Celtic’s Wage Ceiling Has Had One Positive. It’s Prevented Ibrox Style Disasters.

Yesterday’s result has reverberated through the Scottish sports media like a seismic shock. The disbelief is palpable.

They were so convinced that Clement was the Second Coming (of who? Walter Smith maybe?) that many of them couldn’t even countenance a defeat. It’s not that long ago that Kenny Miller was saying that Clement would not “allow” the team to drop points … as if he was going to set the hungry rottweilers on anybody who fell below his standards.

Jackson, at The Record, famously awarded their team the points from the Dundee game that hadn’t even been played yet. He wrote an excoriating piece today, which was hilarious in bits.

The thing I found most hilarious is the blame being heaped onto the Usual Suspects, and in particular Tavernier. I particularly enjoyed the assertion that this player, who if he couldn’t hit a dead ball would be nothing but a dead weight, is still rumoured to be a target for the Saudi super-clubs, even as Jackson and others rip his defensive failures to pieces on a regular basis.

The delusion that Tavernier and Goldson were ever worth tens of millions of pounds was one that persisted for far too long. In promoting it, the Ibrox club and their media acolytes made two enormous mistakes, and they may be doing the same again.

Way back when Tavernier signed – his manager at the time was Mark Warburton – he was playing in Scottish football’s second tier.

Before this guy had even reached the Premier League there was talk of him being an England international and Warburton being his national coach. Nonsensical, but it did have one unintended consequence which hasn’t worked out so well; all that hype helped hiis agent get him a better contract upon securing promotion.

When Goldson signed, he quickly followed Tavernier into a huge pay rise, based on nothing but media hype.

And that was the beginning of the end. Because no matter what these morons may tell themselves, those two just aren’t that good. Tavernier, in particular, is a woefully inept full-back whose only qualities are that ability to hit a dead ball and a decent talent for crossing it, a talent which should come naturally to every player who plays out wide.

Their salary has gone up with every contract renewal and a couple of times in between.

One poster on an Ibrox fan forum last night, in a fury, reported that Goldson and Tavernier are on around £40,000 a week each … which is astounding, and a tribute to the work of their agents as much as it is an indictment of the Ibrox board’s utter insanity.

Whatever our mistakes have been in the transfer market – and there have been a few, a good few, and especially in the last five or so years, when you consider Ajeti and Barkas and guys like this – we have never gotten ourselves into the kind of trouble they have over there.

Consider this; we paid £6 million for Barkas and roughly the same for Ajeti. These are expensive flops, and no question. But the money was paid up front, and the wages were minor. If these guys were on £40,000 a week, would we have had the luxury of being able to drop them to the bench most weeks, or even out of the squad entirely?

It is not easy to justify dropping your most highly paid players …

They hyped these guys, paid the money that matched the hype and then realised that hype was all it was. How long have they been hoping for the offers for these guys?

The Saudi fantasy is just the latest of them. But they are the only club on the planet mad enough to pay these guys that kind of money every week, and nobody is daft enough to pay a high transfer fee for them, far less the kind of money Ibrox once demanded for them.

If those guys weren’t on £40,000 a week that club would have stood a chance of moving them on back to England, even if they’d never have gotten big bucks for them. Had they moved them on, they might have brought in better players to replace them.

Their utter failure to do so means that at some point they face a big rebuilding job … and perhaps without the requisite funds to do it properly.

In the meantime, Goldson will remain their first choice centre back and an ageing Tavernier will be their right back, retained only because he scores goals.

We would never have chained ourselves to two such raging mediocrities.

Our wage structure has been much criticised and I think it could be a lot more realistic than it is, but it is absolutely inconceivable that we’d have sanctioned salaries like those for two players such as these. When we raise the pay of footballers it is moderate, and only levels up to the McGregor type money when players have proved themselves to be amongst the best at Celtic.

It has taken that club way too long to realise that they aren’t worth it, and now they are about to make new contract offers to the likes of Lundstram.

There is even talk of them offering Butland – who has conceded six goals in the last two games – more money (when he’s already Scotland’s highest paid player) to “keep him” from EPL clubs … but of course, that itself may be a ruse designed to “attract bidders.”

Good luck with that.

They will need to be more realistic with their proposed fees, but if you listen to them talk about wanting £15 – £20 million for him, there is no sign that they understand that this is simply a repeat of the Goldson and Tavernier errors.

It’s one they cannot see to stop making. His agents must be laughing, just as those of those other players must have been laughing the whole time.

The people who make decisions over there are out of their minds.

The proof of it was out on the pitch yesterday, and as these serial losers continue to perform like the second-raters that they are, the club continues to suffer for it.

Long may it continue.