Excellent analysis, as usual Sam. And very interesting. Call me an old fart if you wish, but my take is that this lot have watched Ted Lasso and think you can manage a football club without knowing anything about football. I'll reserve full judgement until the season gets underway, but my current thoughts are that this is the wrong decision, handled very badly.
Certainly handled badly. We'll see what happens next. It's not really the appointment so much as the approach that I worry about. But as we've seen before: bad owners don't necessarily stop you being successful.
Great article Sam. Feeling v sad about CW who I feel would have got us out of the Championship which is a league I love! I recognise the corporate view of new owners but am rather cynical about their harsh manner and behaviour, and their inability to treat CW with dignity and respect....but I am just a Senior Blade who has seen it all before.....UTB
Football's about emotion, romance and that identity your club brings. Wilder brought bags of that. When he took us to 9th on the Premier league it felt like we were sticking it to them all because we were Chris Wilders Sheffield United, it was brilliant. We ain't got a barrel of money and all that!
The future looks devoid of any of that. We'll probably go through a succession of bland nice enough managers, with an anonymous Director of Football hiding in the shadows. All the while AI and "data" will churn our random players they're expected to develop and pick to prove the "business model" works. There ain't no romance there .
Sam here. I agree with a lot of this mate. Football is going in a corporate direction. It's not new. But at the same time, it doesn't have to be awful if the owners actually treat fans with respect and keep ticket prices low and fair.
My problem comes when you move into this sphere of football club as middle class activity. That isn't to be classist. But when the package becomes something unaffordable to many, that it becomes something different altogether. For me, I'll always be more worried about off-pitch stuff than on-pitch. We'll be okay next season.
Agreed on the corporate side of the game, it's horrible and just not suited to a working class club like United. Agreed we'll be OK next season I think we'll end up mid table, maybe have a push for the play offs, we'll be miles off automatics though. Selles simply won't have them running through brick walls like Wilder did, and I think he'll struggle on those cold winter mid week matches away at the likes of Swansea.
It's so sad, but this is the life of being a Sheffield United fan it's an up and down roller coaster. The worry is that whenever we have success usually we have to sink really low first.
Excellent analysis, as usual Sam. And very interesting. Call me an old fart if you wish, but my take is that this lot have watched Ted Lasso and think you can manage a football club without knowing anything about football. I'll reserve full judgement until the season gets underway, but my current thoughts are that this is the wrong decision, handled very badly.
Certainly handled badly. We'll see what happens next. It's not really the appointment so much as the approach that I worry about. But as we've seen before: bad owners don't necessarily stop you being successful.
Great article Sam. Feeling v sad about CW who I feel would have got us out of the Championship which is a league I love! I recognise the corporate view of new owners but am rather cynical about their harsh manner and behaviour, and their inability to treat CW with dignity and respect....but I am just a Senior Blade who has seen it all before.....UTB
Football's about emotion, romance and that identity your club brings. Wilder brought bags of that. When he took us to 9th on the Premier league it felt like we were sticking it to them all because we were Chris Wilders Sheffield United, it was brilliant. We ain't got a barrel of money and all that!
The future looks devoid of any of that. We'll probably go through a succession of bland nice enough managers, with an anonymous Director of Football hiding in the shadows. All the while AI and "data" will churn our random players they're expected to develop and pick to prove the "business model" works. There ain't no romance there .
Sam here. I agree with a lot of this mate. Football is going in a corporate direction. It's not new. But at the same time, it doesn't have to be awful if the owners actually treat fans with respect and keep ticket prices low and fair.
My problem comes when you move into this sphere of football club as middle class activity. That isn't to be classist. But when the package becomes something unaffordable to many, that it becomes something different altogether. For me, I'll always be more worried about off-pitch stuff than on-pitch. We'll be okay next season.
Agreed on the corporate side of the game, it's horrible and just not suited to a working class club like United. Agreed we'll be OK next season I think we'll end up mid table, maybe have a push for the play offs, we'll be miles off automatics though. Selles simply won't have them running through brick walls like Wilder did, and I think he'll struggle on those cold winter mid week matches away at the likes of Swansea.
It's so sad, but this is the life of being a Sheffield United fan it's an up and down roller coaster. The worry is that whenever we have success usually we have to sink really low first.