Kevin McCabe opens up on Sheffield United takeover "hope", 45,000 capacity plans and Sheffield Wednesday jibe

As Sheffield United teeter on the brink of a change of ownership, with a US-based consortium hoping to finalise their purchase of the Championship side that has been a long time in the making, one interested observer will be former owner Kevin McCabe. The Sheffield-born Blades fan had a lengthy and eventful time at the helm of his boyhood club, which came to an end when he lost a bitter High Court battle to former business partner Prince Abdullah.

The Prince has since agreed a deal to sell his holding in the Blades to a consortium headed up by Tom Page, a Wolverhampton-born businessman now based in the United States. McCabe opened up about his time in charge of United and the fall-out with the Prince in his newly-released book, Mucky Boots: Trials, triumphs and tragedies of a football club owner, and offered his thoughts on another potential change of Bramall Lane ownership in an interview with The Athletic.

“What will happen to United? I hope they get a new owner. Probably a new owner who’s not mega-wealthy but who understands the game of football and understands something about the roots of a club like Sheffield United. The time is good for United if they can find the right owner. Someone with presence. If they are American, as we’re led to believe, they do understand the business of sport.”

Although the frontrunners of the group are not American - we revealed earlier this year that they are ex-pats living in the United States - they believe that their background Stateside, and their grounding in England, gives them a unique perspective on the “business of sport” that McCabe described - but also how English football culture works.

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That has been a criticism levelled at many football club owners from overseas in the recent past - including at Burnley, who were relegated alongside the Blades from the Premier League last season. They are owned by American Alan Pace, who took control of the Turf Moor club in 2020 using a leveraged buyout method that has now been banned in English football. A piece by respected journalist David Conn in The Guardian claimed that the deal “left Burnley £90m worse off and loaded with debt.”

Pace had been lined up by McCabe as a potential buyer of the Blades had he been victorious in the infamous High Court battle in 2019, which saw Prince Abdullah granted the right to buy McCabe’s 50 per cent shareholding in the Blades for just £5m on the proviso that the club’s property assets were also purchased from McCabe.

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"I’ve done business in real estate across various countries, so there’s no reason football shouldn’t do the same," McCabe added. But it still means those who do take over — whether from Australia, Africa, America, wherever — have to understand what they are buying into.

“The guys who bought into Manchester City had the wisdom to recognise that they represent England’s second city and employed top-class people and regenerated a huge part of that city. Same with Liverpool and Arsenal. They love the sport and properly engage."

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McCabe claims that plans to improve Bramall Lane’s capacity up to 45,000 by building a new Kop and adding another second tier to another stand “would have been done by now” had he remained in charge - or if he had won the High Court battle and subsequently sold out to Pace. “Alan would have done it,” McCabe added. “He saw what we could be. If things had turned out as we’d hoped, we’d have done most of that now. But that’s life.” Whatever supporters’ personal views on McCabe’s time in charge - his player sale approach frequently drew criticism on the terraces, with the feeling that United were sometimes a soft touch when it came to their prized assets - there can be no doubt over his legacy of the Shirecliffe academy, which continues to be a rich source of talent for the Blades to this day.

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McCabe oversaw the purchase of the site, on the outskirts of the city in an area more commonly associated with their bitter city rivals Wednesday, and United are still based there to this day, at least until their new training ground in Dore is built - paving the way for Shirecliffe to be upgraded to a much-needed category one academy set-up.

Bramall Lane also became an impressive and modern stadium under McCabe’s watch and in a cheeky jibe towards the inflatable dome in use at the Owls’ training ground at Middlewood Road, the former owner added: “Supporters think money falls from the sky,” he says. “To change Bramall Lane as we have done took a massive amount of money. As did buying 20-odd acres at Shirecliffe and then turning it into Sheffield’s first academy. Wednesday still have theirs in a bloody tent!”