Guidetti, life without the death-wish opponent

I see the story that Feyenoord are chasing John Guidetti has lasted more days than I expected.  John Guidetti is a likeable guy and seems to have enjoyed his time at Celtic, but he desperately needs to show some form before the end of the season if he is to attract the attention of Feyenoord or any team of that calibre.

One aspect often overlooked about Guidetti is his inexperience.  The player is still only 22 and had started only 30 games before arriving at Celtic Park last season, there’s a good chance that by the end of the season he will have played more games for Celtic than anyone else.  On paper, a season at Celtic was a chance to sort his career out, grab first team football at a prestigious club who were short of a centre forward.  Conversely, being kept out of the team by Leigh Griffiths will damage his reputation.

Barcabhoy sent me an interesting summary of Celtic’s material loss since the liquidation of Rangers.  The figures below compare the three years before Rangers liquidation with the two and a half years since.

As you see, even though we are comparing a shorter time period after liquidation, Celtic’s turnover and profitability is still miles better than when we had to compete with Rangers.

This should end any nonsense about Celtic needing or in any way missing Rangers.  We lost some revenue streams: domestic commercial and ticket income, but the slipstream to European revenues have more than made up for the gap.  More importantly, we are also no longer caught in an arms race with a death-risk opponent, allowing us to bring costs below income and plan longer than the current season.