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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AT, see you at the corner with that other giant of a Celtic fan
Big Jamesgang 🍀
Wee side issue
God bless the men and woman of Scottish Mountain Rescue.660 logged call outs,including 19 fatalities unfortunately,safeguarding the mountains
God bless them and all rescue services
HH
Am I the only one who keeps wakening up then checking the time every hour My wife says for goodness sake it’s only a game ,
Today Celtic should all but secure its 32nd league championship win in my 60 years on this planet.
Aberdeen has won 4, Dundee, Dundee Utd and Kilmarnock each won 1 and the assorted Rangers franchises has won 21.
I am living in exceptional Celtic times really.
I hope those lucky enough to be going along today get the result you deserve and can embark on a week of special celebrations.
The previous 20 league wins prior spanned 72 years which gives some perspective and shows every league win should be cherished.
Watched a wee bit of football this week Leipzig on Monday, flicking between l’pool v Villarreal and 2 thistles on Tuesday, Madrid v citeh on wednesday, Leipzig again on Thursday and some of the 2 thistles last night ….
Celtic is a different sport from all that other guff
Mon the hoops … 3pts will suffice, another small step towards Ange’s (hopefully) first title of many
Only a fool would predict the outcome of a football match
Celtic 4 Craig Gordon’s team 0
I see Pat Nevis this CV morning engaging in mental gymnastics commenting on Sevco’s run to Seville.
“ An incredible achievement after their financial difficulties and slipping down the leagues”.
The greatest hoax played on the sporting public yet public ( self appointed) commentators cannot bring themselves to speak plainly on the matter. They went into administration and were liquidated.
All the semantically arguments in the world does not change those facts.
Celts on the front foot from the start
5-0
Thanks to Ange Players and all for achieving this
HH
Pet Navan……………
Another sleekit nugget.
Hell mend ‘im.
Chelsea sold.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61360374
Chelsea are a small Club – roughly the size of Fulham.
It’s the wonga wot done for them.
In the main an ‘orrible lot.
Hate the scoreline predictions, any win will do. Just win Celtic, Please.
Here we go again
Clap clap
Sorry Corky can’t help myself
Hopefully fun day in Paradise
HH
Pat Nevin cousin of Terry Butcher?
Time for a warm up in the Victoria Bar.
SFTBs
From yesterday (I got sidetracked with work so couldn’t reply), I don’t have time to find previous posts about not competing, but there’s ample evidence that lots of us see Europe as a bonus and the league being the be all and end all – see the “Hibs is the more important game” comments in the run up to and aftermath of the second leg of the Bodo game – we were only 2 goals down to a team in pre-season and we’d thrown in the towel. They didn’t do that in any of the ties they were behind in – Braga, Leipzig. You can be sure a good number of us would have said “we can’t compete” if we were drawn against Dortmund or Leipzig.
The biggest lesson we can learn from them is about doing all we can to make our football team as good as it can be! They’ve spent money they don’t have to achieve success and did so – they stopped our 10 (a holy grail for them) and have achieved European respectability.
We, by contrast, appear to take a “just enough” perspective – we do things either the cheap way or the easy way. Examples include appointing Ronnie as head coach when we intended him to be assistant manager, appointing Lennon in the showers, WGS wanting Fletcher and getting Flood, a “jobs for the boys” approach to the back room team, replacing McKay as he was too much for the Board, keeping Lennon too long last year and giving Kennedy an audition, missing out on Toney, McGinn, Puccini et al for relatively small sums of money, the list goes on! We’re amateurish and have no ambition (Bankier basically said there’s no point aiming for CL as we have had some pastings) to modernise, improve or be the best we can be! Just enough to achieve domestic success and no more than that is our approach.
On this day
1970
The end of the 1969/70 season marked the close of a truly remarkable playing career, with legendary Lions’ keeper, Ronnie Simpson hanging up his gloves on May 7. The elder statesman of the European Cup-winning side, affectionately known as ‘Faither’, was 39 years of age and finally been forced to retire after a run of unfortunate and painful injuries. Simpson’s professional career actually started in 1945 with Queens Park at the age of just 14 days and 243 days and he went on to become a legend at St James’ Park, winning two FA Cups with Newcastle United. He initially joined Celtic from Jock Stein’s Hibernian in 1964 and some thought that his days were numbered when Stein returned to the East End of Glasgow. But instead, Simpson recaptured his finest form in season 1966/67 and won his first championship medal, his first Scottish Cup, the Scottish Player of the Year award and the European Cup. Then in 1969, Simpson’s shoulder was dislocated for the first time in a game at Shawfield, marking the start of his injury problems. A season-long spell as manager of Hamilton followed, but in his latter years, Ronnie continued to stand as an outstanding ambassador for the club and the Scottish game as a whole. He passed away in March 2004 and is rightly remembered as a true Celtic great.
CELTIC: Hart, Ralston, Starfelt, Carter-Vickers, Taylor, McGregor, O’Riley, Turnbull, Jota, Maeda, Kyogo.
Subs: Bain, Bitton, Giakoumakis, Abada, McCarthy, Rogic, Hatate, Forrest, Welsh.
CELTIC: Hart, Ralston, Starfelt, Carter-Vickers, Taylor, McGregor, O’Riley, Turnbull, Jota, Maeda, Kyogo.
Subs: Bain, Bitton, Giakoumakis, Abada, McCarthy, Rogic, Hatate, Forrest, Welsh.
Sorry Bognorbhoy . Gold for you , silver for me !
Turnbull in for hatate.
The more a good teams posted the better 😜
Up the Hoops
Lightweight midfield ( the mini’s will be very physical) and GG must be pissed off with his scoring record.
Who’d be a football manager.
Who is the mib please?
robertson
Philbhoy
Don Robertson is the ref today
Thanks!
Corkcekt
Score predictions are just a bit of fun, like yourself I will take any 3pts today …. But if by a few goals it certainly makes it a wee bit less stressful:-)
Corkcelt that should read … I can’t even spell so no need to think I will predict a correct score !
live updates up
bognorbhoy
Ronnie, of course, was also in goal on April 15 1967, when Scotland defeated reigning World Champions England at Wembley 3-2. Gordon Banks was in the other goal. Fellow Celts on the pitch, Tommy Gemmell, Willie Wallace and Bobby Lennox. Bobby Brown had planned to play Jimmy Johnstone, who had scored twice against the same opposition at Hampden the previous year, but Jimmy got injured against Dukla Prague only three days earlier, and it was Wispy in fact who took his place.