A question that has to be asked. But what the answer is, is anybody s guess

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Running football clubs is expensive. Every £ spent on purchasing a club that needs a sizable investment (£100m+) to get the infrastructure and the UK based staffing levels up to the level the owner thinks the club is at based on his sale price.
 

Bath Blade said:
Who on earth is going to buy a football club who isn’t a shyster or a fraud, or simply deluded. Neither we nor (almost) any other football club are viable as a business. Just to stand still requires vast sums of money available to pour down the drain with no return at the end, and then fans demand you put your hand in your pocket to fund more losses when you finally run out of money.

Other than oil-rich states sports-washing and billionaires with more money than sense (both of whom would look for clubs significantly bigger than ours) the pool of people or companies willing to buy a football club as a vanity project to waste all their money is diminishing. This isn’t just a problem for United and I don’t know where it will end.
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Bath Blade said:
Who on earth is going to buy a football club who isn’t a shyster or a fraud, or simply deluded. Neither we nor (almost) any other football club are viable as a business. Just to stand still requires vast sums of money available to pour down the drain with no return at the end, and then fans demand you put your hand in your pocket to fund more losses when you finally run out of money.

Other than oil-rich states sports-washing and billionaires with more money than sense (both of whom would look for clubs significantly bigger than ours) the pool of people or companies willing to buy a football club as a vanity project to waste all their money is diminishing. This isn’t just a problem for United and I don’t know where it will end.
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Some good points from Bath Blade , I think in the future only Zillionaires or government will own clubs all the rest will be to make up the fixtures ?. I do wonder if the Bloody Blades World that the Prince hangs onto ( and paid them instead of Liverpool ? ) is one of the Bugg Bears to prospective buyers ?.
 
djbaldken said:
Why can't we find a buyer?
We were heading for the Premier league and we couldn't find a buyer. The only two options were shysters or frauds.
Now we are in the Premier league ( Not for much longer) we still can't find a buyer.
What's wrong? Why aren't we attracting potential buyers.
Is our infrastructure that shite? Is the Prince asking too much? What is it?
We are (currently) in the (allegedly) best league in the world. The potential for world wide exposure is there.
So WHY can't we find a buyer? Something somewhere is not right. What is it?
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This feels a really negative post but when you compare to other clubs, i don't see the potential. Other than league status which was always a 1 year death sentence, we don't have that potential in my opinion. Thinking with a commercial/financial head on rather than as a fan.

Sub-standard tangible Infrastructure - Training facilities, Kop
No scouting network
Sheffield is a significantly under-developed and appreciated area - It has gone off the radar nationally, let alone internationally
Not sufficient level academy
No commercial Pull
Limited Corporate Pull/facilities
Scope of potential realistically limited
Significantly High Value Asking Price
Short-term outlook likely to deter
Financial position, availability of club assets, liabilities

All of the above requires significant investment and does it outweigh the benefits of what the Prince wanted.

I think until we can run on a different business model to what is currently being used, we will never be able to attract investment at the value the Prince wanted. In defence it's chicken and egg because until we get that investment we will never get that ability to change our business model.
 
Snowflake said:
…and then what do we end up with ?
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According to Bloomberg he wants £170Million. According to Kieran Maguire the players are the biggest part of a football club's valuation. Let's face it ours aren't worth much. Two of the best ones are on loan to us. Some say we paid Kevin McCabe over £80M but if you read the court reports the independent valuation to be paid was £5M for the shares & £36 M for the club. At a time when we were riding high in the Prem ! The players bought at the beginning of that season were 50% funded by McCabe as they were still joint owners. McCabe stumped up his half & Abdullah paid his half, plus the money to buy the club & shares out of the Prem money we received at the end of the season. Abdullah has always been crafty at never spending his own money. He's got 5 big bank loans at the moment & the repayments are always paid with the club's money. No buyer will want to pay the £170 M inflated price plus all the loans.
 
To be fair I think the Prince would spend big time if he had it, but he has admitted, he has not got the funds. two interested people turned out to be dishonest. it could the Prince wants to stay on and that might have put investors off. I am just surmising that. on the other hand, potential investors may have looked into buying the Club and found out you need £500m plus to get decent players in infrastructure etc. Again I am surmising. you would have thought The Prince would have some great contacts in the Middle East or elsewhere. I am hoping this can be resolved ASAP. however, I am not holding my breath.
 
Laney Blade said:
According to Bloomberg he wants £170Million. According to Kieran Maguire the players are the biggest part of a football club's valuation. Let's face it ours aren't worth much. Two of the best ones are on loan to us. Some say we paid Kevin McCabe over £80M but if you read the court reports the independent valuation to be paid was £5M for the shares & £36 M for the club. At a time when we were riding high in the Prem ! The players bought at the beginning of that season were 50% funded by McCabe as they were still joint owners. McCabe stumped up his half & Abdullah paid his half, plus the money to buy the club & shares out of the Prem money we received at the end of the season. Abdullah has always been crafty at never spending his own money. He's got 5 big bank loans at the moment & the repayments are always paid with the club's money. No buyer will want to pay the £170 M inflated price plus all the loans.
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Maybe 777 will be interested if Everton fold !!!!
 
reedy63 said:
you would have thought The Prince would have some great contacts in the Middle East or elsewhere
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I never really understand this point.

It’s not like football club owners go around offering their clubs to their rich pals in Europe so why would it be different in the Middle East?!
 
Houston Blade how do you know football club owners don't offer clubs to rich pals in the Middle East or elsewhere, if you don't understand my point, that's up to you.
 

scouseblade said:
Its a conundrum. To me we look like an attractive option. I get people say that perhaps Sheffield lacks certain things but the ground, infrastructure, academy etc all looks good. When you see teams like Ipswich getting investment and yet we are only attracting frauds its bizarre. You wonder how hard the Prince is really pushing this. Surely he has people out pushing for the club to be sold?
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Nobody fancies taking on a broken shitshow!
 
So we are looking for a buyer who wants to buy a business which lost £30 million last financial year, and £15 million the year before and would need significant investment in order for it to start making a profit.

It has a half decent stadium but currently lacks function of generating additional revenue (hotel at least should solve this to some extent), has only just invested in more training facilities and although it has a good academy, isn't recognised as this formally.

Has a loyal fan base that sells out the stadium routinely but doesn't have huge amounts of scope for increasing capacity (again without significant investment) so you are unlikely to attract increase in revenue from the fan base without increasing ticket prices.

I know the above is probably describing 2/3 of the football clubs in the country which is why football is in such problems at the moment.

They aren't worthwhile investments unless you are trying to boost your other businesses status (middle east countries) or celebrities (in which case you go for small clubs that cost pennies)

Even if we get sold, the chances of it making a huge amount of difference is so small that I don't see the urgency other than so we don't have to talk about it any more!
 
scouseblade said:
Its a conundrum. To me we look like an attractive option. I get people say that perhaps Sheffield lacks certain things but the ground, infrastructure, academy etc all looks good. When you see teams like Ipswich getting investment and yet we are only attracting frauds its bizarre. You wonder how hard the Prince is really pushing this. Surely he has people out pushing for the club to be sold?
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That's the Ipswich Town with a division one title, an FA Cup victory and a UEFA Cup victory in a period thst we have won nothing. They have a very good academy (cat 2 but the infrastructure is way better than ours) a similar size ground and similar level crowds. Importantly it'd a one club town and they have little local competition, Norwich is further away from them than Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham and Derby are from us. Plus they are currently on an upwards trajectory.

So I can see why they are a more attractive investment but the original point stands, why are we such an unattractive proposition if it isn't the price?
 
With the caveat that we have had fuck all to shout about this season, and we haven't had fire spitting wheelie bins, I haven’t seen anything to change my mind since posting this 10 months ago.

BladeByChoice said:
Warning: rant incoming.

Stop looking for reasons that don’t exist and making excuses to blame everybody else.

Its us, the fan base, we are fucking boring, miserable stuck in the 70s cunts, we just want to drink our Bovril eat our pies and sing ‘your gonna get your fuckin eds kicked in’

Don’t give me that ‘solid traditional old school club’ bullshit, that’s OK for the lower leagues but we are about to enter the world stage for the second time in the last 5 years and nothing will change.

Some of you will be reading this, clutching your season tickets in more boisterous areas of the ground and absolutely refusing to move to an area that better reflects the way you want to watch the Blades.

No not you, you’ve had that seat since 1899 and you’re not moving for no fucker, you’re happy complaining that you can’t see coz every fucker is stood up (views great in BLUT), I bet you can’t wait to get to the first match to tell everyone how shit the fire spitting wheelie bins and light show are.

We have to wake up and smell the century, lets get like-minded fans grouped together so we can all watch the football in a way we enjoy and make some fuckin noise.

Big banners might be crap, holding up bits of card might be crap, but we are in the PL now and on world TV, every time we look good some fat, thick American twat with a billion quid burning a hole in his pocket and looking for a new toy thinks mmmmm Blades look lively.

We have to get with the programme and start selling ourselves, if we want rich owners we just have to do what rich owners want, and that’s not flat caps (sorry Traveling Blade) mushy peas and pigeon racing.


Rant over, normal service is now resumed. UTB
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Remember this being played in the Gaumont in the 70s



naff as fuck but at least the city tried to sell itself back then.
 
FriethBlade said:
That's the Ipswich Town with a division one title, an FA Cup victory and a UEFA Cup victory in a period thst we have won nothing. They have a very good academy (cat 2 but the infrastructure is way better than ours) a similar size ground and similar level crowds. Importantly it'd a one club town and they have little local competition, Norwich is further away from them than Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham and Derby are from us. Plus they are currently on an upwards trajectory.

So I can see why they are a more attractive investment but the original point stands, why are we such an unattractive proposition if it isn't the price?
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An US equity fund group has bought 40% of Ipswich and I wouldnt want these sort of groups to have an interest in us
 
Our name is now occuciated with comedy as the whippy boys to the general football fan and potential owners, presume that is a big reason .
 

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