State of the Club Report, December 2024

My friends in Celtic, the third domestic trophy returned to the boardroom earlier this month.  We sit 14 points clear at the top of the league table, and with 20 games remaining, you can get 20/1 on Newco for the title and 750/1 on Aberdeen.  Yet again, Celtic are not so much a sporting favourite, than an investment asset (this is not gambling advice!).

We have nine points after six games in the Champions League and could confirm qualification for the knockout round next month.  The club reported record turnover for last season of £124.6m, with £77m in the bank.

Good performances in Europe contributed significantly to this calendar year seeing only two defeats in all competitions: a random 10-man loss at Hearts and an absolute drubbing at Dortmund.  2024 is the year that delivered more major trophies than defeats.  This has never happened before and surely will never happen again.

The summer transfer window saw £31.2m spent on in-coming players, with a new high watermark of £11m splurged on Arne Engels.  How easily we moved on from the loss of Jota and Matt O’Riley.

A new transfer window opens tomorrow, so before the madness gets underway again, recall the angry and entitled writers who despaired all summer at Celtic’s transfer activity.  Their form is as consistent as Cameron Carter-Vickers, so you will hear from them again soon.  Transfer business is skewed to the end of the window and is more complicated than many would have you believe.

2025 opens at Ibrox, where it is seldom easy.  However, a Celtic defeat would not convince any of the 50,000 attendees that their ‘heroes’ are capable of catching the champions.

In February we had slipped behind Newco and were playing poorly.  I was concerned the title would be lost, Newco would earn a Champions League lifeline and Celtic would plunge into disarray.

As it turned out, the Premiership, Scottish Cup and League Cup were all decided in pivotal games against Newco: 3-3 draw at Ibrox, the 1-0 Scottish Cup Final win and the penalty decider in the League Cup Final.  All of these games could have gone the other way, and for a period, looked as though they would.

It is to Brendan Rodgers eternal credit that he knows how to win tight games.  Marginal differences in the game at Ibrox were enough to change Scottish football history – and not just for last season.  With £77m in the bank, Celtic would have coped with a second place finish, albeit, there would have been a trauma.  Newco, however, were devastated by the consequences of only taking a point that day.  They celebrated the passing of their last chance.

We are in the fortunate position to have a manager, players and entire club who collectively have the corporate experience to get the job done.  As long as Celtic perform as they have been recently, we will dominate in Scotland and give a reasonable account of ourselves in Europe.

Some of us lived through the 90s, when Rangers were out of sight and Celtic were under-resourced.  Always.  We won the league in 1998, due to a random series of events, including signing a winger from Feyenoord, but that was a one-off.  The next two seasons were a return to more of the same.

The rebirth of Celtic under Martin O’Neill had a compelling side story: the corporate disaster zone that was Rangers under the bombast of David Murray and his non-execs.  They lost £35m in one season; Martin found himself battling against a dying empire.

Rangers acted as though their domination was guaranteed.  Even our 1998 triumph was handled interestingly by Murray, saying “9 out of 10, not good enough”.  The seeds of their downfall were writ large over their accounts and those of Murray International Holdings, for anyone who cared to read them.

Their domination was so overwhelming, it was almost impossible to get anyone to listen to reality back then.  So let’s be clear:

Domination is good.
Generation(s) of Domination is great.
Ignore the fundamentals of business and you sow the seeds of downfall.

Celtic are successful domestically because we recruit well, we develop players well and we have elite level managers, coaches and sports scientists.  There is, however, a gap between where we are and where we could be.

Brugge spent around half of what we spent on Arne on their most expensive summer signing and spent less overall than Celtic (in absolute and net terms).  They have not and never will spend £9m on a player from the Norwich City bench.

Champions League qualification is coming your way quickly and we will be up against teams who work the way we did to find and develop Kuhn, Bernardo, Johnstone, Jota and our Japanese contingent.  Celtic excelled in that space for over two years.

Looking back on Ange Postecoglou’s time, recruitment now appears to be his strong suit (he has no such controls at Spurs).  Brendan is more of a master tactician.  If we continue to scout players Brendan has watched or worked with, we will decline.

The players we sell for a profit in 2027 and 2028 should be signing targets in 2025.  They need to have development potential and eventually leave a price several times higher.  If we get this wrong, it is the chink in the armour our opponents need to become relevant again.

Our operating expenses for the year to 30 June, which excludes transfer fees, were £105m.  That’s the cost of doing business at Celtic currently.  You don’t need me to tell you what happens to our profitability if we fail to reach the Champions League.

We are not Oldco Rangers; the financial reserves are there to prevent a cataclysmic retrenchment in the event we run at a loss, but keeping the club profitable, improving the player trading model (good though it is, it still has a long way to go) and maintaining salary levels consistent with our income spectrum will determine if you ever get to celebrate 10-in-a-row.

No harm to Real Madrid, who have normalised winning the Champions League, but Celtic fans have the best role in football.  Despite being pushed all the way, we get to win so many trophies, achieve our own level of joys in Europe, with remarkably few god days.

This was not always the case and it took God-level strategic planning to achieve.  It cannot last forever, but a quarter of the way through this century there is no sign of a sunset.  The 2024 title win was genuinely pivotal.  Congratulations to everyone at the club who played a role in delivering yet again, often in the face of absurd hostility.

Have a great New Year, Paul.

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