Prince Abdullah speaks to BBC Radio Sheffield

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McGrath said:
I read it (and listened to the interview) and interpreted it as lots of other clubs default (including United), it's kind of accepted in the industry, nobody ever complains, but United were unlucky because some club decided to. Which if that's the case, a 2 window ban seems excessive. But perhaps the EFL ballsed it up anyway and that was why it was reduced to a 2 point deduction.

You're a forensic accountant. UW payments vex me. So how much do we pay to UW, and what comes back in return that presumably makes it worth the outlay?
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UW. The figures are in the FC/BL accounts as a note, but only as a total. No breakdown.
 

Sean Thornton said:
It’s not as if it’s huge amounts in the scheme of things, despite what the Table 18 lot claim. Dwarfed by PA’s investment over the years he’s been here.
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But still, it sounds like quite an extravagance, during times when managers have had to work within tight budgets
 
BigBed said:
Well, he didn't have the decency to do a lap of the pitch and applaud the fans today, I thought he would atleast walk over to the kop, but looked totally disinterested from what we could se, he couldve spoken on the mic to the crowd, wasn't bothered..... didn't strike me as someone that loved the fans and the club??
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Well,that's one way to look at it.
 
McGrath said:
Loans and frees was this seasons summer remit and was that Premier League budget in the summer last year £20 million?

Sounds pretty tight to me
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The playing budget is what counts these days as players increasingly choose to run their contracts down and yet people still get hung up over transfer fees.

How “free” do you think a free is when signing on fees are factored in?
 
Addison said:
Forgot to add to the interesting points. On the embargo PA said he was unhappy SUFC were being charged for late payments over 100 days when other clubs in his opinion were in the same situation. I suspect as this wasn't the first time we'd defaulted that was the reason for the charge. The EFL wanted to impose a 2 window transfer ban but SUFC employed an eminent sports lawyer and negotiated the 2 point deduction as a lesser penalty.
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Like I mentioned earlier he claimed a club is currently late paying us as well despite currently doing well for themselves in the Premier League.
 
Nick Jansky said:
The playing budget is what counts these days as players increasingly choose to run their contracts down and yet people still get hung up over transfer fees.

How “free” do you think a free is when signing on fees are factored in?
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If you want to sign quality at the right age you still usually have to pay transfer fees. If we hadn't have sold Osula, they'd have been no Cooper or Burrows coming through the door.

That £3.8 million in consultancy fees to United World, might have come in very handy this summer!
 
If we fail by 1 point the deduction will have cost us

🫤
 
McGrath said:
If you want to sign quality at the right age you still usually have to pay transfer fees. If we hadn't have sold Osula, they'd have been no Cooper or Burrows coming through the door.

That £3.8 million in consultancy fees to United World, might have come in very handy this summer!
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And we paid transfer fees for quality at the right age.

We don’t actually know what the £3.8m was for (although, inevitably, some on here will make stuff up) so the truth is, we have no idea. For instance, we could speculate that part of it might have been for the services of Des Taylor & his team, in which case it would have been money very well spent.

What we do know is that we are no longer a part of UW, so it isn’t an issue moving forwards.
 
Nick Jansky said:
And we paid transfer fees for quality at the right age.

We don’t actually know what the £3.8m was for (although, inevitably, some on here will make stuff up) so the truth is, we have no idea. For instance, we could speculate that part of it might have been for the services of Des Taylor & his team, in which case it would have been money very well spent.

What we do know is that we are no longer a part of UW, so it isn’t an issue moving forwards.
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Well it sounded like the £3.8 million came from last year's accounts and we'd been paying 7 figure sums to UW in previous years too. So that would have predated Des Taylors involvement, but it sounds like he was a COH paid for consultant anyway who has been advising them.

The Prince sounded vague when questioned, I didn't feel he gave a straight answer and seemed to change the subject pretty quickly. I think there's justification in people questioning what these fees are for and if the club has benefited for them.
 

McGrath said:
Well it sounded like the £3.8 million came from last year's accounts and we'd been paying 7 figure sums to UW in previous years too. So that would have predated Des Taylors involvement, but it sounds like he was a COH paid for consultant anyway who has been advising them.

The Prince sounded vague when questioned, I didn't feel he gave a straight answer and seemed to change the subject pretty quickly. I think there's justification in people questioning what these fees are for and if the club has benefited for them.
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COH wouldn’t have been allowed to pay DT to provide services to the club prior to takeover. They were not allowed to participate or be involved in any management position until approved. The detail isn’t known but you speculate over DT suggesting that UW weren’t paying him. Based on what? There’s nothing out there. In any event, there is a clear timing difference but the point still stands.
 
Sean Thornton said:
COH wouldn’t have been allowed to pay DT to provide services to the club prior to takeover. They were not allowed to participate or be involved in any management position until approved. The detail isn’t known but you speculate over DT suggesting that UW weren’t paying him. Based on what? There’s nothing out there. In any event, there is a clear timing difference but the point still stands.
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Either, I've misread what you said, or you've misread what I've said. But either way, we actually seem to be in agreement
 
SGBlade said:
Excellent interview. He comes across exactly as you’d expect with someone of his record at the club - a shrewd businessman with a passion for sport but a risk taker and someone who’s not immune to making bad decisions. I’m sure he’s overplaying his love for the club and downplaying a bit of the financial gambling, but overall comes across as relatively sincere for someone in his position.

Interesting that he mentioned a few times his biggest regret was listening too much to Wilder in the first two Prem years. He obviously regrets many of those signings except perhaps Berge (who wouldn’t have been Wilder’s choice anyway). Have to agree with that really - 100m+ on the likes of Moose, McB, C.Robinson, Brewster etc really was awful business when you look at the return we got from them in terms of resale value or impact on the pitch. No slight on the individual players, many of whom I enjoyed watching, but terrible value for the football club overall.

Other insightful bits for me were that he could hardly believe our luck with the cash we raised for our cast-offs last summer, which enabled us to keep Hamer, Blaster, Souza and Anel, and the price we paid for the incomings. In retrospect that was a masterclass of a transfer window. Don’t know who deserves the praise (Bettis to a large degree I would imagine) but someone should get a pay rise.

People may not like the prince’s communication style (or lack of it) and he has made some fairly big gambles/mistakes, but if you judge him purely on the position the club is now in vs when he joined, then he’s certainly the best owner in my 35 years of watching the blades.

Irrespective of whether we get promoted this year or not, we now have a solid foundation as a club - decent ground, incredible academy, land for new training complex and Cat 1 upgrade, competitive team of good young players on long contracts. It’s over to the new owners now to build on that with sensible on and off-field investment. Becoming an established Prem team is incredibly hard as there are lots of other well run clubs out there with owners who are willing to burn 100+ millions (which ours will not, given the nature of the investment vehicle). But if they run it carefully and trade players well, we’ve got a chance. And that’s in large part thanks to the prince. He’ll get a handshake and a thank you from me if I ever bump into him.
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Moose wasn't a waste of money? He scored some incredibly important goals in that first season, with some match winning goals.. first half of the season he was playing like a top 10 premier league striker (more than paid off his £10m price tag)

Mcb left us as our top? Or 2nd all time premier league goal scorer.

Cal Robinson was a gamble that didn't pay off as he wasn't a striker (and we didn't play with wingers) - we recouped money on him.

Brewster has/is a waste of money, but no one could foresee the injuries and stop start career.

Yes he's wasted money in the prem but it's been on players that we could only attract (bang average chamionship players for squad depth) rather than strengthening the starting 11. Always seems to have been player B/C rather than player A due to unwillingness to pay the wages.

I'd like to see a list of targets we went for and couldn't get because we couldn't afford the wages or just chose to go else where - such as Robinson who choose Fulham and matty cash who chose villa.
 
Didn't we swap Callum Robinson for Burke? Making it Burke being the waste of money not Robinson.
 
Bell4 said:
dont agree tbh

the season is a set of variables - the points deduction is fixed
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Excellent - if the season is a set of variables, then I’d like our points total to be increased by five, please, before we play our next match. If you could let me know when that’s been done, I’d be grateful. Thanks.


Sadly, the 3 point variable becomes fixed at the end of each match. We got zero points against Burnley, and that is now fixed. We dropped 2 points against QPR and that is now fixed, etc, etc.

The season is a succession of variables that become fixed after each game. Those variables are largely under our own control during the course of each match - that’s the whole point of football. We can’t just pretend that they don’t influence the outcome of the season, and that any shortfall is attributable entirely to the points deduction.

Sorry that the facts don’t fit with the blame the Prince agenda. That must be a disappointment to some.
 
Blademan89 said:
Moose wasn't a waste of money? He scored some incredibly important goals in that first season, with some match winning goals.. first half of the season he was playing like a top 10 premier league striker (more than paid off his £10m price tag)

Mcb left us as our top? Or 2nd all time premier league goal scorer.

Cal Robinson was a gamble that didn't pay off as he wasn't a striker (and we didn't play with wingers) - we recouped money on him.

Brewster has/is a waste of money, but no one could foresee the injuries and stop start career.

Yes he's wasted money in the prem but it's been on players that we could only attract (bang average chamionship players for squad depth) rather than strengthening the starting 11. Always seems to have been player B/C rather than player A due to unwillingness to pay the wages.

I'd like to see a list of targets we went for and couldn't get because we couldn't afford the wages or just chose to go else where - such as Robinson who choose Fulham and matty cash who chose villa.
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People like to slag managers off and blame them for signings they don't like. But I think our biggest problem with signings in the Prem was that we had a scouting and recruitment system that really hadn't changed much from League One and wasn't fit for purpose in the Premier League.

That's probably why we ended up with many of the signings we did. Some weren't as bad as people think either.

It's clearly been identified by the club, Wilder and the new owners that it's something that needs fixing. I think this summers signings have been good and will certainly have leant heavily on analytics.
 
loveWalrusDaveTheBlade said:
No, we are very obviously not the victims. There were no actual victims, which is why I described it as a 'victimless crime'. We were the recipients of the fine for committing the transgression. To describe that as making us victims would be to say that everybody that goes to prison as a result of committing a proper crime is a victim. You make no sense.
We have been penalised with a two point deduction, but this is hugely outweighed by the benefit of securing promotion to the Premier League at the end of the season in which we broke the rules. Without that, we would be in a very different place indeed. Take Cooper, Anel, Burrows, O'Hare and Hamer out of yesterdays starting line up and replace them with five off that bench, and that would be pretty much what our starting line up would be by now.
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The victims are the clubs that followed the rules and got beat by us in the league or finished beneath us.

It also undermines the integrity of the competition, but tbf it's already a shambles anyway so dunno how much noticeable damage has been done...
 
AWetFlannel said:
The victims are the clubs that followed the rules and got beat by us in the league or finished beneath us.

It also undermines the integrity of the competition, but tbf it's already a shambles anyway so dunno how much noticeable damage has been done...
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I do get your point, but if anybody is concerned about the integrity of the competition, then it might be better for them to follow a sport other than football.
 
McGrath said:
People like to slag managers off and blame them for signings they don't like. But I think our biggest problem with signings in the Prem was that we had a scouting and recruitment system that really hadn't changed much from League One and wasn't fit for purpose in the Premier League.

That's probably why we ended up with many of the signings we did. Some weren't as bad as people think either.

It's clearly been identified by the club, Wilder and the new owners that it's something that needs fixing. I think this summers signings have been good and will certainly have leant heavily on analytics.
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In my opinion, for what we spent in the Prem our signings don't seem noticeably worse than those of other clubs that sneak up or yo-yo.

When Brighton sign Izqierdo, Locadia, Jahanbakhsh, Maupay etc in their first few seasons in the Prem for similar fees to Brewster who all flopped, what can be expected? Even clubs with the most vaunted scouting networks regularly sign complete flops for £20 million plus.
 

AWetFlannel said:
The victims are the clubs that followed the rules and got beat by us in the league or finished beneath us.

It also undermines the integrity of the competition, but tbf it's already a shambles anyway so dunno how much noticeable damage has been done...
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The victims might also be ordinary staff employed by a club who don't get paid or get laid off because their employer has cash flow issues caused by late payment on transfers by other clubs
 
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