New owner needs Wilder onside at Bramall Lane
Prince Abdullah was effusive about the manager on television although it remains to be seen how that will play out
For Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, this afternoon at Bramall Lane marks the end of one of the most bitter and expensive battles for control of a Premier League club since Liverpool last changed hands, although one suspects we are only getting started.
The new owner of Sheffield United, whose legal team emerged victorious from the High Court on Monday, is due to lay out his vision for the future of one of the oldest football clubs in the world, back on the rise again.
For their 130-year history the Blades have been presided over by a series of local chairmen from Yorkshire who, to borrow an old phrase, say what they like and like what they bloody well say, although things are changing.
Defeat for previous chairman Kevin Mccabe in the battle to take outright control means that the new incumbent will be Prince Musaad bin Khalid bin Musaad Al Saud, Prince Abdullah’s son-in-law. Prince Abdullah’s London-based public relations agency could confirm only that Prince Abdullah no longer holds the position of “General President of Youth Welfare” in Riyadh, a position often cited as why he has barely seen a game at Bramall Lane since he entered into partnership with Mccabe in 2013. The reason for his investment is that he is “passionate about the Premier League”, and that investment is private, according to his PR, and unrelated to any nation state.
For the rest, one was referred to Prince Abdullah’s appearance on Sky Sports News on Tuesday when he announced the imminent appointment of Prince Musa’ad whose credentials for leading a Premier League club, the Prince Abdullah PR team were not prepared to expand upon.
Needless to say there are many around Sheffield who are concerned over the key relationship at the club between Prince Abdullah and manager Chris Wilder, who will appear with his new boss for the first time today. Prince Abdullah was effusive about Wilder on television, although the question remains as to how that will play out over the next nine months.
Prince Abdullah has always talked a good game, staging interviews in one on London’s swankiest hotels. But as Mccabe’s QC, Paul Downes, said in the High Court in reference to one period when the club were struggling for liquidity: “Far from being ‘minted’, Prince Abdullah couldn’t even come up with a piffling £500,000 to pay staff wages.” Just how much funds does the new owner of Sheffield United have?
Their Premier League promotion meant that in the High Court, United were valued at around £100 million which means Prince Abdullah should be able to borrow the £50 million funds to make the purchase of stadium, training ground, hotel and offices that he is obliged under the judgment to complete. “I have been in sports all my life,” he said this week.
The Saudi political royal dynasty from which Prince Abdullah has emerged is, in the words of one Middle East watcher, “a kind of Game of Thrones”, and the politics of a venerable Yorkshire football club by comparison an episode of Last of the Summer Wine. Prince Abdullah can trace his bloodline back to King Abdulaziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, and his grandfather. In 1975, when Prince Abdullah was 10, one of his brothers, Prince Faisal, assassinated King Faisal.
Prince Abdullah says he made his money in paper production. He was briefly the chairman of Al-hilal, the leading Saudi club, and has a recent 50 per cent interest in second-tier Belgian club Koninklijke Beerschot.
There is a way out of this, which would be a sale of Sheffield United – perhaps to the American investors Dave Checketts and Alan Pace whom Mccabe was in talks with before he lost his High Court battle. For Prince Abdullah, that would mean a profit.
There is also the matter of the Belgian director of football Jan van Winckel, appointed two years ago at Prince Abdullah’s behest. The new owner may want to be in the background, but with his own appointees as chairman and director of football, and an as-yet unspecified role for his daughter, his presence will be felt throughout. That said, it seems Prince Abdullah quite fancies being a Premier League owner.
For now, he needs Wilder onside and today’s press conference will be the first attempt to show the ownership have the confidence of the club’s key figure. Although there is no question whom Prince Abdullah regards as the main man.