You and I have been discussing football finances here since 2004. In our early years Celtic lost several million pounds each year, CQN’s call was ‘we must breakeven over any business cycle’, an incredibly controversial view in those times of indulgent bling.
By 2004 Celtic hadn’t added a player who held down a sustained first team place for three years (since John Hartson in 2001). We also lost a talisman that summer. The pressure was on to spend, from the stands and the dug-out, but Brian Quinn, our chairman, had concerns about running at a permanent loss. In the face of considerable criticism from the bling-brigade he stood firm.
Celtic won three of the next four league titles while reaching new territory in the Champions League as others continued to spent beyond their means and exploit unconventional taxation policies, which ultimately saw them liquidated, but while the end game was predictable, most didn’t predict it. This resulted in strife at our club.
Finance was a focus of CQN in the early years when we produced granular analysis of accounts and budgetary forecasting. As we became less of a basket-case the time spent debating money reduced.
We can all talk about strikers and defending, policing and political influences, good corporate governance and the SFA, but if you scratch below the surface of those with many years of CQN behind them, I suspect you’ll find people who can’t resist a football club’s cost and revenue breakdown spreadsheet….
The document which appeared on the internet yesterday on a former football club [let’s call them ExCo] was a joy. To me, anyway. It provided many small details which add up to one or two enormous conclusions.
ExCo forecast current year spend for 2011-12 on cleaning costs to be £380k, electricity at £455k, insurance at £374k, postage and carriage at £146k, IT at £261k, professional fees at £613k and telephone costs at £149k. Stewarding was £593k, policing, £343k, match day ambulance, £89k. They spent £160k on finance salaries and £176 on press office salaries while ticket operation salaries cost £268k. The list is exhaustive, 10 pages of costs detailed.
Operating costs, before items like our old friend, amortisation, and tax (don’t laugh), were predicted to come in just shy of £37m, but the key message in all of this detail, is that if you want to operate a football club which can accommodate circa 40,000 spectators you need an infrastructure which costs around £20m.
The police, building maintenance, insurances, grass seed and everything else has to be budgeted for before you can look at player wages, not to mention transfer fees. £268k might sound like a lot to pay for ticket office staff but if you need to issue tens of thousands of tickets you need fulfilment staff. All those assets: enormous properties, thousands of fans, blanket media attention, can feel like liabilities to the guy with the responsibility to pay for them.
On reading this the overwhelming memory I had was of former Rangers director, Paul Murray, who a year ago told the world that Newco Rangers would not be viable, and he was hoping a Newco would have SPL football back then. New clubs cannot qualify in European competition until after they have completed three years trading (a minimum of four years without Europe).
With no European revenue for four years, Newco would be unable to pay all those ‘fixed’ costs and put a competitive team on the field. A big club can’t survive trapped in a small league with no European revenue.
This is reality. Scotland has one healthy large club and has a dozen or more potentially healthy small ones, but nothing will ever be the same again.
Thanks to everyone who has bought Willie Wallace autobiography. Orders in from Belfast, Blackpool, Bonnybridge, Burntisland and Blackrock. If you order now you will receive a copy signed by the man himself….
Email me if you have an article for CQN Magazine inside of you waiting to get out; celticquicknews@gmail.com.
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The draft 5 way agreement shows that Mr Bryson either changed his mind or was told to change his mind or had his mind changed for him!
Brogan Rogan Trevino and Hogan supports Kano 1000
11:44 on 18 May, 2013
there are that many people involved – I am beginning to lose track of who is who in all of this
….PFayr
Was thinking ‘file under bin’ or’let’s fit this Timmy bass up’.hh
So, my conclusion, based, I accept, partly on wanting it all to be true (think of a hun linesman that wants, desperately, the Celtic striker to be offside, so it looks offside to him and he flags), but also partly on logic is as follows.
The mainstream media, as PF Ayr said earlier, desperately need to keep punters buying their output. So the output, for years and years, if not for ever, has been skewed towards the hun. This is partly demographics and partly because the media was full of deady bears with typewriters, then laptops. Also, David Murray worked out that, by feeding Winalot (copyright Speirs, G.) to unquestioning spaniels, drawing a salary purportedly to be covering Scottish football, he could control the media. This allowed him continue to run the huns for years, long after the game should have been a bogey. He was pushing against an open door. Everyone was a winner.
The point today is that they all must know the game really is a bogey this time. Rangers died. They have managed to squeeze another season out of the arrangement by pretending Sevco was Rangers, aided and abetted by those who had a vested interest (including non-hun administrators such as Neil Doncaster and Stewart Regan) and those who desperately wanted to keep the “dream” (yeuch) alive. I also believe more than I ever have that masons have had a cabalistic hand in it all, but whether that’s the same as huns keeping the dream going I don’t care to speculate.
But even so, that only lasted one more season, and that season is now coming to a close and there are bills that need paying, such as Craig Whyte’s to Ticketus. Desperate times call for desperate measures and so we have this massive amount of information made available to us in recent days.
It will take a bit of digesting, but on reason the MSM are reacting very slowly is that they are prolonging the inevitable conclusion: their one strategy, their one tactic, their only plan has failed.
BMCUWP
Aye ,was a wee bit worried aboot the jackboots on the living room rug.hh
Hi Bsmboo
It’s a draft….so much could change in final version. ..
HH
Oldco/Newco….Minty , Chuckles , Ogilvie, Jabba, Cardigan, Sally.
Hertz…..McDonald, Jardine, Sandra Clark, Bud the fud, Romanov, Foulkes.
And the bigoted zombies that follow them……………..
Liquidation/obliteration couldn’t happen to nicer people.
GIRUY
Arise Sir Google eyes!
I wonder if Cosgrove and Cowan will mention CF today – starts in ten
Th only way is Billy– visits Ashton Lane in Glasgow’s West end– Edinburgh for Wegies!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58LI0cnLj1U …
wonder who would want to play a pre season game with deady bears?
HH
EmeraldBee\o/ proud to be an internet bampot
Boo Boo Boo !!!!
You’ve just given the MSM Sunday’s their positive Deadco headline.
The end of the beginning for Them will be the rescinding of their licence.
However, in spite of apparently overwhelming evidence of chicanery,I fear that the SFA will apply the Head in the Sandy Bryson Rule ; i.e. if we didn’t know about it, then it didn’t happen.
Of course, the answer should be, “Well, ye ken noo!”
BRTH @ 11 44.
Bryson isn’t paid to have a mind . He is paid for conforming to group think.
SoT “corner shop with supermarket overheads” sums their situation up exactly. That,s one of these phrases I wish I,d written will stay with me forever. Cap doffed. Hail Hail Hebcelt
Big Cup
Sorry mate, but there is no point wasting time and hope going down the asbestos route. Now, the overall maintenance of the stadium? That’s another picture entirely.
Tomthetim
I’d LOVE it if they had the licence rescinded, but like you I just can’t see it happening in Scotland. Loved your reference to the ‘
Suggestion on FF that Minty is to blame is met with sleuth-like identification of the real culprits:
“A simple analogy that deliberately forgets the external influincies, especially Dr Death and Lloyds role in all this.
When he said he was duped, I don’t believe he meant Whyte, he meant Fullerton of Lloyds banking. The financial crisis was the opening these haters needed to shaft minty.”
——
“I would look at the behavior of Lloyds TSB and one Manus Fullerton first. Then I’d look for the trail that leads to John Reid and another corrupt institution that knows how to cover things up. Given the behavior of the GB and their z – list lovies at the barras, I do believe that the authorities now have every incentive they may have needed to do the job properly.”
——
“Manus Fullerton and John Reid both retired from their respective positions just before Whyte completed the purchase agreement of my club. Giving them time to set the wheels in motion, leave just as the bombs start to explode and absolve them of any blame.
Their involvement is much more than a mere coincidence.”
Emeraldbee
That’s a more encouraging answer
Do you have any idea of the normal maintenance costs associated with running the infrastructure thyself the Huns have
Monaghan
That’s mental ….plain mental
They called us paranoid
Brogan Rogan Trevino and Hogan supports Kano 1000
11:57 on 18 May, 2013
Th only way is Billy– visits Ashton Lane in Glasgow’s West end– Edinburgh for Wegies!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58LI0cnLj1U …
#####
Good to see someone tell it as it is.
Ulysses McGhee
I spend a couple of hours yesterday listening to Rat Pack and Crooners singing the old standards and swing.
15 year old Miss TT was walking about humming the birth of the Blue by Sammy David Jnr, this morning.
Could it be an omen?
(:-)
TT
PFayr
Sorry, not my field, but I’m sure one of the ‘bambpots’ on CQN will be well qualified to answer your query. You’ve got to imagine that even day-to-day and month-to-month maintenance for an edifice that size is VERY costly.
I do know, however, that their all-weather/astroturf pitch over at Minty Park is so bad that the ball does not run true. It’s now one of the ‘old’ types of astroturf that really needs replacing, but that comes in at hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even to lift and relay what’s there would cost tens of thousands. Maybe the state of their all-weather training pitch explains why they played so much crap over the season.
EL
My brothers and I and a few mates often go to Ashton Lane for a laugh at the other customers …our boisterous ,having a laugh, approach to a night out is regularly treated with puzzling looks if not disdain ..
There are some right fandan pubs there
Noticed a few posts on the maintenance issues at Ibrox.
I now someone who did work at Ibrox a few years ago and there was no obvious asbestos issue. The main problem they may have is general repair and maintenance work not being done.
They had an issue a couple of years ago with plumbing which was a known potential problem they put off doing till it went horribly wrong. There was talk of them asking for the Commonwealth Games refurb money up front as the ground does need tarted up a bit but nothing too serious I was told.
Monaghan 1900
Half chewed Bacon and tattie scone pebble dashed over t- shirt reading that one.
SairlaffinCSC
Adam Richman has retired from Man v. Food.
Fat Sally would win every food challenge if he got that job.
If you are interested in Polish football, if our players fit Celtic, one of the most important games of the season about to start. Legia Warsaw play against Lech Poznan.
Monaghan1900 @ 12 14 .
” the behaviour of Lloyds TSB “.
The temerity of a Bank refusing to continue the practice of handing over lots of money and not asking for it to be paid back .
EmeraldBee\o/ proud to be an internet bampot
Re Murray park: Being serious for a minute, I was there two weeks ago and watched a game on the all weather park; seemed to be in tip top condition to my unschooled eyes ? They also appeared to be relaying two of the grass parks. If I’m honest their facility is excellent and compares favourably to Celtic’s Lennoxtown in terms of finish, exposure to the elements, location and in particular access.
When it comes up at the asset sale Celtic should buy it !
wellbhoy7
ABSOLUTLY HONESTLY, perfect fit hed be a shoe in, really could be his for the taking, talks utter b@ll@cks & the size o that gubb?
HH
Big Cup
It was when I was there watching a youth game that I, and others next to me, noticed the ball bobbling quite a bit when it was passed along the surface. I’m prepared to admit that I was wanting to see something wrong with the place. Agree that overall the place is quite impressive.
Zbyszek,
Who do you think in the Polish league is good enough for Celtic?
What are your thoughts on Tonev?
Is Kosecki a better player….should we be going for him or are there bigger clubs looking at him?
NEW CELTIC MOVIE?
Cannes: Peter Mullan’s ‘Paradise’ Creates Buyer Buzz
9:00 PM PDT 5/17/2013 by Stuart Kemp
Email This
Peter Mullan Oscars List – P 2012
The script about the founding of legendary Scottish soccer team Celtic Football Club is billed as “Gangs of New York” meets “Field of Dreams.”
Writer/director/actor Peter Mullan’s Paradise, a movie about the founding of legendary Scottish soccer team Celtic Football Club by a priest in 1887, is creating buzz among buyers.
The movie, billed as Gangs of New York meets Field of Dreams in Victorian Glasgow, is being shopped in Cannes by movie director and producer Peter Broughan.
Broughan, whose directing résumé includes Rob Roy, told The Hollywood Reporter he was exceptionally busy because he has a “project that everyone wants.”
The movie details the story of Irish Marist priest Brother Walfrid, who founded the soccer club at a catholic church in Glasgow on November 6, 1887.
Buyers have been keen to talk, and market insiders are abuzz with reports that Daniel Day-Lewis has been linked to the role of Walfrid.
While nothing is signed, Mullan is reportedly expected to reach out to Day-Lewis as he would be the perfect choice to portray the soccer-loving priest.
Celtic became the first British club to win the European Cup in 1967. The team is one of the most supported sporting entities in the world and is estimated to have more than a million fans in the U.S. alone.
Broughan is a lifelong fan of the team, nicknamed “the Hoops.”
Rm……HEAD IN SAND, AT IT’s BEST………!!!!!!!!
“Written by: The Ref
Thursday, 16th May 2013
With the news that Rangers have reached an agreement which will bring Dundee United centre forward Jon Daly to Ibrox for the next two seasons and with the option of a further one year extension, it will come as no surprise to hear that a large number of the Rangers support are unhappy with manager Ally McCoist’s latest signing.
Daly is a Catholic from the South of Ireland, something which was actually of no interest to me, but seems to be worth mentioning in every article in the mainstream media. It’s as if they are trying to provoke a reaction to this signing from a sectarian viewpoint. I would ask those who write and report in the mainstream media: why did you feel it necessary to report on his place of birth and religion? He’s a football player, and you cannot condemn sectarianism in Scotland and Ireland, while at the same time trying to make it an issue in the transfer of a football player from one club to another.
Rangers have had players of all denominations and religions at Ibrox, from Jews to Muslims and Protestants to Catholics; Rangers have proven themselves to be a very inclusive club when it comes to signing players.
Why then does the media focus on this? Well, you see; there is a myth surrounding our club which the media hang on to and feed upon in their desperate quest to undermine our club. The myth is that we will not sign Catholics, and yet as I have already written, that is nothing but a fabrication. Sectarianism sells newspapers and for as long as they can propagate the myth, they will sell their rags to those blinkered enough to buy them.
While I write about sectarian signing policies and football clubs, it is worth asking how many Northern Irish protestant players have been signed for and played for Scotland second largest club Celtic? While Rangers have proven to be a club which welcomes all, I suspect the same cannot be said for Celtic.
So if the Rangers supporters are unhappy with the signing of Jon Daly, it must be because he’s a Catholic from the South of Ireland right?
Wrong!
The reason Rangers supporters are unhappy with this latest signing is nothing to do with his religion, nor his place of birth. It is simply because he is 30 years old and with little or no re-sale value. He is injury prone and of limited ability. He has little in the way of pace and offers our club little in return for what will undoubtedly be a large wage. His signing does nothing to suggest we will be playing an expansive, attractive, high-tempo type of football over the course of the next season, and as such, the Rangers supporters would rather the money spent on Daly was spent elsewhere in signing hungry, talented, young players with a desire to do well and earn a big money move to other clubs. This would bring in much needed finance to the club as the board of directors try to stabilise our finances after a terrible few years. So when you read a newspaper article or listen to a report on the radio or television which mentions Daly’s religion or place of birth, call them or write to them and ask them why they felt it necessary to mention it.
The sectarian myth surrounding our club was borne of the media and to justify it, they must keep trying to make news of it.
In my opinion there are no people more guilty of inciting sectarian hatred in Scotland than its media!”
I have some sympathy for Sevco. Too many new start up companies fail in their first few years……
EmeraldBee\o/ proud to be an internet bampot
The game I watched was a youth match too. The standard of play was more akin to a community youth club: aggressive, ill structured and seldom involved the “pass and move” type game that proliferates in the youth set-up. I’m basing that on having watched several games involving: QP, Hibs, Stenhousemuir the Deady’s, and Celtic.
I’m supposed to be dining in Ashton lane next Friday.
Any credibility that I had on here is now shot.
TT
TinyTim
12:52
No it’s not. You are a man of your word.
No chance of sevco’s SFA licence being rescinded. No matter what is revealed. No chance.