Mucky Boots: Triumphs, Trials and Tragedies of a Football Club Owner

by Kevin McCabe, Peter Beeby

Mucky Boots is the warts-and-all story of Kevin McCabe's two decades as Sheffield United's owner-chairman. McCabe grew up yards from Bramall Lane, where he watched Sheffield United FC and Yorkshire County Cricket Club play. He left school aged 16 and worked on a building site, where a few words of encouragement set him on a path to creating a billion-pound global property empire. McCabe's Sheffield United takeover was driven by his quest to beat local rivals, Sheffield Wednesday, and establish the Blades in the Premier League. Along the way, he took on the football establishment and saw a star striker imprisoned for rape. With his hopes floundering in the midst of a rancorous dispute with then co-owner Prince Abdullah, a chance encounter led to McCabe's appointment of Chris Wilder as Blades manager in 2016. In an ironic twist, as the Blades headed back to the Premier League, McCabe and Wilder unwittingly contributed to each other's downfall and departure from the club they adored.

336 pages, Hardcover

Published August 28, 2023

Reviews

[Tracey Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Good to get the inside on some of the goings on at Bramall Lane I did find that some of the chapters repeated the same info from previous chapters which was a bit tedious but all in all I enjoyed.

[Emmy Beeby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read for anyone interested in the intersection between football and business.