Kieran Maguire. What does the name make you think of?
Do you laugh yet?
Roll your eyes?
Tonight his latest article on how Ibrox is going to move ahead of us screams with a headline about a “£400 million deal” which will move them decisively past us.
And of course, the headline is entirely misleading because it’s the total pot for the Champions League next season, of which Ibrox will see a fraction even if they happen to make it.
This, he claims, will move them beyond us, based on the figures for last season.
Except that last season’s figures were a low point for Celtic and a high water mark for their club.
All this talk of closing the finance gap is garbage; the historical fact is that even when Rangers was at its peak there were only three years in 20 when an Ibrox club finished in front us in terms of income.
It’s not a lock that they will do it here either.
I suspect there are reasons for the vast leap in their income, reasons which are not reflected in a brief glance at the accounts.
How many of their commercial deals are front loaded instead of spread evenly over the course? How much of what they count as “income” actually comes from “investments” which are required just to keep the lights on?
They are in better nick than they were, and on top of that it’s clear that our own commercial department hasn’t done nearly all it should have to put us even further ahead.
We’re bringing in a new CEO with new ideas; watch that change in a big hurry.
What Maguire seems not to know – which is amazing for a “finance expert” – is that one year of Champions League income does not equal “closing the gap.”
If your profitability epends on the vagaries of football results and performances, then you have spells of ups and downs.
The truth is that Celtic’s base income level dwarfs that of Ibrox.
It’s not only have a “larger number of seats” in the ground, although that’s not a small think considering that Celtic Park is a full 10,000 seats bigger which equates to a minimum of £5 million extra in any good fiscal year.
And yes, as he’s pointed out we have more executive boxes and more income from hospitality as well. We also have a retail deal with a global giant and not some fly-by-night operation.
I could go on and on and on.
Will they make more money than us next season if – big if – they get the Champions League groups?
Maybe. Note that I’m not saying “definitely.”
But it’s a year.
It’s a temporary blip in what I am certain will be a next decade where we finish on top eight years out of ten.
Perhaps if the Ibrox club actually had a £400 million deal there would be a good cause for all this euphoria; instead they are counting money they don’t have yet.
There is a reason that UEFA does not allow you to use “assumptions” about European football income when they are calculating Financial Fair Play. What’s the technical name for it again?
Oh yes; counting your chickens before they hatch.
On top of that, as we’ve seen throughout the respective histories at Ibrox and Parkhead, the more they have over there the more they spend.
This will probably be the general pattern far into the future, and so their position will become more and more untenable as ours gets stronger.
We, in contrast to them, have consistently posted profits.
The sheer ignorance in this guy’s work is phenomenal to me.
Their club is not trying to move ahead of Celtic; they are in a race against their own over-spending.
Their objective next season should be to actually edge into the black. What’s the betting that no matter how much they earn that they don’t manage it? What’s the betting they post yet more losses?
Theirs is not a sustainable business model; that’s what a real “finance expert” would say.
This guy started out doing Ibrox feel-good pieces in the mainstream press.
Now he has a blog. Is that a come down or a step up in the world?
Either way, he talks the same crap he always did.
[snack-countdown title=”Celtic’s Countdown To Champions League Disaster” date=”06/20/2021″ time=”00:00:00″ colour=”#000″ textColour=”#FFF”]