A meaningless win is always better than a meaningless defeat, but in the larger scheme of things, yesterday’s game against Liverpool is no more significant than last month’s games in Germany. They are about building fitness and, if necessary, trying new things.
Amido Balde was the winner yesterday. Some were already writing the player off, not because of any performance inadequacy, but because he was not being deployed competitively. Victor Wanyama joined two years ago but spent the first six months of this stay warming the bench with Brown, Ledley and Kayal ahead of him.
Five months ago Rangers International FC PLC released their interim accounts, noting that their recurring operating expenses of £2.371m, were £1m per month more than their income.
£1m per month!! To a club which has no bank borrowing facility! Yet the alarm bells didn’t ring everywhere. Roll on five months, 34,000 fans have been separated from their cash in return for season tickets, and now the alarms are ringing all over the place, not just the Celtic online media.
This is not news to anyone reading Celtic Quick News but in life, it’s often not so much the message as the messenger that’s significant. That the mainstream media feel it’s appropriate to ‘tell it as it is’ about Rangers International’s finances, is a measure of how acute the situation is.
As we’ve been saying here for years, it takes close to £20m p.a., before you employ a footballer or coach, to run a football club which can accommodate circa 40,000 spectators on a regular basis. Add your football budget onto that £20m and you have an idea of the cash needed to be a ‘top’ Scottish club.
Rangers International’s interim revenue for seven months was £9.5m which annualised up would be £16.3m. There is a huge structural gap which no one has been able to even remotely suggest a way to bridge.
Now Dave King has told the Herald what we’ve been saying for a while, “Celtic are building reserves by selling top players that they won’t need until Rangers are back (sic) competing with them. The way our finances are being run we could end up with a gap that is too large to bridge.”
It takes hundreds of employees to run a football club at a busy Ibrox Stadium. There are policing, rates, utility, insurance and stewarding costs, which you can’t do anything about. Even if they double income, they’re still going to be left with a fraction of Celtic’s football budget.
As Dave King suggests, this is not a short and medium term problem, the gap is already too large to bridge. King is wrong on one factor, Celtic will not store reserves awaiting a challenge from Rangers International (or a successor club), they are managing player assets as part of an on-going Champions League development strategy.
The other lot are finished, I tells ya’, finished! This is Private Fraser doing his Dave King impersonation:
824 Comments- Pages:
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Bmcuw
Maybe Sevco have copied that approach for their current attendances?
Maybe not.
notthebus
15:18 on
11 August, 2013
Ha ha ha..
_________________
Hugh Keevins: Rangers pre-season training shows they have more money than they’re letting on
So let me get this right,Sevco go to Brora for a week and they’re minted ?
Further to crowd figures in the 60s to 80s I would say that Celtic were far from unique in ‘massaging’ crowd figures in this way – north or south of the border.
Jimbo
quonno
15:46 on
11 August, 2013
Mike in Toronto
15:42 on
11 August, 2013
It is long many a day since the South gave a toss about the six counties.
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are there any SF members in the Dail ?
I genuinely dont know, so serious question.
moyes just done a wee knuckle rubb with the last guy before the trophy got presented??
lionroars67
Re the SMSM and our supporters. I think the Celtic could make a coin from our quandary of not wanting to watch/listen/read their poison but still needing news on our club.
Not only would Celtic be rewarded financially but over a period of time an alternative media could become the club’s messenger to us. It’s needed as I honestly believe that MSM have suppressed positive news for the ‘tic whilst bigging up the negative.
Church of Scotland ministers were also allowed in to CP free of charge.
Episcopalian rectors as well I would imagine.
In fact if you turned up at the gate wearing a dog collar you got in!
HH!!
Afternoon Bhoys and Ghirls
New Dawn
New Day
New Life
and feeling good.
New Moniker too,
New hopes for the New Blood
and just maybes…
New Striker by the end of the day?
Like I said,
I’m Feeling Good.
Celtic v Liverpool is repeated on LTV Sky 429 @ 6pm bhoys.
Hoping there is some substance to the Finnbogason rumours. Have heard from an Edinburgh colleague that young Alfie used to attend Easter Rd. but had a liking for another team in green and white, 50 miles west. Come here and become a star like Henke, son.
SHAKHTAIL PROPAGANDY @Propa_Gander 4h
When the press warned that 5 “clubs” could go into Admin, I didn’t know they meant Rangers, The Rangers, Sevco, RIFC &. … :^]
#armageddon
glasgows green and white
Tallybhoy
Remember quite a few mongrels used to get on the park – funny how they were all called John Greig by the crowd. :-)
jimbo67
Big Fr Mick O Connell ( God rest him ) would take 8 to 10 alter bhoys ( I believe he said they were Orphans dont quote me on that please ) in his large Rover car to the rear of the Jungle, and get them in Free,as a reward for delivering the Catholic Observer to the homes in the parish of St Flannans in Kirkie,my young brother being one of them, those were the days my friend.BTW that was less for the Kelly’s and the Whytes to cream off, as we all know was on the go.
Awerabest PJ
jimbo67
15:55 on
11 August, 2013
And others.
Seen an interesting theory lately that a fine way to money launder is to buy a football club, publish inflated attendances on which you pay tax and pocket the difference.
BIG-CUP-WINNERS
16:06 on
11 August, 2013
George Orwell, “The Freedom Of The Press”, 1943:
“‘If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.‘”
Sorry to say but Celtic PLC have commercial relationships with SMSM so they will not rock that boat, GB are also on the wrong side of that commercial relationship
Plenty of internet bampots to read and to listen to if you want the truth, you wont get the truth with the MSM
Tallybhoy… I knew a Church of Scotland minister from Knightswood who used to go to Celtic Park with our Parish Priest. Both got free entry
re 60s and 70s attendance, how many actually paid to get in? peor alwayys got a lift over, double up going through, jumed the gates or went in he boys gate when they were too old. if you knew the gate man they let you in for nothing. I reckon loads of people got in for nothing every game.
Bada bing:
Cheers matey, was camping and missed it yesterday!
How come the LFC channel seems to be available on the basic Sky package?
Finboggason?
Please, please and pretty please!
Dancer
I seem to remember Father Ted getting the old discount at the pictures too…
Big Mick not having the best of starts at Motherwell
Saint Stivs
As far as I know Sinn Fein has around fourteen seats in Dail
This does not necessarily equate with the South giving a toss about six counties.
Papa John / Quonno
Father Sheary at St Matthews in the Briggs was above such chicanery! (His predecessor , Fr Romeo Coia, may have been less scrupulous though).
I have no doubt that the modern game is corrupt in the way you suggest- if a sport like cricket is as riddled with crookedness then the chances that Fitba is ‘clean’ are unlikely.
Jimbo
priests at parkhead .
reminds me of a story my wee da used to tell.
he had been to the docs and told to take it easy due to high blood pressure .
come sat he heads of to dear old Celtic park to see us play St Mirren fan fanwith my mums parting words of take it easy mind what the doc said .
so my old man decided to take it easy and go to the main stand.
2 mins to kick off and a priest sits down beside my dad, dad turns to him and said o good father having you beside me should keep me calm I’ve to watch the old blood pressure.
priest said sorry to disappoint you son but i am a st mirren fan.
that was his last visit to the main stand . said it was harder to stay calm than it was to shout etc.
H.H.
Garrygillespieshamstring
I dont think any money changed hands on my admission until I had a beard!
Jimbo
Going back to old days.
Michael Kelly once told us that he would tell us where every penny went.
As far as I am aware he never got round to it.
quonno
16:26 on
11 August, 2013
Saint Stivs
As far as I know Sinn Fein has around fourteen seats in Dail
This does not necessarily equate with the South giving a toss about six counties
———-
agree.
but given there the core values of SF, then there are some in the south who do care about a United Ireland.
anyways, its only a matter of time, Demographics and free elections being what they are.
Who has been detailed the Ross Hall watch? No info coming in from Owen Coyle’s granny as she is down at Wembley.
west wales celt-i have been asking if a CFC channel on Sky is viable? Could punt merchandise ,tickets,golf trips etc ,LFC is excellent and they show Press Confrences live too(something we could maybe do on the website?) HH
Were our CL opponents playing this weekend?
Why was Gerrard getting so much stick for yesterday?
Chuckles could sell central heating in Qatar!! Just love the guy!! <:0)
Cheers Bada Bing ! for the LTV game details
I dont think I paid “full fare” to a pay at the gate match till I was at least 18.
The good old “bhoys gate”, UB40 gate, and previously punts over or the double jook through , all tactically in play home and away .
Many away clubs would only have 1 boys gate at their celtic end. so again we would queue opposite sides of the ground, anything to get in cheaper.
To this day I laugh about my big pal Davie Elder, who was a year younger than me, but a big lad, with a mans face, he got caught everywhere. Charged full fares on trains and the like.
However most times, I bought the travel tickets , and he got the Merrydown, lol.
Kids nowadays dont know what their missing.
The Bundesliga has been brilliant this afternoon.
Undeniably the most exciting league in Europe.
A former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Robert Davidson, while the minister at Parkhead Parish Church received a letter from CFC inviting him to attend games at CP.
He took up the offer and became a committed Celtic fan – much to the displeasure of some of his colleagues.
Celtic FC – an all-inclusive club open to all.
HH!!
quonno
I remember saying at the start of last season that money laundering was the reason for the inflated attendances.
You only had to look at the empty seats, and the freebie tickets.
I wonder if strathclydes finest are looking into it…….