Top Man Say’s Celtic Are Also Ran’s .

The man with those scathing words and saggy face is Adriano Galliani, AC Milan’s vice-president, a club that can afford to pander to Zlatan Ibrahimovic wims, so he knows a bit about football finance.

A lot more than those accusing our major shareholder of having short arms and long pockets.

I found the quote in this months When Saturday Comes. The article was looking at the strength of the English and Spanish Leagues, due purely to Tv money, and how other leagues in Europe now struggle to hold on to star men when they come knocking.

It mentions that German Champions Dortmond lost their star-man, Nuri Sahin, to Real Madrid 12 days after they won the league and Zooropa League Winners and Portuguese Champions Porto have seen their manager wooed by Oil Money and their star striker, Falcao, totter off to Madrid’s second team who have no Big Cup Football and very little chance of winning the La Liga.

As we speak Arsenal are probably looting French Champions Lille for further goodies after they signed Gervinho.

Success means that these clubs and their jewels get noticed and the rich come along and pick them off before they become a danger to them in The Big Cup. Galliani fears the Italians will be next.

We are already in the mire of Zooropa League qualifiers. The trend is seeing bigger clubs with more natural talent finding a home at Zooropa League level and being unable to compete at Big Cup level.

Here’s the bad.

Until the Tv Money self implodes then the only way we will ever compete at the top level again is if we find a nice Arab who wants to spunk millions in a league that is as attractive as lancing a boil on your manhood. The only way we will compete at our current level is decent scouting, asset and budget management and a vast improvement in what our youth system produces.

Not throwing money we don’t have away or some radical notion that our largest shareholder should be bankrolling us in some sort of mini Man City revolution. The economics are all wrong for that to be sensible.