Burning Takeover Questions

BladesPod's Ben Meakin commits his takeover concerns to paper with key questions about the ownership situation at Sheffield United Football Club.

The Pinch is on a short hiatus until July. However, we couldn’t save this one for reasons that will become clear…

Ben Meakin

Dem Google Blades eh? I’ve avoided talking too deeply about potential takeovers of Sheffield United FC in the last few years, so when I mentioned that I found the timing of these latest rumours to be highly suspicious I was immediately shot down as a bitter cynic by my BladesPod co-host. And I used to be such an optimist…

Ultimately, none of my concerns below matter. Que sera sera. And for all the grand proclamations that football club owners usually make, very few will actually give a damn about the worries of the fans when it comes to their decision-making. But, I (and you, if you’re reading this) spend far, far too much time thinking / stressing about United, so here’s where my head is at.

Starting with something that isn’t so much a burning question as a towering inferno of one:

Is this going to hold up United’s transfer business?

The club’s recently published retained list might not have contained many surprises, but it did hammer home just how much work United need to do this summer. If you assume, as I do, that Anel Ahmedhodzic, Vini Souza, Ivo Grbic and – ugh – Gus Hamer – won’t be playing for us next season, then the squad currently contains the following players aged 23 or over:

• Jayden Bogle

• Rhian Brewster

• Tom Davies

• Rhys Norrington-Davies

• Jack Robinson

• Anis Slimane

• Auston Trusty

That’s it. That’s the whole list. Of those, Brewster, Davies and Norrington-Davies are perennial crocks, Bogle has a history of injury issues (although to his credit he played the second most minutes in the whole squad last season), two managers decided Slimane wasn’t good enough for one of the worst Premier League teams of all time, and Trusty was shocking. Yeesh.

Assuming that the club wishes to be at least vaguely competitive next season, that’s an unbelievable amount of work to do – or a hell of a lot of hope to pin on the young shoulders of Oliver Arblaster, Andre Brooks, Sam Curtis and Will Osula.

The clock is already ticking – our season finished almost a month ago and Rotherham, for example, have signed seven (seven!) players already – and United have built up a reputation in recent years as slow movers in the market. Our first preseason friendly is less than a month away. And last year our first signing (Slimane) arrived on July 13th, two days before that summer’s first friendly – and look how that turned out.

I’m not expecting us to have assembled a new team by the end of June, but I think it’s fair to ask: will this proposed takeover slow us down even more, during what’s looking like being a virtually unprecedented summer of ins and outs, and ahead of a season where we kick off 2 points worse than any other team? Will we miss out on targets due to the uncertainty (of the three relegated clubs, not even the departure of Vincent Kompany changes the fact that we’re surely the least-attractive destination for signings)?

And related to this…

Is this takeover going to pose cash flow problems, and will that in turn impact on contract renewals for Egan, McBurnie etc?

Cashflow problems have dogged United in the last few years, with the club struggling – and eventually failing – to repay bills on time. Not only is this a scummy way to run a business, we were deservedly punished with a transfer embargo last year and a 2-point deduction to start next season. 

Of course, this situation would have been much worse had we not got promoted in 2022/23, and grabbed a fresh batch of Premier League income. Even so, the club is not exactly cash-rich, with United taking out yet another loan from Macquarie Bank earlier this month.

What does a potential takeover mean for the club’s cash flow? I’m assuming that current and prospective owners can be big boys and girls about it and reach an agreement that doesn’t damage the asset that’s theoretically about to change hands, but it’s pure assumption. Prince Abdullah managed to extract a sizeable downpayment from Dozy Mmobousi last year, and yet we still hit financial problems.

So my concern here is twofold: firstly, the ruling from the EFL contained a suspension of further points deductions should United fail to pay money owed in a timely fashion in future. Does a takeover suddenly make that more of a possibility?

And secondly, if we’re about to go into – or are currently in the middle of – a period of financial uncertainty, is that harming our ability to retain the out-of-contract players whom we clearly would like to keep? Daniel Jebbison, John Egan, Oli McBurnie, Ben Osborn and Adam Davies were all listed as “offers made” or “ongoing discussions” on the retained list, yet all have ominously failed to reach agreeable terms at the time of writing.

While I’m assuming that at least one of Egan and McBurnie will sign (I’m much less certain about Jebbison and less interested in Osborn and Davies), it is slightly distressing to think of them hitting the open market. A market in which cash-strapped, takeover-limbo United might find themselves outbid for two players who will surely believe they’ve got one last big contract in them before winding down their careers.

So, is the process of a takeover about to hobble our ability to keep players we’d ordinarily like to keep?

Why now?

This is the least important question here, but while I’m asking… what gives? Prince Abdullah has been actively trying to sell the club for over two years, with a pair of prospective buyers getting relatively deep into the process before EFL checks unearthed their impropriety. After the Dozy Mmobousi takeover fell through, we were promoted to the top flight and the owner talked about his hope to sell the club within four weeks (!).

And then… nothing. Not a peep of any takeover talk for an entire season, with CEO Stephen Bettis expressing bafflement at the lack of interest and confirming that the club had hired a consultancy firm, Lazard, to try and find a buyer.

After the curtain had mercifully come down on one of the worst seasons in living memory, news broke that we may have found ourselves a buyer, and that they’re actually quite far along in the process. I’ll reign in my cynicism as to the timing of this news (season ticket renewal time!) and instead think about this purely in terms of the many, many questions that I have about it.

Why now? Why do we suddenly have a buyer after we’ve been relegated, with most of the squad departing and a points deduction to start next season? What is it about our Premier League experience that’s made an interested party think “never mind when this club was on an upward curve one year ago, now is when we’d like to buy in”?

And this has to be a recent development – not something that’s been percolating behind the scenes for a long time. That Bettis interview was given towards the end of March. There’s no reason not to take his statement at face value (it would be an odd, odd thing to straight-up lie about, rather than simply deflect). There was also Chris Wilder’s trip out to Riyadh around the same time which was to “discuss the club’s future” with the owner, which again would be an odd thing to spend time on if the owner felt like he soon wouldn’t have to particularly care about that future.

Which leads me onto my final burning question…

What does a takeover mean for Chris Wilder?

Like it or not, Wilder’s the man. The club has gone all-in on Chris Wilder being the one to oversee an overhaul, not only retaining him after a 20+ game run that would see 99% of managers sacked but also giving him the reins on reshaping the club’s recruitment ahead of what is – as mentioned – probably the most important transfer window of the last decade or more.

Let’s be honest here: Wilder’s continuation as Sheffield United manager is based purely on what he did up to March 2020, and willingly overlooks everything that came after. More specifically, it’s based purely on the warm feelings the owner has towards those halcyon years which – while probably the best I’ll ever see as a fan – are now four years in the past.

Will new owners, unburdened by nostalgia for a bygone era, think that immediately changing manager is the right thing to do (almost certainly yes)? If that’s even a consideration, what does that mean for Wilder right now? 

Does it sap any motivation he might have had for next season, knowing his future hinges on something out of his control? Does it affect his decision-making to be more short-term, i.e. building a squad for right now in a bid to preserve his job security under a new owner as opposed to making signings for the future as well as the present?

And what about the people he’s just brought in as part of the new-look recruitment team, Jamie Hoyland and Mike Allen? The same questions surely apply, as new owners may well want a quick overhaul of backroom staff (or a new manager may want to break all ties with the previous regime – again, quite a defensible approach given how last season went).

Short-term pain, long-term gain

I can’t pretend to be anything other than hopeful about the prospect of a new owner taking the reins at United – at least in terms of the club’s long-term prospects. Sure, I’m operating on the assumption that they have enough money to run a Championship club properly (as in, willing to pump in enough of their personal fortune to keep a club out of embargos, points deductions and relegation battles), don’t have ties to entities with horrendous human rights records and aren’t generally insane. None of which is guaranteed – this is football.

However, the timing is not ideal – unless it gets resolved very quickly, and new owners are either willing to take a hands-off approach for the next season at least, or immediately bankroll a rapid rebuild.

The pessimist in me can see a situation where a possible takeover drags on through the summer, negatively impacting all of the concerns I have above. Next season doesn’t feel make-or-break for the club like 2022/23 did – in that respect, an amount of off-field limbo isn’t likely to be totally disastrous – but it is also the one in which we have the most amount of work to do in terms of reshaping the squad. An owner with more financial clout than Prince Abdullah should prove to be a good thing in the long-term, but we may have some short-term pain to get through beforehand.