Premiership-Championship, financial fundamentals

We’re in the last week of November and one point separates Celtic, Inverness and Dundee United at the top of the table, with Hamilton a point behind.  Dundee, who put on a credible performance yesterday, sit alongside seventh placed Kilmarnock, nine points of the pace.  That’s more than half the league within nine points of the top.

Remember the day Accies relegated Hibs, and we were told how the Championship would be vastly more competitive than the Premiership this season?  There’s a nine point gap at the top of the Championship, which is the least competitive senior league in Britain.

If you were an investor in a Championship team located anywhere outside Gorgie, you might be running the numbers this morning on what another season of lower league football is going to cost to fund.  With ever-diminishing income I know one club who could need £30m investment to get them through another 18 months of Championship football.

The chances of than kind of money materialising are zero, no matter if they flog their properties.  There will also be a structural deficit, even with Premiership football, of having a massive infrastructure to support, without European revenue, of around £10m per season.

If you are a football club in Scotland with a large infrastructure to operate, maintain, police and insure, you need significant and regular European income.  The cost of funding the job to overcome domestic and European competition (all of the latter would be seeded), runs into many tens of millions.

No one has even pretended they have a viable plan to overcome such obstacles.  Hope you can find the fun in financial fundamentals.

Thanks for the feedback on Caesar & the Assassin, which is available here on CQNBookstore, but… if you go here, for an extra £1.01 you can get the book and a DVD (from Cesar (sic.), 6-2 game, Road to Seville, Birthday Bhoys Beating Barca).

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