A comment becoming frequently heard..

[mall]

Which is why I said a few months ago that going down might be a blessing in disguise. Build next season's team around the likes of Lowton, Maguire, Morgs, even Squinny and Monty, people who will fight for the club and are not just here because they're not wanted at their own clubs. We'll have no choice to build the kind of team I think the fans are more likely to take to. You only have to look at the reaction in the 2nd half on Tuesday when Maguire came on.

There is no blessing in disguise here.
We could and should be building from this division. Don't imagine we will romp back.

---------- Post added at 12:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 PM ----------

As far as ST sales go I hope that McCabe still cares enough to swallow some pride and relaunch STs at a vastly reduced rate. He needs to wipe the slate clean with fans, apologise for the mess (some of his own making and some unlucky) and make a fantastic ST offer so that we can really keep and attract fans or the club faces a very sad next 5 or 10 or 15 years till we fluke a promotion back to the Prem.

Relegation gives the club the perfect excuse to relaunch STs - I really hope for the future of the club we take it.

And so do I.
I have renewed but I don't mind if the Board use creative ways to get spectators in.

 

[Bladesway]

Football has changed muttley, so why should Sheffield United be any different? A big part of our problem is that in important aspects we haven't evolved with the game.

I dont like what the sport represents anymore, I think it has become elitist at the top and poorly adminstrated throughout (did I mention its littered with corruption and cheating). Sadly, if Sheffield United want to progress they have to get with the program.

The club has pretended to make an effort towards it but our dated ideals and methods hold us back. This "good old Sheffield United" or "I want my Blades back" attitude will get us nowhere. What we need is to change, but into something original and different that is in tune with the modern game. I wont hold my breath..........

Football changed forever back in 93 when it became Premier League rather than part of the football league but you don't have to sell your soul to the devil to play the game. You don't have to live beyond your means like we have. We don't have to be clients rather than fans and have hotels on the end of our ground.

You have to adapt that is true, but McCabe bought into the entire ethos of the wrong market sector (to use a McCabeism). We looked at models of Liverpool and Man United rather than West Brom, Wolves and Bolton. We shot for the stars when we didn't have either the fan base or the funds if it were to go tits up.

For someone who has made himself so rich out of business deals he really did make a pigs arsehole of this. We have directors of just about everything when we don't need it. What do we need Birch for as an example? In some ways we are "little old Sheffield United" and not big old Manchester United. Its not a slight on the club but a realistic view of who we are.

McCabe will blame property slumps, the banking crisis and the eventual bursting of bubbles when in actual fact he has made a series of mistakes that a 15 year old wouldn't make. Had he not made those mistakes then we wouldn't be here. It's not Robson, Blackwell, Warnock or Adams. They are all just pawns in the Kevin McCabe show. He took the credit and you couldn't get him out of the spotlight when things were good. Now I don't think he even shows his face near the lane let alone at the match. Grow a pair Kevin and face the fans you misled.

 

[Muttley]

apparently he was there on tuesday....suprise suprise!!

 

[kop_blade9]

Its ok blaming it on timing but good business is about using foresight.

A man of his experience and business acumen should have seen the problems ahead (with the property market as one example). A lot of average Joe's (myself included) saw that the bubble was going to burst a long time ago. So why did he stake so much on it?! I wont even start on the foreign clubs because theyre not even worth speaking of. At the end of the day these were poor errors in judgment but it wasnt just McCabe that took his eye off the ball. Almost everyone at the club did. For a lot of fans its only just hit home now!!!!!

NO-ONE foresaw the banking crisis that has hit people and business' around the world.
I bought a property in Spain back in 2002 to retire to and the value was steadily rising until the end of 2007 when the banking crisis hit.
My property is now worth half of what I paid and with the euro being so strong the mortgage is nearly double what it was.
It has affected us all.
Do you think I took my eye off the ball when I bought it?
Should I have had the foresight 5 years earlier that my property would be worth half of what I paid and cost a fortune to pay the mortgage?
I believe it was right to expand his own company and the exposure of SUFC around the world.
The problem was you cannot control world events and sometimes they go against you.

 

[puppet]

Although this will probably open the proverbial can or worms, I would say that the club did try to change and evolve with the times. Linking up with foreign clubs, building hotels, having diverse sources of income.

McCabe forged those links for his OWN ends - not Sheffield Uniteds. We had nothing to do with Fradi or the CCM in Australia. He ended up with some nice building contracts and a nice slice of Valad for his trouble too. We got David Carney and some Conference level Jamaican on trial.

 

[Sothall_Blade]

What actually were United's property assets at the time though?

This article is from Feb 2006 and by the tone of it is obviously "pre credit-crunch":-

http://www.growthcompany.co.uk/recommendations/24378/sheffield-united.thtml

Apart from owning Bramall Lane, the Shirecliffe Academy and the Crookes Academy we'd just bought a fitness club in Staines for £4M.
We were just about to start building the Hotel and The Forsyth Business Centre and were also involved in a £50M joint venture investing in "low risk commercial property".

By July 2006, McCabe was starting talks with Valad about selling his own personal UK property company while the market was "at it's peak".
At around the same time, Sheffield United under McCabe were investing large sums in health clubs, hotels, business centres and commercial property.
Wasn't it the wrong time to make those investments if you know the market has peaked?

The Staines Health Club was eventually sold in Sep 2008 for an "undisclosed fee". This was long after the property market had slumped so I assume we made a big loss on it?
The Hotel was sold to McCabe's company in Nov 2010 for "the market value". How much did it cost to build? How much did we sell it for?
Also in Nov 2010 the club announced that due to "massive down turn in commercial property values, United have disposed of a 50% interest and written down the value of it's stake".

I'm not an accountant but to the untrained eye, McCabe seems to have seen the slump coming and secured his own future.
At the same time, he invested United's money in ill-advised property ventures, which he ultimately had to pay for by selling players.
Can anybody who knows more about this stuff tell me where I'm wrong?

 

[puppet]

http://www.propertyweek.com/news/keeping-it-in-the-family/3092768.article

McCabe DID know the UK Property market had peaked. He said so in August 2007 when he sold his property company to Valad for £250M.
The question is, why didn't he cash in on United's Property Assets at the same time?

He bought the hotel for £1.... does that answer your question?

---------- Post added at 01:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:29 PM ----------

NO-ONE foresaw the banking crisis that has hit people and business' around the world.
I bought a property in Spain back in 2002 to retire to and the value was steadily rising until the end of 2007 when the banking crisis hit.
My property is now worth half of what I paid and with the euro being so strong the mortgage is nearly double what it was.
It has affected us all.
Do you think I took my eye off the ball when I bought it?

You havent spent a life in the property market though

 

[lenners]

Sothall,
As far as I'm aware, the only properties I'm sure we bought/built/invested in were the hotel, the academy plus associated bits and bobs, the enterprise centre and a gym in Staines.
There are probably more clued-up financial bods on here who can clarify further as regards Blades Realty etc but I'm not convinced SUFC ever really invested heavily in property.

 

[FleaPitBlade]

Suppose it depends what you class as 'heavily invested' - that little lot listed above probably tally's up to about a £50m outlay.

 

[Sothall_Blade]

Sothall,
As far as I'm aware, the only properties I'm sure we bought/built/invested in were the hotel, the academy plus associated bits and bobs, the enterprise centre and a gym in Staines.
There are probably more clued-up financial bods on here who can clarify further as regards Blades Realty etc but I'm not convinced SUFC ever really invested heavily in property.

Sheffield United PLC
Final Results
16 November 2005

In March 2005 United Scarborough Estates Ltd ('USE') was formed as a jointly owned property corporation with Scarborough Property Co plc. Thus USE currently has real estate interests in properties located at Camberley, Rushden, London, Maidenhead, Bracknell, Watford with acquisitions agreed at Brighton, Crawley, Datchet, Virginia Water and Leicester.
Total property investments at the year end were £26.5 million.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/article.aspx?id=200511160700561946U

 

[Jim Chimmerney]

There is no blessing in disguise here.
We could and should be building from this division. Don't imagine we will romp back.

I agree entirely, that's what The Blades Way was supposed to be all about 3 years ago.

I'm not saying it's a blessing for the club to go down and if you look higher up the thread, I'm far from saying we're guaranteed to bounce straight back. I'm saying that from the point of view of the players on the pitch, building from within, getting the right players etc etc, relegation and the associated cost cutting will FORCE us to do what we SHOULD have been doing over the past 2 seasons instead of filling the team with other teams cast-offs / youngsters.

Who's to say Maguire wouldn't have been as good as Bartley for example ?

 

[lenners]

Sheffield United PLC
Final Results
16 November 2005

In March 2005 United Scarborough Estates Ltd ('USE') was formed as a jointly owned property corporation with Scarborough Property Co plc. Thus USE currently has real estate interests in properties located at Camberley, Rushden, London, Maidenhead, Bracknell, Watford with acquisitions agreed at Brighton, Crawley, Datchet, Virginia Water and Leicester.
Total property investments at the year end were £26.5 million.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/article.aspx?id=200511160700561946U

So if we halved that responsibility it would be £13m. Even with a property crash, there would still be some value to bricks and mortar.
I don't think the property market has had a massive impact on SUFC - the far bigger impact has been player wages.

 

[SteelCity Blade]

the far bigger impact has been player wages.

:nod:

.....and it didnt bother anyone when we were signing Beattie, Hendrie and the like.

 

[lenners]

:nod:

.....and it didnt bother anyone when we were signing Beattie, Hendrie and the like.

It bothered me when we signed the evil pixie.