
I also find it interesting he says the "dismissal" of Wilder. In the previous line it's resignation. Alan Biggs said all along that him leaving was very much "mutual".
I personally don't buy that the Prince had absolutely no awareness Chris wanted to leave in the times before he tried to resign.

Basing it more on what he said in his interview after Wilder leaving, I think this is an uncharitable interpretation of a google translation. What the Prince said in the other interview was that Wilder would only come to them with one name, when what the board wanted was a few targets such that they weren't hamstrung in negotiations. Which is something we've seen in the past with our lengthy pursuits of the likes of Leonard (and was it Burn that we were linked with for ages?) and more recently Brewster, where it seemed to be well known that he was our only target and it was him or nothing even though we all felt we desperately needed a striker.

I can see that being the kind of approach that a manager and board fall out over, but I don't think it's an unreasonable position for the board and I wouldn't interpret that to mean they don't want the manager to pick their targets. Really, it's very hard for me to criticise the board for wanting to see a change in recruitment policy even though I see it as a tragedy that it resulted in Wilder leaving.
 
That's how normal clubs operate though. There's nothing in there to suggest that the manager couldn't be involved in the shortlisting either but generally speaking the recruitment and technical teams should be shortlisting players for the manager to choose from.

Wilder's recruitment at PL level was rank bad which is why we started the game against Wolves with 7 players who played in the Championship with us.

Agreed that its not been great - I think Wilder would hold his hands up at that. This year in particular, the strategy didn't work, and there should have been a greater short term focus. However, for the manager to have little to no impact other than picking from the 5 - I personally wouldn't agree with that. Would John Fleck, or Mark Duffy have been on a list of 5? Would David McGoldrick?
 
Basing it more on what he said in his interview after Wilder leaving, I think this is an uncharitable interpretation of a google translation. What the Prince said in the other interview was that Wilder would only come to them with one name, when what the board wanted was a few targets such that they weren't hamstrung in negotiations. Which is something we've seen in the past with our lengthy pursuits of the likes of Leonard (and was it Burn that we were linked with for ages?) and more recently Brewster, where it seemed to be well known that he was our only target and it was him or nothing even though we all felt we desperately needed a striker.

I can see that being the kind of approach that a manager and board fall out over, but I don't think it's an unreasonable position for the board and I wouldn't interpret that to mean they don't want the manager to pick their targets. Really, it's very hard for me to criticise the board for wanting to see a change in recruitment policy even though I see it as a tragedy that it resulted in Wilder leaving.
If I was the owner I'd expect the same from my manager, he should have back up options. What would we have done if these players went elsewhere or picked up injuries? Very poor if this was Mr Wilder's approach.
 
It's difficult to criticise the board in this instance. Wilder wanted just 1 player for each position and nobody else will do. That's wrong you have to assess your options and clearly there was better options than Brewster, Bogle etc. Good players don't get me wrong just not upto Prem standard yet.
 
Agreed that its not been great - I think Wilder would hold his hands up at that. This year in particular, the strategy didn't work, and there should have been a greater short term focus. However, for the manager to have little to no impact other than picking from the 5 - I personally wouldn't agree with that. Would John Fleck, or Mark Duffy have been on a list of 5? Would David McGoldrick?
As I put above, I think this is backwards. I think what the Prince meant was they wanted the manager to come with say five targets and for the board to be able to negotiate the best deal out of the picks. For example, Wilder to come to them and say "I need a keeper, I want Ramsdale or Martinez or A N Other" and not "I want Ramsdale or no one".
 

If Wilder chose to sign Ramsdale and not Martinez that's his fault and he should be judged on that as a mistake.

......and Martinez is on a salary of £50k to £60k a week at Villa, so that would suggest we were in the market for the 'right player' at that wage bracket.
 
Why mention this again or individual players? This is not really fair on Ramsdale to again bring up. Also was Martinez same wages, probably not!

You are just showing the answers what about the question ? If they ask about Ramsdale and how well he thinks he has done then this is an appropriate answer !

One of the big reasons Chris went.
He does not want the new manager or Wilder to pick targets. What he wants is for "his team" to pick a number of targets and have the manager decide on which ones.
Chris wanted to use the team he had to pick targets and suggest these to the board to sign. This had already started to happen with Coulibaly, signed without any knowledge to Wilder.
I also find it interesting he says the "dismissal" of Wilder. In the previous line it's resignation. Alan Biggs said all along that him leaving was very much "mutual".
I personally don't buy that the Prince had absolutely no awareness Chris wanted to leave in the times before he tried to resign.

Thats not true or your translation is a bit off its what Pokerblade said!

In the interview on Talk Sport the Prince said he wanted Chris to put forward to the board 5/6 choices he wanted so they can then go after this selection and see what they could get for the money. Then they would talk to Chris with the ones they could get for the money they offer and decide which to go for. Instead the Prince claims Chris only put one choice forward and this was not acceptable because when you do this you limit your options, especially if this choice is out of the reach.

Also if you are going to do this then you need to put the question as well as the answer. Just putting the answer could be interpreted in many ways due to context !

its like me quoting I said this to my mate

"Shut up you idiot thats not going to happen"

which sounds a bit off. Unless you see the question was

"Tomorrow its going to rain piano's and teabags"

😁
 
Last edited:
Really interesting debate and insight going to take place in this thread I bet.
 
Agreed that its not been great - I think Wilder would hold his hands up at that. This year in particular, the strategy didn't work, and there should have been a greater short term focus. However, for the manager to have little to no impact other than picking from the 5 - I personally wouldn't agree with that. Would John Fleck, or Mark Duffy have been on a list of 5? Would David McGoldrick?
Different situation completely. I wouldn't have expected Fleck, Duffy or McGoldrick to be on a list of 5. All three were signed on free transfers when we had small transfer budgets, so it's unlikely there would have been back up options available anyway. Last season we had millions of pounds to negotiate with and couldn't afford to get it wrong (which it looks we did).
 
......and Martinez is on a salary of £50k to £60k a week at Villa, so that would suggest we were in the market for the 'right player' at that wage bracket.

Martinez went to Villa quite late in the transfer window, because we got Ramsdale really early.
 
You are just showing the answers what about the question ? If they ask about Ramsdale and how well he thinks he has done then this is an appropriate answer !



Thats not true or your translation is a bit off its what Pokerblade said!

In the interview on Talk Sport the Prince said he wanted Chris to put forward to the board 5/6 choices he wanted so they can then go after this selection and see what they could get for the money. Then they would talk to Chris with the ones they could get for the money they offer and decide which to go for. Instead the Prince claims Chris only put one choice forward and this was not acceptable because when you do this you limit your options, especially if this choice is out of the reach.

Also if you are going to do this then you need to put the question as well as the answer. Just putting the answer could be interpreted in many ways due to context !

its like me quoting I said this to my mate

"Shut up you idiot thats not going to happen"

which sounds a bit off. Unless you see the question was

"Tomorrow its going to rain piano's and teabags"

😁
Sadly I'm not sure I can even source the questions with it all being in arabic. These are the answers Prince gave to them and you can work out what the potential question was.

As I said some of it sounds just a bit confused but some of it is interesting.

I think the last quote is interesting because it is suggesting that they no longer wanted to take in Chris' suggestions only their own.
And whilst we can say other clubs have this policy, does it not worry you if the team going forward identifying targets is Prince, Van Winkel and mates but not necessarily part of the coaching or scouting staff?

Have we forgotten that Wilder used to mention all the time about having multiple targets/options for positions? Having a plan A, B, C, D etc. and presenting to the board. That deadline day video following him around more or less showed that on a small scale.
What has changed is that the board want to identify targets along with whoever else they allow but whilst Chris was in place, he was not to have anything like as much of a say. People can say that's because his signings have been poor in past 18months however most managers would not be that happy about this.

I also think that some people are quick to believe all what the Prince said was true in that Talksport/Sky interview. True we can only take his word but do we know that's exactly how it went down. Was there more to it than I only want 1 player? Was there discussions before hand, were there targets mentioned before and it got whittled down before? More than likely but we simply don't know.

However main aim for this thread was to share what the Prince had said as it isn't covered on here, give my thoughts and obviously see what peeps think.
 
Sadly I'm not sure I can even source the questions with it all being in arabic. These are the answers Prince gave to them and you can work out what the potential question was.

As I said some of it sounds just a bit confused but some of it is interesting.

I think the last quote is interesting because it is suggesting that they no longer wanted to take in Chris' suggestions only their own.
And whilst we can say other clubs have this policy, does it not worry you if the team going forward identifying targets is Prince, Van Winkel and mates but not necessarily part of the coaching or scouting staff?

Have we forgotten that Wilder used to mention all the time about having multiple targets/options for positions? Having a plan A, B, C, D etc. and presenting to the board. That deadline day video following him around more or less showed that on a small scale.
What has changed is that the board want to identify targets along with whoever else they allow but whilst Chris was in place, he was not to have anything like as much of a say. People can say that's because his signings have been poor in past 18months however most managers would not be that happy about this.

I also think that some people are quick to believe all what the Prince said was true in that Talksport/Sky interview. True we can only take his word but do we know that's exactly how it went down. Was there more to it than I only want 1 player? Was there discussions before hand, were there targets mentioned before and it got whittled down before? More than likely but we simply don't know.

However main aim for this thread was to share what the Prince had said as it isn't covered on here, give my thoughts and obviously see what peeps think.
Showing a wilder bias now , picked it up in the op as well !
All these things were on the sky interview so why are we discussing an Arabic version with the same content which has been discussed already ?
 
Sadly I'm not sure I can even source the questions with it all being in arabic. These are the answers Prince gave to them and you can work out what the potential question was.

As I said some of it sounds just a bit confused but some of it is interesting.

I think the last quote is interesting because it is suggesting that they no longer wanted to take in Chris' suggestions only their own.
And whilst we can say other clubs have this policy, does it not worry you if the team going forward identifying targets is Prince, Van Winkel and mates but not necessarily part of the coaching or scouting staff?

Have we forgotten that Wilder used to mention all the time about having multiple targets/options for positions? Having a plan A, B, C, D etc. and presenting to the board. That deadline day video following him around more or less showed that on a small scale.
What has changed is that the board want to identify targets along with whoever else they allow but whilst Chris was in place, he was not to have anything like as much of a say. People can say that's because his signings have been poor in past 18months however most managers would not be that happy about this.

I also think that some people are quick to believe all what the Prince said was true in that Talksport/Sky interview. True we can only take his word but do we know that's exactly how it went down. Was there more to it than I only want 1 player? Was there discussions before hand, were there targets mentioned before and it got whittled down before? More than likely but we simply don't know.

However main aim for this thread was to share what the Prince had said as it isn't covered on here, give my thoughts and obviously see what peeps think.
Can I point out for the third time that you're taking the most uncharitable interpretation of a google translate when the Prince has previously said this in English and it was a lot more reasonable?

Now, the Prince might not be being entirely honest about what went on behind the scenes, but it seems pretty clear he didn't mean for the board to pick the targets for the manager. He meant for the manager to present several targets so the board could shop around for the best deal. That's the thing that Varkanoid was saying is the norm at other clubs, not that boardrooms pick the squad.
 

......and Martinez is on a salary of £50k to £60k a week at Villa, so that would suggest we were in the market for the 'right player' at that wage bracket.
Although I’d expect him to still go to Villa if both clubs were offering the same. He’s been a good signing for them, in fairness.
 

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

Back
Top Bottom