How bad is the financial situation at Ibrox? It’s bad, and you no longer have to take our word for it. The board accepts that players will have to be sold. They haven’t spent money in the last two windows. And the manager who they were confident of keeping for a long time to come has already retreated back across the border. No, you don’t have to believe us anymore.
Not when there are so many signs out there as to what is going on over there.
Austerity will be forced on that club at some point. Forced on them. That’s reality. The press and their supporters continue to cling to fantasy. The talk today is of Van Bronckhorst walking in there and being handed immediate funds to stamp his mark on the team … one paper actually suggested some potential targets from, from the Dutch league.
Another is listing potential signings from the Bundesliga … it is remarkable how daft all this is.
This is like going outside in your summer gear in the middle of winter and hoping that by denying it is cold you’ll somehow keep yourself warm. The media is in for the surprise of a lifetime if it reckons that there will be major spending there without major selling.
There are problems with the major selling option too, which I’ll cover in greater detail later on but the media seems to think that this will be no harder than simply announcing which players can go, as though there are buyers just waiting to snap them up.
I read, incredulously, last week as several journalists dismissing their financial problems as if they were nothing. Even this morning, Keith Jackson was blaming it all on the global health emergency as if the club was forced to keep on buying players and spending money when everyone else on the planet knew a better idea was not to.
This is a club which sacked staff members last season so that it could chase the title. It had the cheek to borrow money from the government shut-down fund and then sign players with it.
Nobody made them do that.
They knew we were going to be in lockdown for many, many months and instead of hitting the brakes they pushed down on the accelerator.
That club has an entire management team to find and appoint and that before they even think about bringing new players in.
They could, I suppose, go down the road Celtic did and try to muddle by with a skeleton crew for a while but that will have an impact on their squad in the medium term. They got a mere £4 million for the one that just left so they are doing it on the cheap as well, unless they want to run up even more debt for this.
The press just seems to think that there is a genuine magic money tree at Ibrox somewhere, and that they can just going back to it over and over again and plucking notes from it to pursue whatever dreams and fantasies they have on any given day.
This is what’s gotten them into the state they are in … and until they stop behaving like this the problems over there are just going to keep growing. There are signs that the age of austerity has finally arrived.
It is long overdue. So is the media’s acceptance of it.
If they do spend money on players money they dont have as we know what the accounts have said,then the football authorities have to step in but we know they wont as they have changed the rules if it hsppens again.The SFA want VAR for fear of being left behind in technology and fear of being a backwater league but wont introduce Finacial Fair Play.For what reason? To help one club to be able to overspend? Lets see if austerity really does bite them.
Sorry James I cannot believe that they’ll screw the heid, they’ll continue down this track of FREE debt and money until they’ve run out of track.
You know fine well they’ve no intention of stopping now, they’ve been on this course since inception. Why should they stop when they know the punishment is a slap in the wrist and repeat ad nauseam; with ‘Groundhog Day’ rules and regs designed to keep them in the SPL already in place?
Celtic FC are GUILTY of being an enabler to this farce and should 100% be ASHAMED of themselves. It will not matter a jot to them as all they want is the O#& F#+? and they KNOW what’s coming… more debt till they die.
Unless the new manager accepts an equal to or, more likely, lesser wage than Gerrard was on, then there is more chance of Santa getting the tooth fairy pregnant than there is of Lampard, Terry, or GvB becoming their next manager. McInnes would be their “marquee” manager. Furthermore, the likelihood of Gerrard buying up half the current Sevco squad to STRENGTHEN what is currently at Villa Park is as likely to happen as there is of Sevco bringing in Kylian Mbappe on loan, with an option to buy!
For all their bluster, its like a mate bragging about having a dream wedding at Westminster Cathedral, followed by a honeymoon in the Caribbean, and then telling people after the event that they settled for tying the knot at the local registry office, followed by a week in a caravan park in Fife!!
The writing is on the wall, and has been for a very long time – they are drinking in the Last Chance Saloon, and they are supping the dregs from empty pint tumblers.
They have spent, spent, spent and like a lot of things it becomes an addiction. The lure of the CL money will either kill them or give them – should they succeed this season- respite for another season. Either way Ibrox is in a dire situation and are 1 maybe 2 large bills away from admin. Austerity i believe is a swear word, a profanity never to be said. Austeriy means they are not so bigger than the Dons or Hearts that they profess to be. Living within their means, don’t make me laugh.
There is a shock coming but it might be us that are on the end of it. If we keep deluding ourselves that they’re skint and can’t or won’t spend in January and thus simply hand us back this league as a result then we’re deluded. Its gonna be no quarter given from them and a continuation policy of speculate to accumulate.
In January I foresee the transfer out of a few rankers players and the signing of a few players and that they will find further investment to aid this. They will try to follow Celtic’s current model and sign a manager aware of markets further aside from Europe, buy and pay later deals, scour the free transfer market (a new manager from abroad may be aware of some gems?) and add to the strength of the existing squad for one last grab for that CL group spot that might just rescue them. They have the support of the SFA’s lack of scrutiny team, their refereeing assistants and continued support from every media, presser and every institution in Scotland. This time they will all fight to prevent what they didn’t in 2012. If the existing players stay and fight, don’t forget they’re 4 points ahead, then they’ll have the capability still to carry a fight to the end of season. Wishful thinking by us won’t win the league. Its by no means over and we’ll need to fight like hell to overcome these obstacles.
The capitulation theory is not for now or this season. The Celtic board have to back Ange in January and that I believe that will only put us in a position whereby we can challenge them but its no certainty either. If the rankers succeed, they’ll survive. HH