Celtic’s Financial Figures Are A Demonstration Of A Power Greater Than Ibrox Has.

I have no idea when we’re likely to see the accounts from Ibrox, or what they are going to show.

They should, in all fairness, be excellent, reflecting the sales of two players for decent money and a Champions League Group Stage campaign, albeit one that ended in calamity and disaster.

If I were a betting man I’d say they’ll have exceeded their income for last year. Just.

But Ibrox has long had a big problem; the more they earn the more they spend.

Because last season they had a wage bill in excess of £50 million, of which almost £40 million is the first team squad, and they have annualised operating expenses in excess of £25 million. Their accounts for last year have given a value on the Aribo and Bassey monies; £19.5 million combined. A bit less than what the media reported, right? But in terms of their outgoings the same accounts will carry over transfer spending of, believe it or not, £15 million.

That leaves them with a paltry £4.5 million trading surplus for players.

The Champions League earnings probably don’t come to much more than an additional few million above and beyond what they earned last year on their run to the Europa League Final … so whilst I do expect them to break through their previous earnings they aren’t exactly in line to post mammoth profits that signify a spending spree.

There will be very little in the cupboard for The Mooch this summer, and that’s just a fact. You can extrapolate his likely transfer kitty just by crunching the numbers. Without a least one big sale – and you cannot see who it’s going to be – he’ll be shopping in Poundland.

Celtic just posted their figures for the first six months of this season and they are awe inspiring. Our annual profit will probably be in excess of £15 million, in a year where the manager has again been lavishly backed. Don’t forget, this was the summer of Jota and Carter Vickers and others. To have made such an enormous profit from that period … incredible.

We have a first team squad weighed down with value and talent. We are on the brink of a second title and a guaranteed place in those Group Stages again. In transfer market terms, the boss has completed Stage One of his revolution.

You know why dictatorships put on military parades? To scare their neighbours and show them what they can do. It’s a show of force.

So are these accounts, and although we publish the interims at roughly the same time every year here they’ve dropped like on Ibrox like a hammer on an anvil, especially in the week where they again “issued shares” and they’ve been reminded by UEFA that they are on a watch-list. And all the while their manager is making his demands clear.

But he can stamp his feet like a spoiled brat as much as he wants. The club cannot give him what it does not have, and it certainly cannot do it flying in the face of UEFA. If he really believes there will be £5 million for Tillman and more on top of them he’s living in a fantasy world. You need real financial muscle to be able to do what we did this summer.

And that muscle comes from developing the business over years. From posting consistent profits. From trading players where you need to, and getting value for them, to nurturing commercial deals with huge companies, to watching what you spend.

We have never prioritised short term success over long term stability.

Some of us have not been happy with some of the decisions this club has made in that regard, but you cannot look at our financial position, and see this manager get the backing he’s had, without concluding that those years were worth the sacrifices we made … and don’t forget that in those years we were stunningly successful anyway, and won nine titles in a row and four trebles.

Celtic is just a bigger club, and not by a small margin but by the proverbial country mile. Our accounts are just one manifestation of it, but it’s those figures which enable all the rest of what we do. It enables better scouting and better coaching, which is how we’ve gotten good at finding and developing footballers, and that’s where the success comes from.

Ibrox has no real interest in long-term thinking. Everything is about “catching Celtic”, but they don’t do it with the money they earn, which would force them to learn how to spend it better. It’s always done with someone writing cheques above and beyond what they earn … and it’s been like this at Ibrox for more than 20 years. Since the days of David Murray.

They aren’t going to change, and even if they did it would take a wholescale reboot of the way their club is run, and it would take years. If they posted figures like this their fans would expect every single penny of it to be given to the manager for signings; trying to explain to these guys that it would skyrocket the wage bill to ludicrous heights, bringing the club to the brink and make for real pain not too far down the road and they would laugh you out of the room.

And yet in a very real sense, those are their financial policies anyway. Without the profits.

As I said earlier, Celtic did not post those figures yesterday to embarrass anyone, but when The Mooch sat in front of the media last week and told them that he’s made it clear that he wants Tillman signed up and more money on top of it there was a clear warning to his own board that he considers these red lines … and the truth is that their board might well find it impossible to give him what he wants.

Yet we were able to give Ange that sort of money twice, for Jota and Carter Vickers, and still posted a massive profit for that six-month period.

Their fans believe we’re the beneficiaries of some kind of scam, but they could not if their lives depended on it tell you what that scam is or how we’re running it. They saw those summer signings and concluded that the club must nearly have bankrupted itself in splashing out like that … the shock they must have got yesterday when we published those figures would have been seismic. Because it means we could do the same this summer and beyond.

That must be terrifying. That must be sobering. I’ve written this before, but I’ll write it one last time; we are the club now that David Murray always dreamed about building over there. But he lacked the vision and the discipline to it, and we had both.

If we keep on doing what we are doing their strength will be measured in relation to other clubs and they will challenge those clubs for the odd trophy … but they will not challenge us in the ways that matter, on a sustainable basis over even the medium term.

Those accounts are devastating for them. We showed them yesterday what power is.

Before this month is out, that power will be put forth on the pitch at Hampden.

But even if disaster strikes and they take the League Cup, do not believe for one minute any suggestion that it has turned the tide. Over the medium to long term this only has one winner.