I’ve been meaning to do a piece on Kieran McGuire for a while.
This guy, who the press here seems to love, who has been commenting on Scottish football for years and now has a column on a clickbait blog, comes is clearly a subscriber to the theories of Sevconomics.
Earlier this month, he accused our board of not doing enough to match the Ibrox club, and said that if our directors had sunk some of their personal wealth into the team that it could have comfortably stayed ahead of them.
True, but is this really what a “finance expert” should be advising? That we live beyond our means? That we become creatures a of a sugar-daddy? That we become reliant on such an unreliable source of external funding?
Who did this guy last do the books for? Enron or Barings?
I have read some of his articles with incredulity.
How can a “finance expert” think that their club is in good health?
How can he think they have a chance of “overtaking us” when he’s basing that supposition on the vagaries of footballing fortunes like Champions League qualification? Is that a realistic basis on which to judge their stability?
Maybe someone should draw his attention to the “going concern” warnings which have appeared, with regularity, in their accounts since their founding in 2012?
This is what passes for “expertise” these days, is it?
We have posted profits consistently, year on year. They have posted losses.
If both sides were pushed to embrace financial fair play regulations one side would qualify and the other would fall foul of them. We know which is which. It is bollocks to suggest that both clubs are comparable. In spite of his “suggestion” that we seek directors funding to run the club, we have built a sustainable business model.
That’s not what he’s urging us to do at all.
What makes me write about him today is his absolutely ridiculous assertion that the Ibrox club has a bigger global footprint than we do because they have Steven Gerrard at the helm whereas “How many people in the States, for example, would be able to name a Celtic player?”
What, you mean apart from our many, many thousands of fans across that country?
We have hundreds – not dozens but hundreds – of Celtic Supporters Clubs all over America.
Tens of thousands of American supporters have read this blog since the turn of the year … I’ve got the data on that.
Ibrox did one smart thing in hiring Gerrard; they brought in a manager who genuinely was a bigger name than their club.
The Ibrox operation itself continues, however, to be nothing more than what Hugh Adam once said about Rangers; “A provincial West of Scotland football club.”
Even their recent decision to partner up with Hamburg was an example of their restrictive viewpoint; Hamburg is known throughout Europe for being supported by the far-right.
The decision reeked of the kind of stench that comes with the annual bigot-fest at Linfield.
When the Ibrox club went looking for a kit manufacturer, they were forced to take a punt on a new operation – and that has been a disaster of bad PR.
They only got that because Gerrard knew the owners and operators.
It was Celtic who were, yet again, sought out and signed up by a global brand.
Nobody with a fraction of intelligence about football matters isn’t entirely aware that Celtic has a global fan-base and a global reach, even without EPL exposure.
You would struggle to find many Ibrox fans outside of the Scottish diaspora; indeed, Adam found, during a lengthy commercial review into the matter, that much of that demographic actively hates all things Ibrox.
This is all documented fact, and so are the results of Charles Green’s own efforts to find any evidence of a huge global support network … it doesn’t exist.
Honestly, Kieran McGuire is the Kris Boyd for football finance.
How are we supposed to take this seriously? He talks relentless nonsense.
Does he have an accountancy business?
Because his customers should be reading some of this garbage and running for the hills.
If he told them to run their businesses on this kind of basis they’d be in bankruptcy court before they knew what had hit them.