I reckoned Champions League participation was worth circa £22m to Celtic. By contrast, Europa League football will be worth less than a quarter of that. Ancillary income, such as retail and kiosk sales, will also suffer.
The challenge now is to improve the team without that income. This should not be impossible. Malmo managed it, and we’re not in a situation where the bank is hammering at the door. But what should be clear, is that the next five days represent the best chance to strengthen the team for next August’s qualifiers. There’s a notion that the biggest games of our season come early, but we’ve 11 months to plan for 2016’s biggest games.
Three things to remind you about:
Golfers: buy a raffle ticket for £1 to win a round of golf FOR FOUR PEOPLE at the magnificent Aberdour course in Fife. Competition ends on Saturday, get your tickets here!!! It’s offered by Taggsybhoy, in support of the Foundation.
There’s a Mary’s Meals collection from 1pm on the Celtic Way ahead of the game on Saturday. Ideally we’re looking for backpacks, but handtowels (the school kitchens you paid for have handwashing facilities and each child is given their own handtowel), pencils, rulers, etc.
If the kids got new kit for starting school last week, dig out the old stuff and bring it along.
Magners have kindly donated two Premium Seats in the Jock Stein Stand for Saturday’s games. You can win the tickets by answering this question:
Who is Celtic’s top scorer this season?
Player’s surname in the SUBJECT line of your email to celticquicknews@gmail.com . Competition closes at 22:00 TONIGHT, so not a lot of time to enter.
No call today for a donation, go stick a £1 in Taggsy’s raffle instead. Thanks.
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Its as clear as day to me.
There should be no rewards for failure.
My plan would be to half the number of board members, restructure the scouting department, and prohibit businessmen taking anything to do with transfers or team affairs…..and make bonuses conditional on success, not failure.
What a business to be in eh….one where you get rewards for failure.
Gravy train indeed.
HH
Gauld on loan is what I’m hearing.
@LIVIBHOY
You make such eloquent points my friend. Thank you.
The challenge is something we call “The veil of ignorance” (it means nice things, but sounds aggressive). Football may mean that to you, in the same way that Theatre meant that to people in Shakespeare’s time, and Novels (well periodicals) did in Dickens time.
What you are comparing is the transformation of a tangible repeatable entertainment, that is suddenly being mass produced. Lamenting, or wishing one’s favourite form of entertainment as “special” simply doesn’t hold water from a long term (and sadly business) perspective.
Modernisation happens. It comes to all forms of life, from football on sky for £15 a month, to books for £0.99 on kindle, to films on Netflix for £8 a month, to wrestle-mania for £30 ppv.
“You need the fans to play their part.”
No you don’t. Thats the point. We *want* them to as fans. But the reality is, that 4 people could turn up for an Arsenal game and they wouldn’t lose 1% of their turnover. We as Scottish football fans would find it weird. The global audience watching wouldn’t give a rats a**. We are spoilt, as we are used to 100,000 fans watching us win 7-1 in hampden. 80,000 going to Seville. 60,000 watching the 6-2 game.
In the rest of the world they don’t have that. The Milan derby gets about 25,000. US games get 15,000. Monaco were getting about 20,000 when John Collins was there. Fulham think 17000 is a good gate.
We, football fans in Scotland and England who remember they heyday, are shocked at how much match day support has fallen because it was so huge. The rest of the world hasn’t noticed because they never had what we had. They never needed Match day support and attendance; so now that it’s dwindled the only team in Europe it impacts is one – Celtic.
We are an anomaly. WE need things to change. But sadly things are better for all the other teams, and they don’t need fans back in the stadium.
“The Emirates is like Wembley. Arsenal are a fine side but the supporters must get behind them spook the opposition and lift them when they need it. Disengage the fans you have a franchise team that people watch instead of doing something else. There is no heart, soul or passion.”
Agreed man. But that has already happened. Saturday @ 3pm. no games live on tv. no other sport live on tv. people worked 9-5 and half day on Saturday. Turn the radio off on the way home to avoid the scores and watch SportScene… those days are long gone.
I miss it as much as you do. But what we all need to accept is that by disengaging the fan who turns up on a Saturday and replacing them for the TV audience, 100 new fans have been found. This only hurts 1 team in the world. 1 team.
It hurts the only team to ever move their country’s UEFA co-efficient by 2 or more places in a season.
It hurts the only team to pay more than 25 times the average wage of their lowest league competitor.
It hurts the only team to pay a higher average wage than any other SPORTS TEAM per capita in the world.
It hurts the only team to pay a higher average wage than any other Football Team outside of a top 4 league.
It hurts the only team to receive less from TV deal IN THE SPORTING WORLD than they would if they had no tv deal (given the small % bump that 3pm Saturday games brings).
Only 1 team, 1 sports franchise, in the entire world, across all sports (according to Deloitte and SportsIntelligence.com) that suffers from all of these things. Every other team in the top 1000 sports teams in the world makes like a bandit from it.
To paraphrase Jay-Z:
“If you’re having money problems I feel bad for you son
I got 999 teams that are ecstatic, it’s just Celtic that’s the one”
Another name for the hat Robert Beric, available for £4m, our upper limit maybe but more of a sure thing. Was on the nominee list for golden boot! Can we compete with Reading?
Just how deluded are we????
Every year we talk about the August window offering a chance to build for the next year’s CL. We don’t do it.
Every year, we talk about getting business done early in the window- we don’t do it.
Every year we then say the January window is the real target (after which we revert to a preference for AUGUST).
Every year, we get linked with every striker, free agent, loan possibility, bring in trialists.
Every year we plump for some SPL mediocrity.
Every year we sell our best players.
I suspect we will shortly be linked with a late move for Adam Rooney, Stevie May or Billy McKay.
We sing that “we’ll be there” and “we dont care if we win, lose or draw” but these are not true- see this season’s attendances, watch the top tier close.
In the years since 2012 we have spectacularly failed to capitalise on the absence of rivals, to kick on and create a buffer when newco arrive next season. They will be hungry. We will be staid. The four years will have passed as if nothing has changed.
We are going to playing at 5 or 6pm on Thursdays. Crowds will be poor. Do we really think we can beat Monaco, Liverpool, Spurs, Sporting, Villarreal, Marseilles, Napoli, Schalke, Basel, Lazio, Fiorentina or Southampton??
I am not trying to annoy or depress anyone. After all, it is only a game and that is something about which we should always remind ourselves.
However, without fundamental and immediate change at Celtic Park and Celtic PLC, we are, in my view, locked into a state of permanent mediocrity.
Wee shame,Lynsey Sharp papped out in the athletics,
best thing I have seen today
Blant, i thought you were going for some good old fashioned sarcasm :O)
i just look forward to the day when the (ein volk,ein reich ein furher / celtic first , celtic last and celtic overall / PL is our Glorious Leader and RD is his prophet- no matter what they) crowd and the (viva la revolution / burn everything / lets set up our own socialist communist amateur football club in the true spirit of celtic) crowd can get along again
Do we get relocated when ‘they’ close the top tier?
Excellent posts KevinJohn
Ronny should be judged on whether we have as improved from last year.I posted yesterday that over 20 games in Europe we scored 30 goals and 28 .
A small improvement of 5% [in fact slightly less] in both goals scored and less goals conceded would have seen us qualify for the CL .
I dont think we have improved at all .
Gutted[fish pun]
This Lennox town is a noose thing is a bit of a fallacy.
Celtic do produce good players and the return is no worse than Aberdeen.
MCGeady, Maloney, Marshall, Kennedy, Mulgrew, Forrest, McGregor.
Kennedy would have been a star, McGregor is worth something in the transfer market and would easily get into every other side in Scotland. The others are current internationals who are either part of our side or would be first team players.
We haven’t developed a centre forward or a left full back but I am sure other teams in the Uk could not come close to naming an 11 that came through their youth ranks.
There is an argument though that if we want value for money we should bin Lennox town and outsource to another country. relocate to Spain employ their coaching staff and bingo.
I said immediately after the match that we were now the level of a Brentford or Brighton, on the playing front. I stand by that 36 hours later.
‘A club like no other’. This is very true. When you’ve been the best team in Europe, when you’ve’ been described by Messi, Iniesta, Nesta, Neville, Pirlo and co as having the best atmosphere in the Champions League, when you’ve taken record travelling numbers to Seville, when you have a worldwide reputation (slipping?) which clubs with ten times our spending power envy (Man City), these factors make Celtic a club like none or very few others. A peculiar football club in fact.
The board have not only a huge fan base to satisfy; they have to keep the club’s reputation intact. A run of bad results in Europe against clubs with a fraction of our wherewithal in every department except the playing field, is now eroding away what was built during the Stein years.
We are not even somewhere in between the fifth level like Karagandy or Maribor and the mega rich top tier like Chelsea or Bayern, we are already down among the clubs who play to 3000 crowds.
The board have to address this by looking to change a strategy that is clearly not working. Whether it is by bigger spending, better buying, better scouting, change of management, change of board, change of owner, or even copy the models used by Bate Borisov, Astana and Hapoel, who’ve achieved what we couldn’t, with set-ups equivalent to Hibs and Kilmarnock. Something has to move us away from the downward spiral we’ve allowed this great club to get into.
Another Champions League Big Draw day and we’re nowhere to be seen. Many are seriously p’’’’d off with this latest failure, but it’s what looks to me like a board acceptance of where we are, that I’m struggling with.
Dexter
Its a crying shame that Celtic are run by such a bunch of chancers.
The board with the “cant do” attitude.
Who hide when things are tough.
They have nothing to say about their dismal failures…no surprise there eh.
They could not run a sweetie shop never mind Celtic.
HH
Lynsey Sharp last – Big Bren (& Crammy) knew!!!
Worry with loan players is that when we rally need them next August they’ll have left and we’ll have to parachute people into the team leading to groundhog day!
@MIHAL
Your kindness in replied is greatly appreciated.
I’m not on here backing our strategy, I actually think it’s flawed in a great number of places, not just in terms of transfers. I’m not dogmatic in my praise of the board at all, but I do wish to try and depart some facts to some of my fellow Celtic fans, who perhaps have gotten too swept up given the awful situation we find ourselves in.
I believe things need to change. 100%.
But to quote someone I admire greatly: First rule of progress is to recognise where you are.
That means our fellow fans in Celtic need to accept the reality of the world we live in – shitty as it is. We need to stop using phrases like “seasoned pro’s” and “just spend £5m” as if the player that would solve all our problems is down the back of the couch ;-)
West Ham’s captain in the english second division earns twice what our captain does. Fulham, a team in the 2nd division in England, spent 11m on a striker from the English 3rd division last year. Everyone in making more money form TV and Europe than they ever made from no TV and just home gates – literally every sports team in the top 1000 earners/average-wages… apart from Celtic.
We can not succeed by copying anyone else’s business model, because any other successful club’s business model is set up to solve problems that they have, and ours are massively different. Not one other football club is facing the problems we are, on the scale we are.
We do need change. We need a new strategy. We need new tactics (from a business perspective). We don’t need these because of Tuesday – Tuesday has merely expedited the issues at hand.
But before we can change, we need to accept the true reality of the situation we find ourselves in.
Kevinjohn
“Currently our turnover and turnover and transfer budget is the same as Barnsley!!!”
Context or no, you do not really believe that do you?
As Paul highlights – Tuesday was financially the BIGGEST match in our 127 year history……and our players SHIT IT – sorry to be crude, but has to said.
Unless we can get all management ans squad heads together quick – we may implode and ‘lose the place’ – this is serious NOW!
Celtic Mac, if we we in the english tv/league structure obviously we wouldnt be, but we are in the scottish one
Belfastbhoyo
Do you believe that statement in accurate in any context?
kevinjohn on 27th August 2015 12:45 pm
Superb , but at the same , depressing post.
We are a whale ( or at least would be if our potential were fulfilled) squeezed into a goldfish bowl.
Applauding failure, and taking it on the chin…yet again.
Groundhog Day.
Same old, Same old.
Silence from the Dinosaurs on the PLC.
No plan of action to get us out of this awful mediocrity.
There needs to be change…..that is the way of the world.
Do it now.
Don’t reward the PLC for failure.
HH
kevinjohn
Good discussion mate.
Pleasure to chat.
LB
Jeez the hyperbole on this site, Tuesday game was no bigger than any other CL qualifier we’ve had and failed at in the past 10 years. Some fans have learn to accept where we are in the football world these days, we aren’t a big club anymore.
Hopefully next season when we face the CL qualifiers rather than belittling our opponents Paul67 can post an article just listing our away record in Europe. Would hopefully sober a few people up.
BOLT!
Thus perish all cheating bassas.
Was so looking forward to today and the draw! Won’t even bother watching it now! All we’ve heard for years is how people will plough money into sevco to enable them to challenge us! Why can’t we? This is our last chance to kick on as they will be promoted this year and we are in a position of strength,in Scotland at least.
If DD and co don’t want to push us on then something has to be done! Now! Not this time next year!
Ps, team for sat!! Gordon. Janko. Boyata. Mulgrew. Izzy. Britton brown Armstrong gms. Forrest. Griffiths
Lynsey Sharp also finished last with a face on her like a true sevconian.
The Huddle – Financially the BIGGEST!!!!
Tomthetim What I was trying to send from my phone, but I couldn’t access what I was typing because keyboard covered the comment page, was I sent a similar thought to your post to Cloghercelt. Something was wrong when the midfield just did not play. I hope I am wrong.
I also said before the game started we would win provided all 11 stayed on the field and then we collect 4 bookings for the stupidest and childish things. The ones you were expecting to pick up cards did not make a tackle. KTF
Mac, please see a copy of my post from early in yesterdays blog (below) – unfortunately in terms of “sure things” the environment has changed – we used to be mid level epl in terms of wages/signing – now we are lucky to be championship – £6m players are now largely beyond us (unless we get lucky and get ucl football several years in a row) – I’m not saying I think we couldnt have speculated slightly better or more and reaped a lot for it for to get UCl level team that we expect to compete with top top euro clubs at home with championship resources you need to either gamble heavily or get very lucky regularly – we dont do enough of either
…………………………………………………
I’m sorry Lhads and Lhassies but for the moment this is our Lot in Life, until atleast one of 3 things happen
1) We move from either/both the Scottish (Only) game / being a Winter League
2) The finances / borrowings in England return to normal – BT have shellacked that one for a few years or so by the look of it (or financial fair play (haha) kicks in
3) We re-invest gains in player development back into more sure things
Lets take Pauls point about the Martin O’Neill era team – leaving KoK out for a moment – what chance would we have of signing Hartson or Sutton (at the age’s we signed them) now? Our max player signing fee ratio has gone from being comparable to mid table EPL then to mid championship now (at best), the wages we offer are probably at the same ratio – European football and a packed 60,000 seater every other week were our 2 carrots – neither carrot has been in full bloom for a while.
Not only that we now have major competition for young potential and experienced hands from America, Middle East, China and even Australia.
I said it last year – where are the red lines and when should they be examined? Does Ronny have to perform in the Europa Group Stages or be out by Christmas? Does he deserve another Champions League Crack next year – what would failure cost us? By then we’d be down what 50-60 million (at least) over the 3 years on where we could have been. Could we find ourselves asking the exact same questions in a year – Could Craig by tempted by an offer form a bigger league? The striker situation is really the most difficult for us – why? because anything anything above £4-6 million will be on a lot of radar’s, lets say we had a homegrown trio of Hartson, Sutton and Larson (all mid 20’s all had a few successful season in europe) what wages would our competitors be offering (2,3,4,5 times what we can)
GO TELL THE SPARTIM on 27TH AUGUST 2015 1:12 PM
KevinJohn
“say for instance you have an exciting team to watch (The tribute act are trying to pilot this concept as we speak) and you increase your core fanbase from say 30k to 35k, and they spend £1000 per annum on the games and the club thats how much extra incomem circa £500,000 surely that cant be sniffed at.”
Even at a high level my friend it does not work like that.
If we increase our attendance by 5000 people for every game, thats great, and I hope it happens. The average additional income of a season ticket holder is about £100 over the season, and not £1000.
(25 home games * £10 spend * 10% of ticket holders spend) = £25 average spend per season ticket supporter per season. So 5,000 additional fans at every home game nets celtic £125k. Or roughly Scott Brown’s wages for 1 month. Or Derk Boeriggter’s for 2 months (grrrrr).
So no, it makes no real impact. That’s what the English clubs have all seen. Working with some folks at Arsenal I have seen the empirical data – fans don’t spend at the game (Arsenal have it at 3% spend anything at the ground), at least not in numbers required to make any serious money. (point for another day – people don’t spend because Celtic facilities are bloody atrocious).
“Scrap the bonus structure unless its tailored to football success then, what would that save, if its minimal then still scrap it, i don’t think he warrants a bonus”
I don’t disagree. But a board’s package rewarded on the running of a running the business, and our business is not just what happens on the park. I don’t like that any more than you do, but if we want that to not be the case, we need to not be a PLC. From a business perspective, and we are a Publicly traded business, the football is merely the carrot to get you in the door to buy stuff. And that breaks my heart… but doesn’t make it less true.
“Comparing us to Arsenal achieves what, they are more hollywood than us anyway, but the information you provided is insightful and useful. However, i find all of this only supports the view that we cant win so don’t try mantra.”
No, definitely not, we just need to redefine what winning is. We can not beat the current system by playing it at it’s own rules.
“In essence there is no point in trying to improve the team.That is a view that could be taken from your comments.”
That is the viewpoint we’re meant to take. That is the viewpoint that the G8 teams that carved up the Uefa Coefficients enforced before they agreed to “disband”. The status quo has been set in stone, and as a club in an insignificant country, we’re not part of it. We are all meant to accept our scraps, and be cannon fodder. It’s why money from the Champs League is divided by your home countries viewing audience. So an English team will always earn 5 times as much money as a Scottish team simply for turning up in the Champs League.
The cards are stacked. Intentionally so. It’s meant to preserve the great teams place, to create a “world series” of football every season. We are not meant to be there every season. We are meant to fight our way through and every now and then be the plucky underdog that will put up the good fight. Next year it will be Club Brugge. The year after Malmo. Only 1 club in the history of the ECL has managed to move their whole country’s co-efficient by 2 places up in a single season (in the top 25 countries) – Celtic. 1 club did it once in over 20 years man, out of 1000s of clubs.
So I’m not saying lets not play to win. I’m saying, lets stop trying to play to win they way we’re meant to in a game that’s rigged. It’s rigged to not care about home attendance because other teams never had it. We’re *STILL* top 10 attendance/match-day-revenue club in the world. Still. The impact of match-day-revenue has been obliterated by those who don’t have it, so it’s useless to chase something that has no impact.
What we need to do, is take a good look, and come up with a new strategy. And it can’t be taken form any other club, because they don’t have our problem. We are unique. And that is bloody scary.
Kevinjohn,
Congratulations on an excellent post even although the implied conclusion of it is very depressing. You make a powerful argument based upon facts, theory and personal experience… Very difficult to argue against you!
However, i disagree on the acquiring experienced players topic. Let me give you the contextthat you seek. Berget played for both Celtic and Malmo…..arguably he won the tie for them. We could have got him if we wanted him. Similarly, is it not the case that our manager turned down Malmo and did select us…for good or ill? So we can be more attractive than outfits or locales like Malmo. Finally, on this issue look at the Barisov team that qualified for the CL last night… Full of seasoned pros. Are you saying that the SPL is less attractive than their league, or the environment?
My daughter in law is Swedish so i have visited there a lot. I much prefer where i live than there. That kind of choice is down to personal preferences and there is no absolute.
We can and should attract more experienced players; we simply choose not to.
Wish there were more posts like yours….even if I disagree with some aspects.
Rebus
Everyone within the club must take a share of the blame,but surely our scouting department is seriously flawed.John Park has to be shown the door ,a failure anyway you look at it,and what a bout the scout,forget his name,who more or less said that VVD was on his way out of the club after the Malmo games,who gave him permission to say that,get rid off.
belfastbhoyo
“Currently our turnover and transfer budget is the same as Barnsley!!!”
True or False?
Last year and this year CL qualifying rounds – will we EVER get it any easier, with advantage in the first leg on both occasions.
Its time for an open discussion on exactly why we are failing – chances could disappear – just slip away.
Ger57
That wasnt me calling you anything merely a suggestion that if you dont look at the bigger picture, maybe im guilty of that too, then we become entrenched in a narrow mindset.
If any offence was caused, then you have my apologies
@KevinJohn
“That’s such a scary statement because it is without context. It suggests that a) we’re all on the same currency b) there are standardised immigration rules c) we all have the same tax rates d) we all have the same cost of living and e) we all have the same standard of living.”
Okay perhaps I should have contextualised this statement by stating that it was taken a very simplistic point of view. I appreciate the complexities of such comparisons, however, even given said complexities, I would confidently say we pay more in wages and transfer fees, relatively speaking. Even within the market we operate in, I don’t think we have spent wisely, do you disagree with that?
“There are no “seasoned pro’s” that we can afford. “
I disagree, although it depends what you define has a seasoned pro, I am not talking about Kevin Nolans of this world or anyone from any English team whatsoever. I do think there are players out there with decent European pedigree, who would happily fit into our wage structure.
@Joe Filippis Haircut
That is kind of my point, why can Maribor and Malmo and we can’t. One of the main reasons for me is what we have spent on wages and transfer fees not being good enough.
@m6bhoy
No Mowbray shouldn’t have got more time as his team’s performances in Scottish competitions were abysmal. The main reason he got the sack. Unlike Ronny. Did you think Lennon should have been sacked after Braga, Utrecht and Sion? Strachan after Bratislava? O’Neill after Basle? Whether it floats your boat or not, even when we get into the UCL, the majority of the games supporters go along to see are in Scottish competitions, so far Ronny has done well in these.