The Media’s Beloved “Finance Expert” Was Busy Yesterday Talking Rubbish About Celtic.

If you follow as much of the online football media in Scotland as I do you’ll know there are three self-styled “football finance experts” who the press here seem to love talking to. They are the only three people in the finance business who, with no skin in the game, somehow manage to find something positive to say about every set of Ibrox accounts.

They are Neil Patey, Dan Plumley and Kieron Maguire. I find all of them to be faintly ridiculous. They are self-promoters to a fare-thee-well, rent-a-quotes who promoted themselves as experts but who the media only uses when it cannot find or afford the real thing. They have made reputations talking about the financial affairs of football although all have, at best, a sophomoric understanding of it. The Ibrox accounts are just one case in point.

Maguire must be really pissed off about the rise of Dan Plumley, because he was once the fairest in the land you could barely read about a football related issue without a quote from him. How glad he must be that Football Insider still values his “opinion”, although Plumley is still popular with a couple of Ibrox fan media sites. Maguire must consider that an incursion on his turf too.

But how pleased Maguire must be about the Super League story, because the BBC had him on about that and then Football Insider bizarrely asked him for his view on the Ibrox ticket standoff, although what in God’s name that has to do with his alleged area of expertise I really don’t know. And as per usual nearly every word he uttered was nonsense.

Let’s do the Super League first, where he talked about the prospects of Celtic and the club across the city being courted by it. First, the Super League spokesperson who was all over the media the other day made it clear that we’d get an invite before the club across town would, so when it comes to “both sides” being wanted, that very much remains to be seen.

They claim – claim, and that’s an interesting word – that it will be a meritocracy. So that means whoever wins the SPFL. That’s us, and until the trophy is prised from out of our hands, we’d get an invite. Would the second club in Scotland? Not when this is a much smaller tournament than the current UEFA competitions, and there are a lot of other clubs to fit into it.

Here’s the other thing; I can see why they’d want us from a political point of view.

We’re a huge catch for them, not only because of our European Cup but as a consequence of our prominent place both on the ECA and UEFA. It’s just not readily apparent what the Ibrox club would represent to those people, who know they need clubs with weight.

Ibrox has a big fanbase? So what? A lot of clubs can tick that box.

You need more than that to stand out.

Their selling point is the “rivalry” with us, but this was always our alleged USP to the EPL and they saw through the essential ridiculousness of that argument in two seconds flat. They don’t need that to sell their game and neither would these guys.

Limited places restrict Scotland’s potential access.

This is what the fools in our media who are promoting this idea don’t comprehend and won’t examine closely. I’m doing a larger piece on this subject later on, but for now let’s say that limited places means that if you’re not from a “major nation” you’re scrambling.

That Scotland’s champions also just happen to be UEFA and ECA bigwigs and Champions Cup winners to boot massively enhances our prospects.

Secondly, nobody involved in football at a serious level should be promoting this thing as if it were in any way a serious concept. It isn’t.

One of the reasons they are reaching out to clubs in smaller leagues is that the big player have all walked away from anything to do with this, as every single one of them can see the writing on the wall clearly.

The idea is dead.

A minor win on a small point of law does not change anything.

In fact, the court judgement specifically confirmed the dominant position of UEFA and FIFA and continues to give them the authority to regulate tournaments involving member clubs. It simply said that their current rules, in relation to how they go about that, are not robust and need to be more transparent.

Which UEFA is way ahead of them on, as Celtic already pointed out.

For all that, Maguire was happy to promote this as if it was a realistic proposal, and the idea of Celtic and the club across town joining it as if that was a realistic option.

He tried to sound intelligent about financial projections that, actually, have the substance of wind.

All the major sponsors for this idea have walked. Their financial model – which he should have talked about in detail since that’s his area of expertise – is a joke; a free app which will let fans watch their clubs without having to pay? That sounds about as hocus-pocus as you’ll get and nobody with the slightest knowledge of the football money market believes that for a second.

But if he’d left it at that for the weekend, I might have written a single line on him in my larger piece about this issue and left it at that, but he was back on Football Insider too, talking about the ticketing situation of course … and what he said there was worse.

Claiming that rivalry is an important part of the game and that the fan experience makes it better (he must have graduated top of his class for that brilliant insight, right?) he then went on to demonstrate his complete ignorance of the situation by making this claim.

“To have this taken away is indicative of the failure of people in charge of both clubs who have failed to provide an environment for both fans to support the clubs they love.”

How are we meant to take seriously someone like that, someone whose lack of understanding of this matter should disqualify him from talking about it?

It was not the people in charge of “both clubs” who caused this but the people in charge of one of them. And the problem we have them isn’t that they failed to “provide an environment” for fans but that they failed to provide a safe one, a very important distinction which this guy doesn’t make.

And I really can’t be bothered with people like this any longer, people who pretend to speak authoritatively through outlets which either don’t bother to vet them or don’t care as long as they get traffic.

And the “football finance experts” are amongst the worst.