An excellent post, here are my thoughts for what they are worth
1. Failure to get promoted back to the PL has hit the club hard in the money dept and McCabe is unwilling to bankroll any additional funding to make that goal more likely. He wants out and that is obvious. Thus the only we we are to progress is with a new Chairman.
Very true, this aligned with the fact that in the summer of 2007 we threw money at one of the worst managers in the clubs history. James Beattie was a huge hero during his time at the Lane, and one of the finest strikers we have had at the Lane during my time supporting United, but he must have cost the club millions having him on the wagebill
2. The economic situation combined with point 1 makes the situation worse. There is a distinct lack of financial optimism. Football is in the entertainment business. SU are not a particularly good prospect on the face of it because we have no recent PL exposure so are hardly likely to readily attract the sort of investment to a) pay McCabe back and b) take us forward. Our record is poor too, is it now 1 PL season in 17 years or something? I admit there is potential but someone like Wolves/WBA has more PL pedigree than us. And as much as it pains me to say it, from someone who leaves miles from Shefield, Wednesday are still considered the bigger club out of the two to somerone unfamiliar with the Sheffield scene. So getting that investment won't be easy.
So we have to cut our cloth accordingly, and work out how to pay the debts off. Nearly £50m is a hell of a lot of money, and we will be hamstrung for a long time by this amount, what we need is a sensible plan to work out how to pay this debt off in such a way its not massively detrimental to the playing of side. A good way of doing this is by serving the debt and repaying it at such a time the money become available to pay it. It sticks in my craw that we are paying are a large sum back to Kevin McCabe at a high interest rate in the form of a 'soft loan'
3. We have a manager who just doesn't really have any charisma and I think his football team shows it. By all accounts the product is not that exciting and is fairly predictable. Haviong said that he built a team with a sound defence but the actions of McCabe has destroyed that now and with it Blackwell's main plus point. Score a couple of goals against us and it is very hard for us to come back from it. And with the loss of Killgallon, Morgan and Walker we are looking very vulnerable again I fear. Despite having a preference for Coppell, a move for O'Driscoll would be a good one as the guy gets his teams to play attractive football (Bournemouth and Donny) and probably has a little more ambition than Blackwell demonstrates. Could even be a case of history repeats itself (Porterfield - less fashionable S Yorks club to the Blades), but I doubt McCabe/Birch will move for him not least as it would cost us money that could be argued, by them, would be wasted (on compensation).
You have a very good point, however with the appointment of Warnock came a big plus point in the fact he was a self-confessed dyed in the wool Blade in his own words, and this helped us push on as it appeared that we had one of our own managing us, and this fostered a lot of spirit throughout the club, and helped the club recover from the dark days of Adrian Heath and Mike McDonald quicker than it would if we had taken Bobby Gould or Gary Megson who were both closely linked with the job. My choice for the managers job is Chris Wilder who is now time served in an apprenticeship in the conference and has got a lot of past experience in managing a club and coming close to achieving something at a club like Halifax who didn't have a pot to piss in
4. The lack of decent players just shows that we are drifting back to those pre and early Warnock days of mid table obscurity or even worse.
Just like in the days of Nigel Spackman, Steve Bruce and Neil Warnock the players we had who were any good, and of any value got flogged leaving us with a side of limited but honest triers when we bottomed out. The main difference was that in those days we had a side full of players owned by Sheffield United, now we go in to most games with 4 or 5 players either on short-term contracts or on loan to the Blades. Its effectively a short-term fix but its causing us long-term damage
5. There is no way we will get in the play offs this season unless we sign quility defenders on loan and I just can't see that happening, because of the financial/team situation.
I pointed out today during the match we had a back four that would have been lucky to have played a combined total of 20 games at the back for Sheffield United. Communication and a settled back four is crucial for a solid defence. I fully agree that it won't happen any time soon that we have a quality back line. I think Morgans loss will be telling as he is a quality defender at this level, but he is ageing and will need replacing in the next 3 or 4 years. (He's a week older than me which makes it even more depressing)
6. I think Blackwell may resign at the end of the season. He has got a good win ratio and despite the quality of the football has proved he can grind out performances. I suspect he feels a mixture of loyalty to McCabe for rescuing him and resentment regarding the dismantling of a team that probably would have got us very close again to promotion and now feels he has taken us as far as we can go. If he is to stay he just must develop the youth players but of course has very little say in whether we keep them or not because of the level of debt.
I think Blackwell will be remembered as a manager shose record will stand up to scrutiny on paper, but not be fondly remembered. I also think there will come a point where he decides to move on to pastures new as you have already said. Like you have already said and i have already agreed we will need to bottom out to move back up. Under Blackwell i really do fear that when it all goes tits up, it will go with a bang, and i reckon we will become whipping boys overnight. What we need is a manager who can take over, and when things bottom out, retain the support of the masses and build something new in the wider picture. At the moment we are in the shit and are staring in to the abyss, but its times like this when we need to pull together. I can't see us ever pulling together again whilst the standard of football is as dire as it is at the moment
7. Finally the dreaded M word. I noticed another post on here about this the other day and presumed it was one big wind up, but I really feel that there will be strong pressure to consider some kind of merger between Utd and Wednesday even if it is just a stadium share. There is a lot to be had from releasing debt at both Hillsborogh and BDTBL and in a city like Sheffield sites would very prestigious especially as the economy starts to recover and confidence grows. Sheffield football has really let both sets of fans down since the war and that is bordering on criminal and I wonder just how long both clubs can continue "hoping" to get into the PL but consistently failing. Frankly at the moment I think Wednesday will get there before us if either team is destined to do it, because I think Irvine is the sort of manager to bring it about on the pitch whereas with Blackie I just sense he is not a winner (two play off final defeats when on paper his teams were the stronger). Just how long are the financial men at both clubs going to put up with investing money in two traditional clubs with a fierce rivalry who just can't make it over the line I wouldn't know, but a stadium share is a kind of fudge that could be parceled up and sold to the fans (semi-finals, maybe European venue, World Cup etc). Such a plan would probably need a stadium capable of extension to 50-60k but initially 40k capacity. I just wouldn't rule that one out.
I don't agree with any of that, any form of Merger or possibly even groundsharing will result in stuff like mass boycotts, and massive divisions that will take decades to lose and a merged Sheffield club are straight away on to a loser. It's the complete loss of identity that i could not stomach. I've got too much pride in the identity of being a staunch Sheffield United supporter for anything like that to be viable, and i'm sure the vast majority also feel the same.
Anyhow typically more cup half empty than half full I appreciate but another decade in the wilderness seems sadly to me a more likely scenario at the moment.
Sad but true, but hey ho. I've manned out a quarter of a century of crap like boardroom troubles, fly by nights running the club, bottling it in big games, disappointments and when something good happens an ever bigger kick in the bollocks is just around the corner. Still, if we dropped a division, on the plus side it would mean new grounds to visit, and we could rebuild it all again from scratch, and hopefully find what drew us all to Sheffield United all over again.
I've got an 8 month old son, and to be quite honest i can't wait until he comes to the games with me and in his own time becomes a staunch Unitedite himself. After 25 years of thin and even thinner there is still something that the name Sheffield United conjures up inside me, a warm feeling of happiness and belonging that negates all the negative feelings of how shit things are. Its still a fire that burns inside of me, and i want the fire to burn inside him. I dunno if its passion or not, but Sheffield United are my club, always have been, always will be
