Uefa yesterday confirmed how they would deal with with Financial Fair Play (FFP) with respect to the crisis. Their statement had a bit of something for everyone: those who are keen to see FFP rules applied and those who are looking for some wriggle room.
Of the six emergency measures, two encapsulated both sides of this coin:
“Neutralising the adverse impact of the pandemic by allowing clubs to adjust the break-even calculation for revenue shortfalls reported in 2020 and 2021, while at the same time protecting the system from potential abuses
“Addressing the actual problem which is revenue shortfall due to COVID-19 and not financial mismanagement”
Protecting the system from potential abusers and not providing cover for financial mismanagement are strong messages. Miscreant clubs who have wallowed in financial mismanagement are under Uefa monitoring remain under pressure, the best they can hope for is a one-year reprieve from consequences.
Congratulations to SPFL chief executive, Neil Doncaster, who was appointed to the Uefa Disciplinary Body yesterday, recognition, I’m sure, of the manner he handled himself in recent months.
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Doesnt look good celtic way. Staff..being told all sorts.
What are we ?
Betty of Pearse Street Dublin.
God bless you sweetheart.
the doctor said this week;
‘Elizabeth, if your blood pressure drops again , we’re going to have opt for an induced coma’
‘no you’re grand thanks’ says Betty!!
Thanks for letting me share cqn and as always for letting me listen to all your stories.
Well who else ,they have mega bucks , mind you it took from 1998 till 2019 to put a lick off Paint on the Main Stand for F—KS Sake .
Ivehadto: Aunt Betty is in my thoughts.
Up de Dubs.
SFtBs @ 6:13 PM,
Well firstly let me say my comments were aimed in general at share ownership.
I believe that Fergus envisaged a PLC with a wide ownership among the support, with quality professional investors like DD and professionals on Board like Brian Quinn to ensure the Club had wide spread ownership but is professionally run.
Of course being a PLC the ownership can and has reverted to a couple of wealthy individuals. Not what was envisaged.
Next when I say – take the hit – I’m talking about the risk to the share price. You would assume long term membership owners schemes that a hit on the overall value of the Club in the short term would be managable.
If you have £45 million in the bank, pay £30 million for players that don’t work out and you fail to qualify for Europe, you are not going to go bust, but you are going to ask some serious questions right.
If you have institutional investors that risk – normal football risk, is not acceptable. It makes the Club far too cautious, £45 million to spend and Cluj send us out of the UCL…. no that’s not acceptable. There is a middle way between that and bankrupting the Club.
There is also the fact that employees of the Clubs must do there job well, we all have to.
Footballers who are very good, coaches that are inspiring, Managers that are winners. Whats wrong in expecting that. Excellence as standard in sporting circles should be achievable.
That is not gambling. To my mind what is gambling is buying dozens of players and hope a couple come good.
The old argument we can’t pick a decent football player because it’s a lottery. Lets get someone in who can.
It’s not a matter of the PLC selling players and re-investing, that was the myth from the last decade, we have £45 million in the bank because that we daren’t reinvest – a crazy position to be in.
The only logical reason I see for this as commented on before, is to give value to the business ergo stockholders. It’s the right thing to do if you’re a PLC. It’s the wrong thing to do if you’re a football club.
I’m not sure I understand your dividend question.
Here’s what I think happens. Only preference shares pay dividends, only DD has them. They don’t pay out a lot.
They come from money invested by DD that helped build the new stadium and the payment is a type of ROI. I stand to be corrected though.
GUYFAWKESAFOREVERHERO reckons it amounts to 500k per annum so not too challenging.
My point about shareholders dividends was even if we make a profit and have money in the bank we don’t pay them on ordinary shares.
That’s another reason why a PLC model doesn’t work.
We don’t want to pay the money out in dividends.
We can’t re-invest the money in the football team as it’s deemed too risky to “gamble” on anything above beating Rangers.
Currently the best use of the cash is to keep it in the bank which adds value and liquidity to the company and stabilises the share price.
So we don’t really attract Corporate Raiders. The speculators are interested in the totally value of the Club as a whole getting significanly bigger (maybe 5 times) but that’s only going to happen if we move to a larger, richer league.
We all want to do better. We all would prefer a fan owned club to a plc run club.
We should do this, but don’t be overattached to the PLC as the last 15 years has proved it’s far from ideal for a football club.
Hail Hail
Pearse Street almore – Tarmac McQuillan, my grandad – dreadful for going over to The Magnet, he’d stop traffic with his stick- it turned into The Widow Scallans- and then my cousin saw the uvf/uff attack on the widow scallans – held the dying guy in his hands; oh boy!
I’ve had to
Thoughts and prayers for your Aunt Betty.
HH
God Bless Aunt Betty & God Bless Martin Doherty, the doorman at Widow Scallans who lost his own life but saved many others when he challenged the UVF Murder Squad.
Ivehadto
Prayers said for Aunt Betty – sounds a tough old lady.
Ivehad- God bless aunty Betty 🇮🇪🙏🇮🇪
HH
D. :)
Adi
What’s the story ?
Congratulating Doncaster?
What next Paul? Wishing Rangers all the best in going for 55?
Pathetic.
I’VEHADTOCHANGEMYNAMEBACKTOJACKIEMAC,
God Bless Your Aunty Betty.
Hail Hail
I’VEHADTO …. Prayer said for Aunt Betty. Will remember her at Mass tomorrow.
I’VEHADTOCHANGEMYNAMEBACKTOJACKIEMAC
Thoughts with you and your aunt Betty
Ivehadto: I’m sure I knew Martin but I wouldn’t have known him too well. I knew his partner, though.
Chat on share price is fine. Keep it in perspective, only one of many key indicators the Board require PL to keep a beady eye on. Turnover, season ticket numbers, match attendance come to mind. There are others, all included in the Annual Report, I think tabled as a five year record.
One clear advantage of the PLC model is that Celtic and ManUtd are probably the two most scrutinised football clubs in the country.
The significance of a strong share price is to make a predatory strike less likely, the opposite of what DD’s innumerate detractors claim.
Personally, I’d say after twenty five years DD is entitled to the benefit of any doubt about his investment in Celtic being emotional rather than financial.
——————————————————————-
All good luck to Aunt Betty and the Square Marchers tomorrow and thereafter.
Hearing Bella Ciao everywhere I went today. Hope you are all word perfect giving it laldy.
IVEHADTO…………….
Prayers said for Aunt Betty.
God bless!
Golf will probably be stopped again
Looks like Keane choking for the pubs to open anaw…
I’vehadto
Prayer will be said for your aunt Betty.
Chairbhoy @ 7.29
If as you admit, not a lot is being taken out of the club by Dermot Desmond, and it is certainly not an amount that makes much difference to our standing or spending power, then how do they harm us?
Your clarification seems to suggest by 2 ways-
1) Keeping us as a well run low spend club makes us an attractive option for future buyers- But how will these future owners/shareholders hope to make any money from us? It’s just passing the buck down the line
2) You characterise the selling of players as being necessitated by the need to keep th ahre price and the dividend high to make us a sellable club and an attractive buying proposition.- the same question occurs – if DD is not making any worthwhile (by his standards) money out of Celtic, how would any other owner do so?
You then interject the possibility of the club making money for him if we get to a different league- if we get our chance to be one of the big boys. Yet, if that happens, it will be because we have done the right things during this period- the right things that you claim are wrong. If we get there, it is a win:win. DD finally makes some money and we get a stature commensurate with our following. It is as worthwhile a trade as the one Fergus made with us. If we had pursued a different policy, would we be in any better position to make this jump?- it does not seem so. What would have neen the point of spending a lot more to go one or two rounds more in Europe. Benfica and Olympiakos have done so and they have not jumped into an elite group, though they remain ahead of Celtic.
There is always a delicate balance between success and profitability. No one wants us to lose out on CL millions, not you nor I , not DD nor PL. They run the club this way because they see this as the optimum way for a big club in a small league to be run. And there are not any similar comparator clubs doing otherwise. When Dutch Clubs lose a Van Persie, Suarez or Van Nistlerooy – they do not pay out the same sum they received on a ready made replacement; they buy as promising a young player as they can to repeat the cycle because they too are fallen giants and cannot compete financially with the clubs that predate upon them. The only difference was they were replacing £25m and £50m players with £10m and £15m while we were, until recently replacing £10m sales with £3m – £4m buys. The strategy is the same – the gearing was slightly different.
And as for your recipe to improve trading, you state:-
“There is also the fact that employees of the Clubs must do there job well, we all have to.
Footballers who are very good, coaches that are inspiring, Managers that are winners. Whats wrong in expecting that. Excellence as standard in sporting circles should be achievable.
That is not gambling. To my mind what is gambling is buying dozens of players and hope a couple come good.”
——————————————————
Nobody is delinerately buying bad players or hiring uninspiring coaches or managers. We paid good money to recruit Tony Mowbray and we failed to land Roberto Martinez when he would have cost less (without complaint from our fans). Only the cheap option proved to be inspiring in his future coaching career. More money spent on a bigger name guaranteed nothing.
What is wrong in expecting winners?- nothing if you can deliver it. If you merely expect it and ask someone else to deliver your ambition- there is a lot wrong with it. You are placing your historically unlikely ( in that we have been top European club team only once and never got to be best team in the world) expectation as a burden for someone else to deliver. And you wil berate them soundly for failing to do what you did not do yourself. If the formula is so easy to prove succesful, them why are there not hundreds of gifted blog posters out there proving their worth with Alloa or EK Thistle or Larkhall Boys CLub to attract the attention of chairmen of bigger clubs elsewhere?
There is good reason to believe that we have no one on these many Celtic Blogs who has managed a club beyond amateur level or, at best, Junior, level. There are none with a proven record of delivering excellence and winning. Managers who constantly win against the odds- Mourinho, Ferguson, Guardiola are way out of our league and we have to shop in our own market. If we paid huge sums for a Manager, we have less to spend on a squad and these managers will not come to work with inferior tools, or will not do so for too long as Brendan showed.
When we do get good winning managers WGS won 3 leagues out of 4 , Ronny Deila 2 out of 2, and Lenny presided over only one lost league and it was lost before he took over; he has since delivered 4, we complain that they don’t do well consistently in Europe. Now I believe we can improve in that arena but the odds on a CL run to quarter-final stage or a Europa run to Semi-finalists or finalists lengthen each year as bigger better financed clubs take these events more seriously.
“Excellence as standard” needs to be defined. What additional excellence did Brendan provide us with that Neil did not. He won the same events domestically that they did and his Euro highpoint was matched quickly by Neil Lennon and has been surpassed by MON and WGS previously.
“That is not gambling”- Of course it is and unlike the low punts model- it is gambling with higher stakes- and is a quicker road to the debtor prison.
It is all very well to talk about better players, excellent managers, bigger buys and better Euro achievments.
They are fine aspirations and dreams but they are not an operationalised plan.
Unless you can say who to buy, as players and managers, and at what cost, you have done nothing other than state it could be better. You are ignoring the other two possibilities- you could be effecting no change or you could make things worse.
I want sober responsible people in charge of Celtic. The rest of us can afford to indulge in harmless dreaming and imagining we have the secret to guaranteed success.
I know I do not have it (though I had a winning coaching and playing record in my sport) and I doubt that you have it either.
Thanks bhoys, I’m struggling.
Love y’all.
Scoreline today in the Russian PL – Sochi 10 Rostov 1
Sochi are a mid-table team- before today’s game they were 1 point above the relegation threatened teams. Rostov are in 4th place. If they had won by a large score they could have moved 2nd on GD.
Rostov scored first and there were no players sent off. Looks like Putin’s boys have made a killing on this result.
” FAIRHILL BHOY on 19TH JUNE 2020 9:14 PM
Golf will probably be stopped again ”
Why?????
SFTB
You are on a roll today…😉😉
HOT SMOKED
One of the players (Nick Watney) tested positive for Covid .
The initial source of current debate was a Membership Scheme that would allow Celtic supporters to pay in almost equal measure to watch Celtic play football in the way that suited the circumstances of supporters that can change year on year and certainly year on advancing year.
It was in response to the position Celtic now face, and may face again, where Celtic’s financial fate depends on the emotional investment of the percentage of the support who purchase STs but with no guarantee of when they can attend at Celtic Park.
Not all Celtic’s eggs are in the ST Basket but there are more than enough that if physical attendance is impossible or delayed or less enjoyable or risky, Celtic risk losing some if not all the advantages years of financial prudence have provided.
The Membership scheme puts the income eggs in a number of baskets and if everyone can see a game, even if behind closed doors with no atmosphere, those supporters who are not ST regulars or can no longer afford an ST, might be more willing to pay to watch in circumstances where the support and The Board were seen to all be pulling in the same direction and not relying on the emotions of the support to stay afloat.
What is happening now is unprecedented and it needs unprecedented thinking, but we are stuck in the debate of precedence.
An underlying premise of making the Membership Model a reality was that not enough supporters would respond positively to their emotions being used, or can no longer afford an ST because they have lost their job
or
simply they want something more in return for their emotional investment, especially if investors with large shareholdings do not fill the gap that retains the advantages from years of prudence, from which they have received dividends, emotional investors haven’t.
The amount matters less than the fact that it is the small shareholders and supporters who are being asked to step up to the plate with no other incentive than not feeling guilty if they do .
Thus the first tier of the Membership scheme suggested paying for a say in the running of Celtic. What form that would take would have to be decided and what might have been pie in the sky when Celtic were profitable, might become attractive if the cost of retaining the financial advantage had to be met by large shareholders thus costing them.
I mean what would be the risk to them about being just that bit more accountable to the support compared to the complete absence of accountability that has allowed the 5 Way Agreement to stain Scottish football and another club to put the rest of Scottish football in jeopardy?
Does anyone think that had there been some support/small shareholder input to the 5 Way Agreement it would have resulted in a club who had cheated Scottish Football and Celtic for years, culminating in fraud in 2011, being allowed to continue as if all they had done was made mistakes registering players?
When matters started to come to light in 2013 and had there been some support input at Board level representing/echoing the emotional investors that Celtic totally rely on as a club but seem to have forgotten, would Res12 have been passed or adjourned?
Would the LNS Commission not been challenged from 2014 , when evidence to do so was provided and again in 2017 after SFA CEO Regan suggested Celtic/SPFL take SDM’s testimony at court in the CW Trial re sporting advantage to Lord Nimmo Smith?
Why was that not done, especially after a suggestion was made in early 2018 that SDM’s testimony to the FTT be included as part of the approach?
Would Rangers have survived had maintaining the integrity of the game mattered more and just how desperate were Celtic to make sure that they did, but at what price to The Celtic Board’s integrity?
Exactly what is wrong in seeking accountability to an intelligent support?
The Membership model is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-X3f5S7iLvhXGCLBFwLvpbX42FWPIS25/view
SFtBs @ 9:40 PM,
You seem to be conflating several debates which of course I’ve touched on but has now become rather confusing.
We have done the “spending money to get European football” debate as well as “what is Celtic’s true level of success” many times over the last decade. These debates are worth revisiting but conflating them with the Club ownership structure is hard to follow.
Now I can see the reasoning, the impression the Celtic Board seem to imbue in many, is an organisation with multiple personality disorder. Examples
Every penny made will go back in the Club – then sitting on a fortune in the bank.
Giving the impression during the Rangers scandal that integrity of the game is paramount – then making empty gestures or turning a blind eye vis~a~vis Res12, the five way agreement, LNS Commission findings etc
Giving the impression that the only way to run the Celtic organisation is with cold hard professional precision – then asking clients to donate money owed to them in refunds and buy a season ticket at full value when unable to offer that client what they are paying for.
The fact is Celtic is run as a PLC, a type if business designed to maximise profits and support stockholder value.
The “old firm model” was a gold mine for them, yet the narrative from the support and the emotional investors was, what ever part of my Club depends on Rangers I can do without… expressed as “we don’t need no stinking Rangers.”
So all the while the Board are ensuring nothing is done that will jeopardize the re-emergence of Rangers, the continuity myth and the old firm cash cow.
Now these examples and they’re many more of this seemingly contradictory behaviour stem from the fact we have PLC dressed as a Community Football Club.
Now what I’ve done by trying to project the argument and give examples why a PLC Board find it difficult to act in the best interest of the Football Club at all times is muddy the water.
Auldheid’s very salient points above is the positive way forward, we should concentrate on that, learning the lessons from 2011 and restructuring a professional and fit for purpose ownership model.
Aff Oot
Hail Hail
Enjoying the debate with Chairbhoy and SFTB with guyfawkks and Auldheid , (sorry if I’ve missed anyone out)
I’ve had to
I’ll say a few prayers for Betty during mass this morning
Hi Bhoys
Up early today open blog have a read and mind starts running wild, so here is my wildest thought this morning.
Celtic board running club to make money they can’t spend because if the £40 million??? in the bank is spent on players we make the gap between us and everybody else in Scotland so big everyone, even huns, can see we will never be caught. So sit on the cash and dream of other ways to spend it. Hotel???
While the huns by hook or by crook slowly creep closer keeping the horde on board at ibrox. Keeps the hun money coming through the gates. Keeps the co-conspirators at Celtic park, ibrox and hampden happy as the “old firm” cash cow is kept alive.
Covid comes along wipes out the bank balance that was the safety net if the huns got to close.
PLC board start panicking as they see the mess that lies before them,hence the PR screw up that we have witnessed this close season. Now all they can think of is how to keep money in the bank, so season ticket holders are getting screwed again.
Just a wee thought to consider over your cornflakes this morning.
KEEP THE FAITH
Chairbhoy, thanks for the information. Makes sense since it is UEFA competition. 👍
Cant believe that some cannot see the sarcasm in Paul’s last paragraph.Deary me.
TB
People often see what they want to see.
Hot Smoked,
And nowhere more so,than on here.
Tony Rome,
What was the “PR disaster”during this close season.
Turkeybhoy on 20th June 2020 8:52 am
Tony Rome,
What was the “PR disaster”during this close season.
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Come on Turkeybhoy are you telling me you can’t see the way the rebate on last years season ticket has been handled as well as the lack of engagement surrounding this years tickets and pricing. Also maybe not so much but the information spread regards the virtual ticket eg will it be available to non season ticket holders. It hasn’t exactly been professional has it? Or have I missed some club communications?
KEEP THE FAITH