At the beginning of the season on ‘CAFC picks’ I selected both Sheffield clubs to be promoted from League 1 this season. It’s a prediction I stand by. Both these clubs deserve to be in the Championship at the very least. As for the Premiership, well, many feel the calling, but few are chosen. The first goal must be to consolidate in the Championship.
At the beginning of the season on ‘CAFC picks’ I selected both Sheffield clubs to be promoted from League 1 this season. It’s a prediction I stand by. Both these clubs deserve to be in the Championship at the very least. As for the Premiership, well, many feel the calling, but few are chosen. The first goal must be to consolidate in the Championship.
Both clubs have suffered from poor decision-making in the recent past. Wednesday chairman Lee Strafford told Four Four Two, ‘When I took a close look at the accounts [after being appointed in January 2009], I could see how badly the club had been run for twenty years.’
Strafford argued, ‘Dave Richards [currently chairman of the Premier League] has got a lot to answer for. He wated millions overpaying for players. His biggest error was when he ostracised Paolo di Canio. We sold him for less than £2m when he was worth £10m.’
As far as Sheffield United are concerned, the Carlos Tevez affair was a turning point. When United were relegated on the final day of the 2006-7 season, the club appealed to be reinstated after West Ham were fined for fielding Tevez, who was partially owned by a third party. There are those who suspect that many at the top of football saw West Ham as the bigger and more glamorous club and hence more deserving of being in the top flight. The saga dragged on for two years with the Blades eventually receiving £20m in compensation.
However, there is more to it than that. The compensation money was not well used. James Shield covers the Blades for the Sheffield Star. He commented, ‘If you were to list four things a Championship side shouldn’t do, United did all three. They went through too many managers [four], all of whom had a completely different philosophy, they were over reliant on loan players and they invested too heavily in the wages of certain players.’ There were rumours that James Beattie was on approaching £40k a week after signing in 2007.
United’s accounts are still in a mess and they are over reliant on the loans of owner and lifelong fan Kevin McCabe. It is a concern how they would cope with a depression compared with a recession, i.e., a 7 to 10 per cent fall in GDP and 20 per cent unemployment should the eurozone collapse. What they do have is an excellent youth system which can provide first team players and generate funds from transfers.
Over at Hillsborough, David Coupe, the chairman of the Wednesday Shareholders’ Association, celebrates the fact that the club is debt free for the first time in 20 years. He argues that Milan Manadric, now on his third club, have given Wednesday a new lease of life: ‘There’s no way we should be playing second fiddle to towns like Blackburn and Bolton.’
This season could see three Lancashire teams relegated from the Premiership (Blackburn, Bolton, Wigan). If my beginning of the season prediction comes true, there will be three new Yorkshire teams facing them in the Championship, the third one being Huddersfield, although they are likely to have to face for them the big challenge of winning a play off final.