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Do The Sums Sevconites. The Plan You’re Being Asked To Believe In Doesn’t Add Up.

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It’s that time of the year again. Season ticket renewal time. It’s a time when clubs want optimism to be in the air, a time when they launch new kits amidst great fanfare and publicity. A time when managers look at what they’ve already achieved and set targets for the next campaign. It’s a time when players contracts are winding down and decisions are made about who’s to renew. These are not all separate issues, they are entwined.

Screw something up, and it has dreadful effects on everything else.

This is a dangerous time to be a football chairman.

Celtic has no worries on either score. Last night, our manager and players swept the boards at the PFA Awards. Some minor griping can already be heard, but no-one cares what a few bitter dishonest hold-outs might think; the prizes went where they belonged, to the Celtic team which has excelled and driven a wrecking ball through the opposition.

Player of the year; Scott Sinclair. He was one of several Celtic players who could have taken that prize. Young Player of the Year; Kieran Tierney, for the second campaign in a row. He is our outstanding domestic talent, and in clinching this he held off Moussa. Goal of the Season went to Dembele himself, and there was never any question that it would. The strike against St Johnstone was the finest move we’ve seen in a Scottish football ground in this campaign, with every player in the team getting a touch in the passing move.

And Brendan won the manager of the year award. Of course. Because who else deserved it? Nobody, that’s who. He has not only demonstrated a great eye for a player but he has done what football managers should all be able to and which so few are. That’s what separates them from the rest, and makes them genuine greats; he makes players better.

Not all managers can. Not all managers do.

Across town, Pedro Caixinha was brought in to do that. He sat at his very first press conference and told the world that he had a squad that was the best in the country. He used those very words, and in doing so I wrote that he’d blown his alibi for failure with it. Now he’s telling the media that the challenge he promised before being appointed can only succeed if he gets to dismantle that squad and build a brand new one.

Caixinha’s been in the door for just two months and he’s chucked it already. He’s given up on the vast majority of his team. He’s not talking about doing some minor tweaking around the margins; he wants a new side. Seven players at least. A shortlist of twelve. The media is talking about a cull, of a vast clear-out of those there already.

This will be the fifth major rebuild of the Sevco squad since the club was founded. Think on that for a minute the next time you hear of how they’ve got “limited means”. It was good enough to get them a European spot – which they don’t qualify for in other ways, but since no-one at the SFA cares and since St Johnstone and Hearts clearly don’t I’m no longer going to moan about it – but not second place. Other sides, and their fans, would be content with that, having only just come up.

But not these folk. Operation Catch Celtic, although wildly unrealistic, is leading them off the cliff face and towards a fresh disaster.

There are reports that the hunt for a Director of Football has not gone well, especially as the candidates they’ve spoken to have balked at the idea there’s only a couple of million to spend on the team. Sevco fan sites are already buzzing with stories of how leaked details of the transfer budget available to Caixinha put the “war chest” worth around £3 million.

Can they do math?

Here’s a little basic math for them.

Seven signings into £3 million puts the median cost, per player, at just over £428,000 each.

Pedro has said he’s been told he can spend up to £1 million on a single footballer. It’s impossible not to feel a stab of sympathy for this guy when you hear him trying to make that number sound good. Because he’s not a bad bloke, and he’s not “from here” so the whole “culture” nonsense that surrounds Ibrox hasn’t got to him.

£1 million wouldn’t buy a player of the quality of Kenny McLean at Aberdeen. It is £500,000 less than we’re reputed to be ready to offer for John McGinn of Hibs. It is a paltry figure by the standards of modern football, and even signing six players at that level would not make this into a title challenging squad. But let’s say this isn’t just pie in the sky, and he spends it.

His total transfer budget becomes £2 million. And there are still six players to sign.

£333,000 per player.

Now, it’s not clear whether the £3 million will be his transfer market spending or whether it will also include wages. Let’s for a minute say that it’s not including wages. Does the idea of a Sevco team that’s been completely rebuilt around a half dozen players in the £300,000 price range scare you? Or me? Or, really, anybody at all?

But add wages into the mix, and boy oh boy it’s an even more ridiculous story.

Say the £1 million player was a on a relatively light £5000 a week. Not big money. Not the sort you’ll attract anyone of any real quality for. It’s a modest sum.

That equates to an annual salary of £260,000 per year.

Apply that to the six remaining players … just the salary … and you get £1,560,000. Add to that the cost of the £1 million player and his wages and you get a total of £2,820,000.

£180,000 of the £3 million left. To sign six players. On five grand a week. Each player would have to fall in the £20,000 bracket.

All this is to say nothing of agent fees and signing on cash.

You can see where this doesn’t quite add up to a shot at glory.

Sevco fans are being asked to fund the fantasy that a £3 million spend can translate into success. Even if you doubled it – which the club is in absolutely no position to do – Celtic fans would see no reason to be concerned.

Think on what it would take for Sevco to spend – just on fees – before you’d be worried; £10 million wouldn’t cut it. Would £20 million? £30 million? That would move them ahead of everyone in the chasing pack, but would it put them ahead of Celtic? What if we responded by spending the same? Or by simply spending what I expect us to in the coming window? (Around £10 million, before anyone asks haha.) They still wouldn’t get near us.

Those sums would destroy their finances. The wages alone would be crippling. To spend it and fail would be like getting hit by the EBT bomb all over again.

This is the “vision” they are outlining before season ticket renewals start in earnest. With no shirt launch on the horizon. With a managerial team that looks all over the place. The director of football plan already lies in the dust. Would Caixinha accept one now? Doubtful.

On top of it all, they already have an expensive squad on good salaries and long term deals, and the idea that any player is going to willingly walk away from big money “to play football every week” on a lesser contract is sheer nonsense, and typical of our media’s wishful thinking. The not-so-subtle suggestion which has crept into some of the media reports, as to what “pressure” might be applied to “incentivise” people to move is disgraceful, and won’t work anyway.

A lot of Sevco fans are going to buy those tickets on the expectation that someone, somewhere, will get tired of all this and swoop in with the big bucks and change the game. As they look around for that person they’re missing the big picture; as I’ve said repeatedly here and elsewhere, and as King himself has made abundantly clear, if they want to catch us the money is only going to come from one place; they are going to have to put it up themselves.

What’s it going to take before they get it?

It’s like that old poker aphorism, and it comes to mind at times like these.

If you can’t spot the sucker in your first hour at the card table ….

then you are the sucker.

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