Celtic’s qualification for the Group Stages of the Champions League was secured last night in a tense encounter which was characterised by nervousness. You could tell the immense consequences of failure were on a lot of minds. This wasn’t just the prospect of facing three years away from the top table, this was maintaining the feel-good factor at the club, it was their futures, it was the Brendan Rodgers’ revolution’s early phase.
This was a game-changing moment for our club, because it is the game which funds that first phase. It will give Rodgers the latitude to get in the players he wants, and build the team he longs to see out on the park. There are key areas which need addressed, but the money is there now, the resources will be in place. This is huge. The significance of it can’t be overstated. At one point last night all of this was up in the air, the transfer kitty, the marquee signing, the profile raising games … it was all in the balance. Then he went five at the back and steadied the ship.
For well over a year the press was telling us that getting to this Promised Land was impossible, that it was out of reach for Scottish clubs, that our future was scrabbling around in the Europa League and hoping for a miracle that lifted us out of this fair land and set us down in some kind of continental or regional tournament.
Those of us who watched our team closely last season knew that some of the players wouldn’t cut it but that the squad was not as bad as the press was making out. With some signings and the right man at the helm there was a chance to make it.
We brought in the right man. His signings have been very shrewd. More work needs to be done, but the tens of millions we netted last night justified the risks thus far and give us a fantastic base on which to do the necessary building work.
Those millions elevate us to a brand new plain, well out of reach of our Scottish rivals. Aberdeen and Hearts will live with that; their fans get it, they understand that our resources make a real challenge next to impossible, and although neither club will give up – and nor should they – their supporters aren’t burdened by unrealistic expectations.
Not so, the arrogant inhabitants of Ibrox who have already written off every other team in the land and see themselves as challenging us as if by right. That task became monumentally more difficult last night, and for all Barton’s sneering on Twitter, this is a disastrous result for them, perhaps even a catastrophic one. The gulf between their club and ours was already enormous. Now it is a yawning chasm, like the Grand Canyon, wide and deep and virtually unbridgeable.
Current estimates, from informed sources, suggest that their club will not finish this season without additional financing in the region of £5 million, and this is based mostly on last year’s figures and takes no account of their increased salary spending and transfer fees.
It also fails to take into account “exceptional costs” like their stadium maintenance bill and the high probability of court cases as sponsors and kit manufacturers aim to claw back millions in advances already paid. The dominos don’t stop falling with that one.
All of this will have to be managed in the shadow of Celtic’s European adventures and the vast earnings that come with them.
Sevco has gambled its future – quite literally – on a second place finish and European football. Should that gamble fail, and that’s not unlikely, they’ll be counting the cost for years if they survive that long … which I wouldn’t bet on.
They have already reached peak earnings.
With no prospect of serious money from merchandising, media rights, with sponsors and kit makers on the brink of pulling out, and the dreadful effects that will have on their “brand value” their club is in enormous trouble, with ramifications which would be unbelievable except that we’ve seen this movie before.
Our own earnings for this season could top £80 million, which puts us on a par with some of the lower tier EPL sides, even accounting for their enormous television advances. That’s the scale of what we’ve done here, the size of last night’s result.
Imagine the quandary this puts King in.
He really did believe he could ride into Ibrox and get away with bluff and bullshit and doing things on the cheap.
With our extra money in the bank the truth is that even if he suddenly did the impossible now and found money in the mattress and was able to provide – after more than a year of obfuscations, excuses and outright lies – that “over investment” he promised, all that proposed £30 million would do is put the two clubs on roughly the footing they were before last night.
And as this site and others have demonstrated time and time again, that means they’re nowhere, with Celtic holding a projected financial advantage in the tens of millions, enabling us to spend more on players, pay them higher salaries and maintain all the infrastructure of a major club, from the youth academy to a stadium in good repair.
There is simply no escaping the cold hard facts here, and if King is being realistic with the fans, and they are willing to accept reality, there’s a chance – a slim one – that they could make it through the next few years living within their limited means.
To try and keep up would be suicidal, financially ruinous in a way Murray wouldn’t have dared, and for what?
To stop us getting to ten titles in a row?
Their club will be consigned to oblivion well before then if they try.
Last night funded one revolution, but it also destroyed another. King can no longer get by on making glib promises he and his board can’t keep. He choices are to embrace reality and get his fans ready for that or to put every chip he has on a bad hand.
His ego won’t let him do the first. That’s why last week, in light of our storming home win, the one that put us in the driving seat for this tie, they went all-in with the Garner deal and the bid for one of the defenders.
So everything is on the table over there; he’s bet it all.
But last night the dealer dealt us aces.
And King has nothing in his hand that can beat that.
In Brendan We Trust.
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