An interesting feature can be found here about the decline of football in the Sheffield, not in the sense that it no longer arouses great passions but that Wednesday and United are now both in League 1 but both would aspire to be and have been Premiership sides.
An interesting feature can be found here about the decline of football in the Sheffield, not in the sense that it no longer arouses great passions but that Wednesday and United are now both in League 1 but both would aspire to be and have been Premiership sides.
The view taken from Hillsborough is that they have now hit rock bottom, that Milan Mandaric found fundamental problems at the club and he is now sorting them out. At Bramall Lane there is a view that owner Kevin McCabe has focused too much on overseas expansion and links, including the Chengdu Blades in China.
Can a city the size of Sheffield support two successful football clubs? What the article does not say much about is the long-run decline of the local economy in terms of the erosion of its manufacturing base. The construction of a tram system does not seem to have brought the desired benefits, although it does serve a massive retail centre on the city outskirts. Sheffield does have one of the strongest ice hockey teams in the country in the form of the Sheffield Steelers.
Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are big enough to sustain two teams, although one of them in each case has enjoyed greater success for some time. Bristol is undoubtedly weakened as a footballing power by having two teams, although rugby is strong in the area. The Potteries are economically challenged and Port Vale have had difficult times recently, although strictly speaking this is not one city as reflected in the original name of Burslem Port Vale.
The extreme example of counter productive rivalry is to be found north of the border where the grounds of Dundee and Dundee United overlap on opposite sides of the same road. In England some towns such as Cambridge support two non-league teams.
In any other sector of business merger offers a route towards rationalistion, but that is out of the question in football where fans have a strong identity with their clubs. I can still remember the storm of protest when Robert Maxwell proposed to merge Oxford United and Reading as the Thames Valley Royals, possibly playing at Didcot. In the case of Sheffield, the name of Sheffield FC belongs to one of the oldest cloubs in football.
Even sharing a stadium is off the agenda as has been seen at Liverpool. Around £3.5bn has been invested in stadia and related facilities by English football clubs over the last twenty years, but none of it on a joint venture. The latest Deloitte report on football finance notes, ‘The challenge of funding major new stadia remains for clubs. Technological advances mean that modular facilities provide a lower cost, more flexible option for clubs to consider.’ But not together.
In the report referred to above Simon Chadwick from Coventry Business School does offer a novel suggestion. In effect he suggests that clubs could share back office facilities, a growing trend to save money in local authorities. For example, the two Sheffield teams could share a marketing team (perhaps, one might add, linking up with efforts to promote the city). But even that modest proposal would be a step too far for most fans.