One way or another, we should be getting new owners and (hopefully) investment in the next 12 months. If that’s the case, what would you like the priorities to be? For me, after the roller coaster of the last decade, I’m keen to see some medium-term planning and investment, even if it means less spending on the first team in the short term.
In an ideal world, and assuming stoke/brentford levels of investment (I know, I know, just humour me), my priorities would be:
1) New single-tier, steep rake Kop with significant safe-standing and decent facilities. We’ll have to put the club in significant debt to do this but raising finance for infrastructure is sensible compared with raising debt for player recruitment. Should put our capacity up above 35k.
2) Major investment in recruitment personnel and technology. We’ve started to improve on this but need way more. I’d suggest we focus on young British players first, then build up our ability to recruit in 2-3 core European markets. We should allocate a certain % of annual player recruitment $ to buy promising youngsters. We have proven capability as a club at developing players, which complements this strategy perfectly.
3) Build the new 1st team training ground at Dore If planned carefully to last us the next thirty years and I think we be a big bonus when it comes to player recruitment.
4) Develop Shirecliffe into a quality Cat 1 academy and boost the community sports facilities available, if there is space. Might even be able to nick a few extra fans from that part of town.
5) Invest to make our women’s team top 10 in the country. Women’s football is growing incredibly quickly and improving quality year on year. I think the club does a great job with its media coverage but, with our size, there’s no reason why we can’t be a leading UK club. I’d do this for its own sake, but happily it also helps the next priority…
6) Huge focus on attracting women and ethnic minorities as the next generation of fans. I’m not making a political point here (please don’t respond if you think I am) but sheffield’s population of white men isn’t growing significantly any time soon. And it’s hard to pull people away from either blades or owls families (it’s taken us 20 years of sustained success to move that needle). But there is massive untapped potential in the city. It will take a deliberate approach - maybe recruiting community leaders, changing up our food and events offerings, free tickets etc - but we only need another few thousand people to become season ticket holders and it changes things dramatically. I do think this will change the atmosphere somewhat, but I think if we build a monster new kop, there’s plenty of scope for different types of experience around the ground.
7) Appoint a Director-of-Football with a 3-7 year plan. I love Wilder and think he might succeed with us again. But he needs to our last ‘Football Manager’ boss. He’s a one off. Going forward, I’d like to see us have a stated strategy on the way we play (technical, high-pace, front foot football) and a set of player recruitment and development criteria that we work within. The DoF, Head of Recruitment, First Team Manager and CeO need to be on a committee and have some creative tension, but DoF needs to sign off. We need to build a squad that can play at least two different formations, to give us tactical flexibility and allow for new young coaches to put their stamp on things. A proper plan should avoid bloated, unbalanced squads and situations where top players let contracts expire before we cash in.
What would yours be?
In an ideal world, and assuming stoke/brentford levels of investment (I know, I know, just humour me), my priorities would be:
1) New single-tier, steep rake Kop with significant safe-standing and decent facilities. We’ll have to put the club in significant debt to do this but raising finance for infrastructure is sensible compared with raising debt for player recruitment. Should put our capacity up above 35k.
2) Major investment in recruitment personnel and technology. We’ve started to improve on this but need way more. I’d suggest we focus on young British players first, then build up our ability to recruit in 2-3 core European markets. We should allocate a certain % of annual player recruitment $ to buy promising youngsters. We have proven capability as a club at developing players, which complements this strategy perfectly.
3) Build the new 1st team training ground at Dore If planned carefully to last us the next thirty years and I think we be a big bonus when it comes to player recruitment.
4) Develop Shirecliffe into a quality Cat 1 academy and boost the community sports facilities available, if there is space. Might even be able to nick a few extra fans from that part of town.
5) Invest to make our women’s team top 10 in the country. Women’s football is growing incredibly quickly and improving quality year on year. I think the club does a great job with its media coverage but, with our size, there’s no reason why we can’t be a leading UK club. I’d do this for its own sake, but happily it also helps the next priority…
6) Huge focus on attracting women and ethnic minorities as the next generation of fans. I’m not making a political point here (please don’t respond if you think I am) but sheffield’s population of white men isn’t growing significantly any time soon. And it’s hard to pull people away from either blades or owls families (it’s taken us 20 years of sustained success to move that needle). But there is massive untapped potential in the city. It will take a deliberate approach - maybe recruiting community leaders, changing up our food and events offerings, free tickets etc - but we only need another few thousand people to become season ticket holders and it changes things dramatically. I do think this will change the atmosphere somewhat, but I think if we build a monster new kop, there’s plenty of scope for different types of experience around the ground.
7) Appoint a Director-of-Football with a 3-7 year plan. I love Wilder and think he might succeed with us again. But he needs to our last ‘Football Manager’ boss. He’s a one off. Going forward, I’d like to see us have a stated strategy on the way we play (technical, high-pace, front foot football) and a set of player recruitment and development criteria that we work within. The DoF, Head of Recruitment, First Team Manager and CeO need to be on a committee and have some creative tension, but DoF needs to sign off. We need to build a squad that can play at least two different formations, to give us tactical flexibility and allow for new young coaches to put their stamp on things. A proper plan should avoid bloated, unbalanced squads and situations where top players let contracts expire before we cash in.
What would yours be?
