Over the last couple of years, the Celtic board has excelled at getting away with things that they should not be allowed to.
One of the things they consistently do, and which this website has slated them for time and time again, is that they brazenly lie that high calibre players simply won’t come to Scotland. You only need to look at the Middle East right now to see how many of them are over there. The Saudi League is not even at SPFL standard; players are going there for the money. Money remains the motivating factor for a lot of the players across football.
I’m not suggesting that we pay Saudi type fees. I’m not suggesting that we pay what teams pay in the upper half of the EPL. But these people get away with this because they present it as an irrefutable fact of football, when actually it’s a choice. It’s a choice our club makes, and not only does it stop us from bringing a higher quality player to Parkhead but it makes it virtually impossible for us to keep people here once they reach the salary ceiling we’ve set.
If you want me to prove that this is something we lock ourselves into rather than something that circumstances impose on us, I would ask that you look no further than the club across the city.
We may laugh at their being linked with high profile players, and when they pull off a Barton deal or go out and sign an Aaron Ramsey it might strike the funny bone, but how much do you reckon they are paying someone like Butland? And they don’t mind doing that in his case because he justifies that salary, and he won’t soon leave them for more money elsewhere.
They don’t just talk a good game about leaving it all on the field; they do it. They would never have a £70 million surplus whilst critical areas of their team were crying out for signings. We might think certain elements of the way they do things are mad, but they behave like a club that means business, and in a year like this that just may be enough.
I’m not here to praise them. They don’t deserve it. They overspend every single year, and that’s not something I want to bang the drum in support of. What I’m saying is not that their strategy is better than ours, or that throwing caution to the wind is not a little bit mad. I’m talking about one specific issue, and I’m saying that they have proved that if you’re willing to put the right financial package on the table that you can attract high profile footballers.
And our board gets away with talking about this issue as if it’s ridiculous to suggest that if we paid more that we’d get some of these guys. But it isn’t ridiculous at all. Established players in European leagues wouldn’t come to Scotland? Says who?
Offer these guys guaranteed Champions League football next season, and the chance to win things and play in front of 60,000 and for a lot of them it will come down to what financial package is on offer. And it’s there where this club has made a conscious choice not to push out the boat.
The problem isn’t even the players we won’t try to sign.
The problem, of course, comes when we’re trying to keep the guys who are here right now. It’s difficult not to see the wage cap as a deliberate strategy to ensure that players don’t want to stay here when there are offers from elsewhere. If you take Matt O’Riley for example; if we made him the most well-paid player at Celtic Park and asked him to stay for two or three seasons more because we want to crack on and attempt at least to climb out of the Pot 4 basement and into Pot 3 and maybe even 2, would he hang around? He’d be tempted to, I think, but this is why no such offer will ever be made.
Because the people above the manager only see O’Riley as a bankable asset. If we get a £25 million offer for him, the bean-counters are going to conclude that we need to accept that and move him on and replace him on the cheap. That’s the strategy after all. And that strategy only works if O’Riley doesn’t know he can treble his wages somewhere else and if the buying club knows that even such a salary demand isn’t out-with their budget.
We will never be able to pay O’Riley or others what even a modestly sized English club would, but if he was earning twice what he is right now it makes it that much harder to entice him away and the club doing the buying would have to pay much more, and this is the kind grey area – the “will he or won’t he want to go?” – that Celtic doesn’t want him in.
This is what hamstrings us, and this will be the board’s excuse if we get through this window with no significant business done. That attracting quality to Scotland is too difficult, and especially in January. You could write the script for these guys, it never changes.
Until we ditch the wage structure and bring in something more realistic, we’re chancing our arm every single season. Ibrox now spends more than us on wages … they don’t get value for that money but what if one day they do?
We’ll move half a dozen players on in this window, and all of them will be on decent but not brilliant money … think of what bang we could get for our bucks if we married the scouting policy to a decent go of it in the marketplace.
Our system isn’t completely wrong. It is certainly not broken; it has certainly given us a squad full of saleable assets … but it doesn’t work as well as it might either. We are held back not by any restriction set on us from elsewhere but by the ones we put on ourselves. We are, as has been pointed out, our own worst enemy.
I’ve been saying this for years, we have a gullible, I’m a bigger Celtic fan than you! Support who believe our board even when they call us privileged. P. S. I gave up my season ticket for this very reason.
A long overdue look at this, it was time someone delved into this aspect of of the boards strategy. Intelligently laid out and explained, good article.
Totally agree, a £6mil player on £2mil PA over 3 years will cost the club £12mil over the term as will a £20mil player available on a free earning £4mil PA, outlay is the same but you’re hopefully signing a far higher quality player
Peter Lawwell’s job description should read: “Main Hun In Residence At Parkhead.” It’s alarming to watch him, season after season, do his utmost to frustrate our manager by deliberately withholding funds to strengthen the first team squad. Add in the fact that there is no structure in place at the club to successfully develop our youth team players. The aim of this shitshow is to enable Sevco to bank the £60m Champions League money. Why does the club use Parks of Hamilton coaches? Because they are free!!!! These people would “piss on you and I in a thunderstorm.” Could you imagine Barcelona using Real Madrid’s transport travelling to games in similar circumstances? The Celtic Board have no shame unfortunately and the loyal fans are the ones who suffer at the end of the day.
Liewell has got away with we can’t break the wage structure nonsense for year’s, funny how nearly every club in the world pay their star player’s top money.As you say they use this excuse to move our best player’s on when they want to cash in, it is time for board change absolutely no ambition in Europe so why should the fan’s pay top dollar to watch this shit every year.
Change would have to be forced upon the board for any of the above scenarios, they’ll not do so willingly; never.
The Lawwells feet are well and truely under the table, they too will have to be forced out to bring about real changes.
James, I’m of the exact same opinion and we both know that statement is 100% TRUE.
Agree with you wholeheartedly on this James. The reason equities are a far better prospect than Govt bonds is because companies reinvest a chunk of their profits back into the company to improve systems and generate more profits. Celtic don’t do this and it’s going to catch up on us. Yes, stay liquid Celtic, but reinvest into the team so that their success leads to more profits. Basically reinvest or slowly stagnate.
I couldn’t agree more with all you’ve written. We have been promised an ‘Ajax System’ for years and it has still to materialise. Ajax have done so well in the market by buying a few players for five to ten million then sell for massive amounts. I bet they have the wage structure that you mentioned, keeping players there for a few years. Broonie was 4.5M all those years ago and look how that turned out, same for French Eddie, Sutton and more recently, Jota. It seems like the board want us to be in the Europa league rather than the Champions League. Managed decline, indeed.
Celtic directors have made a nice profit bonus last season.
They will make another this season by not signing suitable players, the money is already in the bank.
At some point this practice will come back to haunt same directors.
Team and fans first, to win trophies.
No team = no fans = no trophies.
Solution is simple, get rid of The Lawell family.
James,
One of your best posts ever.
You’ve got to take your hat off to them. They have people who back them, who are prepared to put in millions of their own money with no guarantee of a return.
We have a board who take millions out the the club in dividends. They spend more in salary then our team who had 71 million £ in the bank.
It’s about time the Celtic fans woke up.
It will be utterly APPALLING if Sevco outgun us in the January transfer window Les…
But you know what – They might just…
I’m not panicking just yet but January will swiftly be slip sliding away –
And with it this most critical of titles might be slip sliding away as well !
Nepotism is most destructive and we can clearly see its effects.
Lawells profit related bonus. Same as before.
I bet he’s penny pinching during negotiations & that is enough to put a player off.
If the guy is expecting more with his own progress then this presentation would put him off the idea that an autocrat may consider a pay increase in future.
Dermott is culpable in allowing this & does so because of the increase in his own bank balance.
The only way to change it is to refuse to renew season tickets on mass & boycott Champions league packages. The club will know they are being monitored ongoing & the fans are not just a one speech election cannon fodder.
You may find players would come for wages equal to those of Peter Lawwell
James,we have a bunch of fifth columnists residing in our boardroom who’s only aims in life seen to be………
1.Keeping an Old Firm Franchise alive at any cost,no matter the risk it brings or the threat it carries.
2.Growing old, rich and fat on the back of the Celtic supporters investment while at the same time viewing us as some piece of dog shit they just trod into their brand new 6 inch pile carpets.
3.Antagonising and frustrating the aforementioned Celtic fans with their parsimonious investment in the football operation and avaricious self betterment.
4. Steadfastly refusing to even attempt to enhance the team’s chances of a decent European campaign and in fact doing the very opposite by making sure successive managers have been hamstrung in their efforts to give the fans a team to be proud of on the continent.
This list is NON EXHAUSTIVE !!!
I could go on all night.
They,and the pathetic absent billionaire landlord are guilty of choosing an outdated business model which ties us to a rival who shouldn’t even be on our radar and who would love the chance to be in our shoes so they could obliterate us and everything we stand for and the scary thing is that this could actually happen with these assholes all sleeping at the wheel !
We were fortunate Ange appeared to save our collective bacons,post the 10 in a row fiasco but this policy is one of continually playing with matches and petrol in the building with no home insurance.
As the IRA said to Thatcher after the Brighton bomb….”You have to be lucky ALL of the time,we just have to be lucky ONCE !!!”
Hell mend them if we lose the league title this season as the fury of the Celtic fans will be unleashed and the shit that the huns fans get up to will seem like a Sunday stroll in the park.
They cannot say they were oblivious to the fan discontent (eg,Hearts defeat at home) which has been brewing over these issues for some considerable time and in a perverse kind of way a tiny part of me wants to see it happen because l’m afraid this is what it’s going to take to blow these bastards out of our club for ever.
The clock won’t wait for them……..tic,toc,tic,toc……….
And there is why Lawell is so highly thought of by Desmond, his shares arre safe and making him money. Even if we went to England and generated more money it would still be the same, yes, we would have a better standard of player but we wouldn’t be able to really challenge the big boys as this shower wouldn’t let us.
Didn’t we address this wage structure to some degree with offering bigger contracts to some of our bigger players during the summer James?
We know that the scum have to do overpayment upon player’s just to bring player’s into that rancid shithole.
Don’t understand why we have to stockpile player’s in return?
Now every club expects to waste a certain amount of money upon wages to player’s that offer nothing or very little towards the club?
Ours still remains to high for my liking.
You expect that to increase with a change of management, but not to actually increase the wage budget to the degree that we managed to do so in the summer also?
We obviously must be paying decent wages as it’s not to easy to offload these player’s who contribute nothing towards the club.
The majority of players we actually sign will possibly never play for a bigger club than ourselves, and one a small minority actually go on to land much bigger contracts than what we are actually paying?
We remain with taking a way to cautious approach within the transfer market currently for my liking, with only going for the loan to buy approach for the player’s over the 5M mark?
Maybe getting our fingers burnt on barkas and ajeti deals changed that approach, but it does raise the question about just how much trust is there within the judgment calls being made between board and manager currently?
Getting the recruitment side right is massive within Scottish football, and the same applies to ourselves, so extending the wage budget with poor returns is nothing more than a failure upon the part of the decision makers for doing so, and many a manager loses his job over this issue within the club?
It still remains unclear as to just how much impact Rodgers had upon the decision making process over the summer, but increasing the wage budget for what we are getting in return is hardly great business either.
We are nowhere in disaster territory by any means, and not in a position where mistakes can’t be put right either, but improvements are still required from the decision makers also?
We now have to be looking at players that a manager is confident enough that can play at CL level?
Big ask, but more than enough now who could grow into them potential players?
If it means taking a hit upon the amount of deadwood, then so be it also imo.
As much as we claim to be a very well run club, there is still enough room to be ran better upon squad numbers and wage budgets imo.
The next 2 transfer windows will be very telling for all concerned in the decision making process, and will only get to no2 as long as this title is won?
If not serious questions will be asked with heads rolling in the aftermath, but still not expecting it to come to that, even if concerns remain currently?
Too many fans back this chaotic project driven plan of the board. “Wage cap” “Not worth the fee” “Cause disharmony in the squad with high wages”. The board love these fans. I know fans that think £25k a week is too high for a player and yet scream about not progressing in Europe.
Take nothing away from the other lot, they want their cash on the pitch. Not a heated drive.
James is it not funny that Peter lawwell comes back and the bean counters start counting harder.while he was not here our transfer business was done in the 1st week of business now he’s back it’s slow slow slower and they’ll run about in the last couple of days trying to appease the fans with a couple of players we would otherwise sign in my opinion I don’t think we will sign anyone half decent not had their big bonus the last couple of years why is the 2nd and 3rd biggest shareholders on the board
The wage structure is now an anachronism in modern football. Top players demand top wages. We can’t compete with the super rich clubs at the top of the big 5 leagues, but we should be able to attract players that are just below them. The board would rather gamble £10m in fees and £50+ k a week on 5 players than bring in the one quality player that can make the difference to a young squad.
Interestingly you say Rangers are not getting their Bang for their bucks considering their bold outlay of beans.