The recent accounts were outstanding. What they revealed about our club’s “cash in hand” position has been reported on, but the implications of it have not been widely explored.
We have £30 million in the bank, as a surplus which performs two major functions.
The first is of crucial importance and we ought not to overlook how significant it is. This is the protection it gives us against some possible future disaster. COVID should have taught us that this is more than possible. The world is a dangerous and scary place and any number of things can go wrong, and any number of calamities can befall us and the game.
Scottish football, in particular, faces a number of major challenges. Imagine sponsorship money tanks in light of Ibrox’s little game with the SPFL, as some of us are very concerned that it might.
I know that our rivals obsess over certain legal cases; it is highly probable that Celtic’s insurers are all over that issue, but if they are not this is the kind of cushion we need to be able to settle the matter one way or another.
That snatches away their greatest hope.
So that’s first. It protects us from cold winds, whichever direction they blow in from.
Although these things are unlikely they are possible … and we’ve learned that from a season and a half of total disruption due to the pandemic. It is a lesson we won’t soon forget.
The other thing it affords us is the opportunity to invest further in critical infrastructure. This, in fact, is one of the things Michael Nicholson talked about in his CEO statement. And whilst on the surface some modest enhancements to the match-day experience might not necessarily get the pulse racing, we should not play them down either.
We know the club has been sitting on major infrastructure projects for a couple of years now, but there are two things that we need to remember in light of them. First, the initial outlay might be so large that the rewards would need to be big enough to justify it. And secondly, these projects would take years to stay paying off even if we started right now.
There’s an argument, of course, for saying they should have been begun years ago … that’s valid but it might well be that we didn’t have the wherewithal at that time.
Maybe we do now. Only those inside the club know that for sure.
There is one key area where there could be changes; the stadium capacity.
That pays dividends almost at once, and if we put another ten thousand seats on the capacity it would reap rewards in the millions from the day that the work was completed.
I know the bean-counters have looked at that. I know they have to be thinking about it.
The costs of doing it would be huge … but so would the potential rewards and they would be immediate and lasting. This has to be part of the thinking and at some point you really do think that we have to get real about it and take the plunge.
That £30 million is massive for us. It’s not just money sitting there doing nothing.
It gives us strength and it gives us options.
It is a triumph that we’ve managed to build such a war-chest and put a winning team on the park at the same time.
Not only that ,our fans won’t have to wear hard hats and protective clothing in case the roof caves In during matches !
Money in the bank is the same for everyone, not just Celtic. It makes you feel comfortable, it gives you piece of mind, it’s there for unforeseen circumstances, it’s there for a rainy day etc. and we would all like that safeguard. However, for a Club Celtic’s size I would not imagine even a large sum like 30M would go all that far.
I doubt it would even come close to paying for the construction of an increased 10,000 capacity, although I’m sure we would all welcome that, and apart from the construction costs there would be a period (eg 1 year) when part of the stadium was closed and attendance figures and revenue were reduced as a result. Perhaps a successful CL campaign for two or three years in succession would boost the coffers sufficiently to do that, but until that happens we should be frugal in our approach and live within our means.
Keep the 30M in our back pocket and build on it year by year, let’s not get too ambitious or too carried away too soon. I think we all know that our board are not prone to doing anything that extravagant anyway.
I think increasing capacity is a no brainer & with an extra 15,000 seats we’d be insurpassable in Scotland whilst it would take us closer to the Elite level teams on a European platform. With the Orcs inability to increase theirs it would be amazing to see what desperate manoeuvres their mutant board would try, possibly increasing season tickets by 50% !!! ?
Fergus McCann himself stated that the construction of Celtic Park as it is today was low cost but very high maintenance. It is around seven years ago since I was in the place but even then it was starting to deteriorate badly. Not even a lick of paint had been added since Fergus left. There were cracks appearing which weren`t
just shrinkage. The movement when everyone was doing the huddle or cheering a goal against you-know-who
was frightening. I am speaking as someone who spent many years in the construction industry and there were
times I felt safer when down 6m deep sewers or working in the middle of a 1.5m wide river bridge abutment with a jack hammer than I did in the stadium.
The only “maintenance” I ever saw was the erection of the “tapestry” around the park to cover the rusted girders.
There was a period when a fairly large section of brickwork was loose above the wide exits near the rear of the
park beside the cemetery. It looked as if it had suffered a knock with a large gib. After a number of weeks, I wrote
in complaining about the danger, as well as a potential ankle-breaker in a broken grill on a cable-service duct at
the main entrance. The brickwork was repaired shortly after but the broken grill was solved by sticking a cone in the hole. The cone will probably be still there.
Sometimes it`s better to see the log in your own eye rather than the skelf in another`s.
open up the capacity in the ground its an investment for life, replacing the initial cost from the many years celtic park will be there
I’m sure a bond amongst fans would also raise a pound or two?