Football - UEFA Champions League - Celtic v Juventus - 31/10/01 General view of Celtic Park Mandatory Credit:Action Images / Rudy L'Homme
If you want to know how one of the daftest ideas in the football business came about, you need to go back to the 1989 movie Field Of Dreams.
“If you build it they will come” is used as a justification for all sorts of foolish infrastructure projects, and I find that funny for two reasons.
First, it’s clearly a mad idea. You do not automatically draw the crowds because you build something. Those who think a Celtic hotel would make us millions are dead wrong. The running costs are bad enough, but the presumption that such a thing would function with a high capacity, which many do appear to believe, is simply not realistic.
How many clubs have opened museums, bars, spent fortunes on facilities and after the first initial swell of interest have seen it die away?
Celtic did the right thing with its sports bar, in opening it through the week and relying on good numbers on match days and keeping it simple. Had we spent money building one from scratch, at great cost, and hoped to fill it every other day it would have been every bit as big a failure as Edminston House looks like being.
Secondly, the whole thing is based on a misquote anyway; the actual line in the movie is “If you build it he will come,” not they. So, this crazy piece of dubious “wisdom” is built around words that were never even spoken but which in the context of the movie people seem to believe actually were.
This is not a solid foundation on which to construct a policy.
The reason I’m writing this is that earlier in the week I read the crazy suggestion that some sort of stadium upgrade would be worth us “foregoing” the signing of a player.
What rubbish that is. Who thinks like that?
For a start, the strength of the playing squad should never sit beside other considerations when the club is setting out a strategy. We are a football club which operates a business, not a business which just so happens to run a football club.
Nobody is going to come if there is not something decent to watch on the park.
Imagine suggesting something like this when the twin news stories on our sites are Celtic’s lack of a signing so far and Ibrox getting itself into a complete state over their own failed infrastructure project. Talk about failing to read the room.
Talking about a complete inability to understand the moment we’re in.
The last time we tried an experiment like that Rodgers had to “forego” his summer targets whilst we spent money on disco lights. Rodgers walked out a matter of months later. He was not willing to accept that trade-off and he was right not to.
All that that revealed was that some people at our club have an absolutely warped sense of priorities.
And see, that’s why I don’t like this suggestion at all. I wonder if this sudden talk of upgrades at Celtic Park isn’t an attempt to rub Ibrox’s faces in their own travails a wee bit. This is not ridiculous. We’ve signed players in the past just to stop them getting them. Scott Allan is a case in point.
Needless to say, this would basically be someone at Celtic’s ego running riot with our money, because the absolute wrong reason to do something like this is to “prove” how easy it is and to make someone else look like a mug.
They are capable of looking stupid without any help from us.
Big infrastructure is even worse.
It is hugely expensive. It is hugely disruptive. And it is largely pointless to do it if it means sacrificing first team players for.
I’m all for “enhancing the match experience.”
But the match experience, to me, is more than anything else about the product on the pitch. See, and this might sound daft, it is never going to be the disco lights or the sports bar or the quality of the cuisine that gets me coming to Celtic Park every second weekend … it’s the team on the park.
Remember not that long ago when we had to close the upper tier of the North Stand for European games? Build it and they’ll come, eah? Not in that case. The reason fans stayed away was that they weren’t convinced the product on the park was worth it.
Better wi-fi (which Celtic Park absolutely does need) wouldn’t have brought them back.
If we’re spending money on stuff fans think is pointless and using that as an excuse to deny the manager money that’s just not going to stand at all. The point I find myself having to argue over and over again with the board apologists is that all the financial muscle they like to boast about is of no use to us whatsoever unless it reflected out on the pitch.
There is a small segment of our support which is obsessed with this balance sheet stuff, and an even smaller segment which is obsessed with Big Shiny Things. The rest of us just want to see the best possible Celtic team that we can get.
And you know what? If we build that then the people really will come, and then the biggest infrastructure project of them all – the extension that would give us an 80,000 capacity – is not just a mad idea but a prospect that is both exciting and realistic.
And still no signing activity. Getting beyond a joke starting the season with Bain in goals. We will be truly humped over in the US even if the 2 English teams put out their reserves.
With Brendan suggesting Vata was gonna be his third striker did that exclude Oh, is he moving out? What about Johnson. I’d have Johnson up front way before Vata.
I think we will be lucky to see three players in at this rate and that may include a loanee.
Is the manager being too restrictive in his selection criteria? He must know his budget, there must have been player options discussed within that budget. The longer this goes on the more I think there is a growing chance we lose O’Riley. Brendan has always been far too slow in the transfer market, last minute panic buys and loanees.
There will be far more going than coming in that’s for sure.
Shambles.!
80,000 seats sound great.
Right up there with the Big Boys.
But will 80K turn up on a Wednesday night in November to see us play Ross County or Livingston?
Doubt it and if it happened it would have a negative effect on the Park. The Support spread out all out over the Stadium with large gaps.
Would selling 70 K or 80K , plus the additional Commercial Revenue translate to a better product on the Park?
Nope, our Board would still Budget to stay just ahead of The Tribute Act.
No sense building an expensive European ready squad to play against the ‘cannon fodder’ of the SPFL.
I reckon it would be an enormous ‘White Elephant’ unless we were part of a Pan European League and that’s’ Pie in the Sky’ stuff at present.
As a Club we are a victim of Geography. We have a Global Fanbase. We are the biggest and wealthiest Club in Scotland.
The Club has iconic status but we play in a ‘Mickey Mouse’ League. Our Boards parsimonious outlook mirrors that reality.
It, despite our fervent hopes, will never change as long as the SFA is the regime we have to operate under. They’re Bowling Club Administrators at best and stuck in the 17th Century.k
Couldn’t agree more.
The current project to build the indoor full sized pitch was supposed to include a pitch with a stand for the ladies team but that had to de shelved because of access issues. So this project is not going to save us money in the long run because the ladies team is still going to have to rent a stadium to play out of.
This project will cost money as we will now have to have more ground staff to look after the different locations.
I said it before, every department of our club is dependent on success on the park. I may be one of the few, but in Forty-Five years of going to Celtic Park I have never bought anything from any kiosk. My “experience” is about going to watch the team I’m emotionally jnvested in.
The people that want this are probably the thousands on the ST waiting lists and I suspect the more thousands that can’t even get on the waiting list. Of course the team is the priority, infrastructure improvements takes a lot of planning but while there’s demand and cash available maybe it’s a good time to look at it. I’m not interested in the food or bar on a match day, going to the football is about the football.
Just a point on the “disco lights” and alluding you Rodgers walking because of this trade off.
My understanding is that better lighting was required by uefa, I believe to make Celtic park a 5 star stadium, or to achieve something like that. The actual disco part is some software that cost very little in the grand scheme of things, like 70 grand if I mind right. I’m sure there was some extra cost in making the lights so they could move, but the bulk of the cost was the upgrading of the lights
Well said. There should be no talk of increasing capacity or any such stuff until we have players on the park that are having us competing in the Champions League and Europa League after Christmas.
Agree 100%. Team comes first then look at other projects. I do believe we are at a point where serious consideration of upgrade to the main stand must be done, giving us a huge advantage and completing Fergus plan/vision for Celtic Park.
Aye great idea , increase the capacity so more fans can watch a team in stasis getting turned over every year in Europe, brilliant!!!!!
Won’t build a team , only their misplaced ego’s.
Terrific, spot-on article.
It’s ALL about our football team and that must be the only priority.
If the ‘suits’ don’t get it, get them away tae fukk!
Hail! Hail! The Glasgow Celtic, phonies OUT!