What happens next? The Prexit issue

In the first of a series of articles, our editor addresses the question of Prince Abdullah's exit from Sheffield United and why fans should greet any would-be owner with cynicism.

Sam Parry

Prince Abdullah, the owner of Sheffield United Football Club, has repeatedly signalled his intention to sell up. And for all the talk of his inadequacies – and there are many – my biggest worry is any future sale. With the Prince, there are known knowns. After Prexit, we don't know how the chips will fall.

Any individual in the market for a Championship football club is either mad, bad or rich. The finances in that league are broken. So what sort of person buys Sheffield United, and why?

Recency bias is a buzzword in football that describes the tendency of fans and pundits to place greater importance on recent events over the greater sweep of time. Accuse me of recency bias if you will, but I have no grounds to be confident that Prince Abdullah can sell our club to an individual with either assets or good intentions and certainly not both.

Remember Henry Mauriss?

The Prince agreed to a £115 million sale with the now-convicted fraudster. It did not pass muster because, as it turned out, Mauriss’ skulduggery was so enormous and far-reaching that the FBI already had his head pinned to the blackboard. Mauriss is serving time in California where today it's a balmy 19 degrees Celsius. I wouldn’t spare a dime for his thoughts.

Little matter though, there were more fish in the sea.

Except there is a problem here. Instead of trying to catch the eye of a prospective owner by demonstrating a semblance of off-the-pitch competence, our desperation to sell – or rather Prince Abudullah's desperation to sell – led the club to take the bait of bottom dwellers—the slippery sorts: wriggling octopi sucking in their prey without even bothering to switch into camouflage mode.

Dozy Mmobuosi, the next would-be owner, was nakedly dodgy. He didn't even talk a good game… Guinness?! A mass-produced stout in one of the nation's finest ale-producing cities – have a day off.

The difference between Mmobuosi and Mauriss was not cons but comms; the former tried to speak directly to fans, conducting chats on YouTube with interviewers so happy to be there that even an invertebrate like Dozy wished they had a spine. The latter, Mauriss, slunk around out of view. Note to self: slopsucking grifters hide both in shadow and plain sight.

Dozy did try to hide his financial affairs in the shadows whilst putting himself in the eyeline of fans. This effort did not go unnoticed. As of December of last year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Mmbousi on three different counts, which if and when he is found guilty, will result in huge fines and a maximum of 45 years in jail. That’s what happens, ladies and gentlemen, when one fakes documents, pretends to be a billionaire and makes up companies out of ‘thin air’. Thank god for Team America who have now twice served our would-be owners with criminal charges and helped save us from who knows what.

Because it’s only with hindsight that we can laugh about it. How close did they get to crossing the threshold? And what then? Thankfully they didn’t, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying and who’s to say the next bottom feeder isn’t preparing their lure? We don’t know. And the unknown quantity, the unrevealed monster, the slippery creature of the deep is way more frightening than the devil we know.

When they come along — and it’ll happen sooner rather than later — we need to make it clear to the club, each other, and any official channel that will listen that we will not tolerate more of the same. It’s on us. Nobody is going to do that for us.

On The Pinch, we published more and better information about Mauriss more quickly than traditional media. When David Taylor’s article found no evidence of his billionaire status, I took to Twitter to inform The Star of their lack of judgment in printing “BILLIONAIRE” online in every article about the takeover. We put hours into researching Mauriss; hours which The Star did not, because if they had, they would have drawn the same conclusion as we did.

Likewise, I spent an age watching, pausing, noting and dismantling the embarrassing comms strategy of Dozy Mmobuosi and, as I did so, the local papers were full of puff pieces ripping quotes from these engineered moments and presenting them as insight.

The point I’m making — as well as nakedly patting the team on the back — is that we as fans cannot rely on the Prince, the local media, or a prospective new owner to give us the facts. We have to stand up for a football club that existed long before Kevin McCabe and will exist long after Prince Abdullah. We have to treat these individuals with cynicism because all else is utterly cowardly.

Whoever comes next is the biggest threat to Sheffield United Football Club since the last owner and the one before and the one before that. Because today, in the main, new owners tend not to be good ancestors to football clubs. Very few anyway. Most of that is their fault. But part of that is down to the loss-making effort that ownership involves.

In the top flight, 15 out of 20 clubs are owned by billionaires. In the Championship, 7 out of 24 clubs are owned by billionaires. For the most part, those clubs and their fans are strategic play-things for sport, for sports-washing and the long haul. The individuals range from shadow lurkers to crackpots with bright ideas doomed to fail — it only takes a couple of years of poor performance and any of those clubs could be well set for the scrap heap.

And if they are not a billionaire, who are the owners out there? Because a loss-making enterprise like Sheffield United is not the sort of investment a local businessperson can get involved with. Fans aren’t going to buy the Blades. So who’s left?

The asset managers and pension funds and consultants: they’re probably the safest bet to secure us against disaster but they are unlikely to make the sort of game-changing investments required to bring the academy up to scratch or build safe standing areas or spend any time whatsoever engaging with the fanbase. They are more likely to see financial incentives in selling off Bramall Lane and rebuilding a new ground on the cheap somewhere near Rotherham.

So who’s left then? The mad, bad and ugliness that too many fans have faced at other clubs across the country, or the great hope? A wealthy individual willing to fund a football club without too much concern for the balance sheet and every desire to sink funds into a new academy, a ground refurb, cheaper tickets, better food and drink, and bigger signings. There are very few of those around.

When Prexit happens, fans will have little influence on the terms. What we can do is make it abundantly clear that we are treating any new owner with due cynicism. We can come together around simple red lines: no stadium move, no changing Bramall Lane to the [INSERT COMPANY NAME] ARENA, no hiking ticket prices, and no using fan media as a mouthpiece for your agenda.

Whilst all is not well in Denmark, let’s not kid ourselves: the foibles of Prince Abdullah may appear preferable to what comes next. His biggest responsibility to this football club lies in its sale. And that’s a story to be continued, for good or ill.