How chance meeting in restaurant put Premier League back on menu

But new co-owner, HRH Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, loves playing the online managerial game and maybe it is that fascination with building a successful team which has led to the Saudi Arabian prince’s arrival at Bramall Lane.

His affluence – his uncle is the Saudi King with an estimated family wealth of $18bn – means he could have had his pick of English football clubs, but he was attracted by the history and traditions of Sheffield, and the Blades in particular.

Certainly, his timing could have been better, as any fantasy manager will tell you, as news of his arrival at Bramall Lane came just hours after the closure of the transfer window.

Had he been involved a couple of weeks earlier manager David Weir might have had the time and funds to bolster his squad.

But Prince Abdullah is here now and his first trip to watch his new club will contain an element of fantasy as he heads for New York.

New York Stadium, that is, as United travel to their South Yorkshire neighbours Rotherham United on Saturday in League One.

“He has not yet been to a game, but will be with us at the weekend,” said Blades director Scott McCabe, who along with his father and club owner Kevin helped thrash out the investment package after several trips to Saudi Arabia.

“I believe he watched the Notts County game on television in Saudi Arabia, and has been following the games intently through radio commentaries and websites.

“If you look at the deal itself, the Prince has bought 50 per cent of the football club from our family for a very small, nominal sum.

“But that was conditional on the Prince investing a sufficient level of funds which gets us to our aims and ambitions, which is the Premier League.

“Over the course of the next two to three years, you will see funds going in which will purely go into first-team football.

“One of the attractions to him was our stadium – a 33,000 all-seater stadium, which would not be lost in the Premier League; it would be up there with the best in the Premier League – and a top class academy, which we have invested in and will continue to invest in the people and infrastructure there.

“There’s little needed to be invested in the stadium and the academy.

“The money he puts in, it’s not like other clubs I could name, but won’t, that if they are promoted into the Premier League they would have to be looking at serious infrastructure projects, whether to increase in capacities or facilities, or training grounds and academies. We have already got that so the money which comes in goes straight to first-team football.”

With a stadium and academy worthy of the Premier League, the McCabes have been looking for outside financial help to increase their muscle with regard to player recruitment.

They believe they have finally secured that funding.

“We have been looking now for a number of years to find the right type of partner,” said McCabe.

“When you go down this track in football, identifying the right type of partner – someone who can deliver – is perhaps more difficult than some people realise.

“The economics of football can be a strain; you only have to look at our numbers in recent years when we were relegated from the Premier League. Players’ wages principally, mean you have to invest heavily to get back to the Premier League.

“We have each year – whether we have been in the Championship or League One – always set promotion-chasing budgets, which means it’s a risk year-on-year.”

So how did a 47-year-old wealthy Saudi Arabian Prince – described as a “real football-nut” – end up at Bramall Lane, a League One club?

“It came about through pure chance,” admitted McCabe. “Over the last three or four years we have been working with our own advisers on attracting investment into the football club.

“We have had one or two sniffs of interest, but they have never been either the right people or been able to deliver what we would like to deliver.

“This came about through pure chance, sat in a restaurant in London and bumping into someone and having an informal chat. This particular person we spoke to was an adviser to the Prince on real estate in the UK, and made reference to the fact that Prince Abdullah had a desire to invest in an English football club.

“Off the back of that conversation (Blades were) led to a further meeting with the adviser and then the Prince.

“There we saw for ourselves that the Prince was real, and was a real football-nut. The Prince is heavily into football, but you can see from his background he is a businessman as well.”

The potential at Bramall Lane is obvious and McCabe believes, thanks to the Prince’s passion for football, the future looks promising in S2.

“You go and visit the Prince and everywhere you go, when you meet him, and the conversation generally revolves around football and how to improve football at Sheffield United Football Club,” said McCabe. “But what is heartening is he is a genuine football supporter who is interested in the history and heritage of football.

“That is probably part of the attraction for him to Sheffield United; Sheffield’s place in the world of football, the birthplace of modern football you could argue.

“We are in the third tier of English football, but he can see the potential, he sees the heritage and buys significantly into that.”

“For a Saudi prince, he seems a very conservative, reasoned individual,” added McCabe. “He’s built up his own businesses. It sounds a bit contradictory, but he is self-made in many ways. His passion for football is obvious.”

If he can achieve similar success with United, then the Blades could soon be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea once again. Now that is fantasy football.