Sustainable football success, as we often discuss, is all about the money. In that respect, Newco’s Europa League run will be a significant benefit to them. Winning the tournament, which surely is a greater prospect than them reaching the final was as recently as a month ago, would bring multi-year sustainability to a club which has been a financial basket case for its entire existence.
Even if they fall at the final hurdle, they are likely to have earned £10m more from Europe than last season, there will be associated commercial benefits and crucially, the perceived value of a raft of players out of contract next summer is likely to have doubled. They will sell at a significant premium.
This season will see Newco break even for the first time. The sale of Patterson to Everton earned £9m, with compensation from Aston Villa for their management team bringing in a further £4.5m. Turnover, which excludes money from Everton and Villa, is likely to reach £75m, a lot of money for a young club. Any prospect of Financial Fair Play consequences has disappeared.
To give you an insight into how far ahead Celtic are commercially, that £75m may not be enough to make Newco the highest earning club in Glasgow (transfer fees Celtic received for Edouard, Ajer, etc. are also excluded from this calculation). Next season, Celtic will turnover in excess of £100m, Newco still have work to do to come within £30m of that total.
With the consistent rise in Scotland’s Uefa coefficient, we are likely to see several years where our champions gain automatic entry to the Champions League group stage, whereas the runners up endure two rounds of the treacherous non-champions qualification route. Only two group stage slots are available this way. The stakes could scarcely be higher.
But first, winning the league, qualification for the Champions League with all its benefits lies ahead for Celtic. We battered Hearts in the League and League Cup at Celtic Park this season but won by the slenderest margin on both occasions. Hearts will not make it easy tomorrow. They started the campaign by beating Celtic and feel aggrieved from the subsequent encounters.
Beat Hearts, win the league at Tannadice, celebrate with the trophy and 60,000 friends against Motherwell and remind the world: Glasgow’s green and white! You and I will make sure it remains this way.
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A number of people have posted that Frankfurt have a significant Ultra element in their support. While on the face of it this is a recipe for disaster as we all know the Huns have that in abundance, the poor people of Seville, God help them. But when it all kicks off the SMSM have in abundance the following excuses ready,
‘Gers fans attacked’ ‘Guardia Civil heavy handed’ and this time it won’t be the Chelsea fans who will be blamed but those bad Frankfurt Ultras. You heard it here first!
I HATE the SCUM HUNS…..I always have and I always will.
They will RIOT in Seville NO MATTER the Final score line, I would bet good money on it.
The Destruction of Seville may even start BEFORE the match kicks aff.
SFTB:
You should read mine from today … I’ve said a LOT of what you did in that lenghty post, in particular about the Champions League and Europa League finals of the last two decades or so.
A lot of sense in that post of yours … see, we don’t always disagree!
https://thecelticblog.com/2022/05/articles-and-features/the-real-danger-in-ibroxs-european-run-is-some-will-demand-celtic-match-it/
The hun luck continues……main frankfurt centre back out for season
TR speaking on SKY last week.
We look ridiculously over-trained — he looks as if he has been in a sweatbox for a month.
No wonder we have no energy — we have left it all on the training ground.
Might be a case of sweat now results next season but we do look over-trained.
NB looks as if he is a POW from the Balkan War.
Not good.
Uri Geller claiming credit for the Sevco win
maybe Bitton and Abada can have a word with him before the final!
MADMITCH:
You’ll see the difference in the next campaign, no doubt about it.
I actually keep meaning to do something on that … for a great example watch a Netflix documentary series called Untold. All of them are sensational, with the one on the Danburry Trashers an absolute mental story of Sevco-like corruption … you’ll love it.
But the one that you need to watch to get it is called Breaking Point, about the two US tennis prodigies Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish; the segment on how Fish became, finally, the more accomplished player is an absolute tribute to how conditioning and fanatical focus on fitness and pushing the body to the absolute extremes pays incredible dividends in sport … our own Kieran Tierney is a splendid football case in point.
JHB
However the suggestion that there is some kind of drug regime afoot is absurd in my opinion. Also the dire warnings that the people of Seville are about to face Armageddon, smacks of both sanctimony & jealousy. – let’s wait and see….Armageddon predictions have a poor reputation when it comes to Scottish football.
Sevco drug doping to achieve a sporting advantage? Only they know the truth , but it would not be half as reckless as the underhand practices which led to the demise of oldco .
As for Seville , their follow following has a long and inglorious history of laying waste , win or lose .
JF @ 4.18
Just what point are you trying to make?
We are not good enough for the CL?
If all the teams in a competition are crap then a crap team will win it?
You seem to be trying to ride two horses and fell of half way round.
My point if VR can make the CL SF — then so can we.
We should be a better team than VR.
If we had played them this season what would have been the result?
Our half cooked efforts against RB would suggest we would have been in the mix.
MM
Not surprised at all that you mis-read that as cap doffing or that you extrapolated with a great deal of imagination that my soul fellow (and myself- I was 10 year old at the time) were pessimistic about Europe). You do have a reading issue in that you see what you expect to see whether the words you are reading support it or not.
For the record and, once again in the vain hope that it might stick in your mind:-
I am wholly in favour of Celtic competing in the CL and earning the money to help us gain traction. I am in favour of playing the best teams and risking taking a doing because it is the best way to improve. I am not in favour of deluding myself that we could win it or that it would be might hard to beat any last 16 or quarter final opponent who we might meet if we qualified from Group Stage.
Citing a small-ish but Spanish team who are battle hardened in La Liga as proof that we could do it alters not one word of the formula I gave as to why we or any other peripheral league performers will struggle to break the q-f barriers at CL level. Teams who remained relevant at Euro level through the 70’s 80’s 90’s noughts and tens, like Benfica and Ajax, are not doing this, though Ajax had a gallant failed attempt. Thes types of team are not our comparators; we are at a lower level than them and we could not convince any informed fan of World Football that Celtic are on a par with Benfica or Ajax.
As for the mind set of my da and myself back in 66, I can give you accurate, uninvented info. Neither of us are natural cap doffers but are or were equally hard headed. We knew that Jock was building something very, very promising but we had absolutely no idea that Lisbon triumph was just around the corner. And neither did any other Celt, including the players and Big Jock. Only when we got to the semi’s and a favourable draw, did we dare to dream of a chance to tilt at a final.
And that was back in the pre-Bosman, pre-TV financing, pre- Big 5 leagues where peripheral clubs such as ourselves and Anderlecht and the Dutch were just about to challenge the Latin hegemony over Euro titles.
Only a fool would seek to compare confidence in Euro success from 56 years ago- a different time and a different world where different attitudes and expectations should and did prevail
P.S.- I predict we will beat Hearts but it is always a struggle to do so- reading any defeatism or pessimism into my statement is just straw man/GIGO stuff.
Try reading the actual words and , if you struggle to understand what they might be conveying- just ask!
Posters have to do it all the time with your obfuscating abbreviations- a sure sign that you know what you want to say and expect that others will know it because you do.
CONEYBHOY
Never mind Uri Geller. There’s quite a few on here who think they influence Rangers results just by tuning into their games on TV or radio.
It’s called the jinx complex.
FOURSTONECOPPI @ 3:58 PM
Fek imagine ye wer a tim in this ward
———————————————–
or this one
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17104462.calls-snp-suspend-glasgow-councillor-accused-shouting-sectarian-remarks/
or this one
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-council-candidate-urged-quit-26524845
JF @ 4.29
Training / Conditioning — we are doing too much too quickly.
Especially halfway through a season.
We are exhausted walking out onto the park.
I blame the lack of games — one a week means 5 days hard on the training ground.
When it was two a week AP didn’t have time to run them into the ground.
My thoughts are that our efforts at improved conditioning have been counter productive.
I would throttle back on the training and up the carbohydrate load during the week — the energy will do us good.
We have went from one extreme to the other.
NL efforts made us look like an egg chasing front row carrying their winter weight.
AP’s efforts have us looking like male versions of LizMcC before the Olympics.
MADMITCH:
First up, I’m trying to say that getting to the Champions League latter stages is a pipedream unless you’re on one of those insane runs. Getting to the Europa League final on the back of seven wins is more about luck that it is about good form, and that includes the luck of the draw.
To look at Ibrox’s “achievement” and suggest we ought to be doing the same is to say we should be pressuring people at Celtic Park to be luckier, not necessarily better.
As to the players and their fitness … the human body can be trained to an incredible peak. These guys just aren’t used to it yet. I started doing regular exercise recently, for the first time in ages, and it’s damned difficult and painful, but the consolation is that I know in a few months what takes effort right now will be easier and almost second nature a month after that.
Yeah it’s extreme what the manager is putting the players through … but when these guys can run for 90 minutes non stop you’ll see a show and a half.
I expect by end of May we’ll see some YouTube videos contrasting the great time we all had in Seville, to the triumphal, bigoted, pathetic display that’s inevitable on May 18.
I remember having this predictive discussion with a Hun colleague just ahead on Manchester in 2008; to his cries of dissent.
Didn’t hear back from him afterwards….
SFTB @ 4.41
If we are not held in the same regard as Benfica or Ajax then that is down to the work of one man and one man alone — PL doing the dirty work for the Irish Raj.
He was lifting a bigger bonus that anyone at these teams so at least one person was happy.
If you aim low you become small.
19 years on from Seville and our T/O struggles to be bigger.
That shows the lack of effort from the board better than any other stat.
I have to ask — what is our natural level?
Who can we consider to be our main challengers in the global scheme of football?
If it isn’t VR then who is it?
SFTB @ 4.41
You still haven’t answered the question — who would you expect to be the bigger challenge this season — RB vs VR?
La Liga — 5th vs 7th?
Frankfurt fans already clashed with West Ham fans when both sets of fans were in Seville for respective matches against Betis and Sevilla. They also displayed a banner last night mocking the queen and took 30k fans to Barcelona. Powderkeg doesn’t cover it. This could be the worst and most violent event in sporting history.
GLENDALYSTONSILS on 6TH MAY 2022 4:37 PM
Sevco drug doping to achieve a sporting advantage? Only they know the truth , but it would not be half as reckless as the underhand practices which led to the demise of oldco .
As for Seville , their follow following has a long and inglorious history of laying waste , win or lose .
—-
I totally agree on the ‘financial doping’ and the of circumventing of players’ contract rules in the past – honours ‘won’ during that period should’ve been stripped. However doping individual players with performance enhancing drugs is altogether a different matter altogether.
For a start everyone would need to be in on it and it be 100% leak-proof…..is anything ever? Would any professional footballer be willing to put his career, livelihood & family on the line at the club’s behest, especially those intent on pursuing their careers at a higher level than the SPFL. No – this is a conspiratorial step too far for me.
Yes their support does have an inglorious history, but let’s not pre-judge – to bring it up front & centre now smacks of sour grapes.
Finally, I hope recent events have finally put paid to the belief in some that “the huns are going bust soon” – that has never been the case since Green, the last of the spivs, left the building.
We have to beat them and be better than them – bottom-line.
Someone posted of a good breakfast place near, I think, Queen Steet Station . The name of the place might have started with a `G`. Harly precise, I know but anyone any idea?
MM
“If we are not held in the same regard as Benfica or Ajax then that is down to the work of one man and one man alone — PL doing the dirty work for the Irish Raj.”
I specified Euro relevance throughout the late 70s 80’s 90’s and noughts and tens. That is what differentiates Benfica and Ajax from us.
That cannot be laid at any single door. He wasn’t there for over half of that period.
As for your RB v VR question- I didn’t answer because I did not consider it a big important question or even an interesting one. When these ideas pop into YOUR head, the onus is on you to explain why they are important or big before demanding others do it for you.
I am out for the evening will catch replies around 10.30pm or so
T
D17 @ 5.05
How have things changed since 2008 ???
Post CoViD19 world — everybody is much louder / edgier / angrier.
Full scale war in Europe — nobody want’s to back down.
ID politics turned up to 11 — local / national / international — everybody is at it.
Post Trump — no filters / everybody just lets it all hang out.
Current orgy of WW2 memories / films / remembrances.
You are right it is going to be carnage and to a huge amount of people on all three sides — including the locals — that is they way they want it too happen.
Art is not what you see it is what you do.
SFTB @ 5.16
As always a huge amount of words but very little progress.
Don’t bother about 10.30 — stick it out and head for the dancin.
We’ll cope without you.
I’m in Villanueva del Ariscal, just about to head into Seville for an evening at the Feria.
I suspect that Seville will have the air of Paris on the first of June 1940.
Huge chapter and verse about how the second wave of performance enhancing drugs got into football in the late 60’s into the late 70’s.
There were / are rumours that we got done over by an enhanced team in 1970.
Even had an impact on the 82 WC with the redemption of PR in the eyes of the Italian public.
Drugs are always involved in football.
Sometimes on the periphery sometimes at the heart of things.
The L/pool asthma stats are out in the open.
“JHB on 6TH MAY 2022 5:09 PM
Yes their support does have an inglorious history, but let’s not pre-judge – to bring it up front & centre now smacks of sour grapes.”
I can see why it might be thought that that view `smacks of sour grapes` but is it not also a consideration that the timing of the expression of that view is to do with the fact that a potential trip to Sevilla has now become a FACT?
MADMITCH on 6TH MAY 2022 5:25 PM
—–
Re: “Liverpool Asthma stats are out in the open” – are you able to provide a source?
It would be of interest to me.
Re my 5:15 pm question, Drouthy`s was the place I was looking for !
Sinn Féin doin well
…..and I will be going there about 9:30am on Saturday for a pre-match breakfast and maybe even a pint !
geebee1978 on 6th May 2022 1:53 pm
HANKRAY on 6TH MAY 2022 1:47 PM
Not sure they’ll have a better chance against Frankfurt.
What impressed/surprised me about them was that they also matched West Ham’s physicality then beat them technically which gives me hope for the final. Neutral ground too……this isn’t a foregone conclusion…
Didn’t see the Frankfurt West Ham game last nightbut Newco won’t be found wanting in the physicality stakes either. They are a big side as we all know and last night they took no prisoners in the 50/50 crunching tackles of Bassey, Lundstram, Aribo, Jarosic etc.
I noticed Van Bronchurst’s tactic to beat the high press of the Germans was the long ball over the top of the defenders with his team picking up most of the second balls, not pretty but worked.
“but let’s not pre-judge..”
Aye, and we might wangle a place in the top six playing off the cuff fitba’…
JHB…the intellectual truthmiser. :-)
Dream scenario.
Eintracht Frankfurt win the EL final.
Huns riot i lnside the stadium and on the pitch.
Rangers banned from Europe for 3 years.
I know. I’m a bad man.
Has a bad side ever made it to a Euro Final? you know the answer.
Ange has done a fantastic job, what the hun have achieved proves that.
HOT SMOKED on 6TH MAY 2022 5:39 PM
…..and I will be going there about 9:30am on Saturday for a pre-match breakfast and maybe even a pint !
Mange tout Rodney!
HOT SMOKED @ 5:29
——
Yes of course, as you say, the context has changed. Nothing has happened yet – I’m sure there will be ample opportunity to comment, if & when it does. It’s just feels like easy headlines at this juncture to deflect what is a worthy feat by the team.
On the pitch, this is, or, should be, a seminal moment for Celtic.
Birmingham, Newcastle, Birmingham again.
Barcelona, Manchester, Hampden x 3.
Nobody told me there would be days like these, strange days indeed.