Faceless Sheffield United ownership should take note of wind direction amid frustration amongst fanbase
Seeing football club owners in the press is terrible news, and you don’t want to hear from them on a regular basis. Particularly when things are going well. This indicates that the team, manager, and players are rightfully the focus. But it’s such a delicate balance. When a club makes such a drastic shift of direction as Sheffield United did this summer, invisibility is not an option. For either the supporters or the owners. Or for a manager with a difficult act to follow in Ruben Selles, who, while I believed he did himself no favors with his on-pitch team address following last Saturday’s awful start, needs backing, time, and patience.
COH Sports has maintained a low profile since its inception. There’s nothing obviously wrong with that, and you could argue that the lack of personal ego is a good thing. However, I believe they should consider which direction the wind is blowing as we approach the period of football regulation, when fans’ interests should be properly advocated.
Steven Rosen and Helmy Etoukhy, prominent board members who represent a large number of unknown investors, have received little attention. It is the distribution of ownership, along with communication limited to very occasional statements, that results in nothing more than a foggy understanding of how the group runs. And it’s likely that no single board member is making decisions, leaving the club mostly in the hands of chief executive Stephen Bettis. And that’s considerably better than a distant tyranny (you might find one nearby!)
Bettis is unquestionably an experienced and capable administrator, but it is unclear how much authority he has to make decisions. Certainly, it took three weeks for the club to reach a collective decision on changing the manager, which most likely precludes Bettis.
Hopefully, transfer procedures will be less complicated as United, following sales, faces pressure to improve the team in the face of interest in other assets such as Gus Hamer, Tyrese Campbell, and Michael Cooper. Fans find it difficult to support a government that has numerous faces but is essentially faceless without instructions from the board other than an ethereal allusion to a “change of culture”. It didn’t help that professional poker player James Bord was seen as a key adviser in the early phases.
Of course, Bramall Lane is no stranger to absentee owners and distant control, having faced the same from Prince Abdullah. It’s not only here. There appears to be a trend, particularly with regard to foreign ownership, in which the real movers and shakers are rarely seen or held accountable to the public. Isn’t some type of presence preferable? People just want to get to know them better. Meanwhile, we wait to see how everything plays out, with little information on which to base an opinion.
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