Celtic’s Champions League Pricing Policy Will Be Judged By The Quality We Can Put On The Park.

At some point soon, Celtic will release the ticket prices for the Champions League. There will be four home games, and those four games are likely to cost the fans somewhere around the £200 mark.

These will be amongst the most expensive tickets that Celtic fans have ever had to buy, and there’s already some disquiet over exactly what we’re getting for our money. It may well be that Celtic makes a flurry of signings in the next seven days and whatever is left of the window after that, but it’s no wonder that fans are concerned.

This is the time when the club has to show some loyalty to fans who have shown a tremendous amount of it down through the years … and some to the boss at the same time.

The manager spoke yesterday about what his needs are. He still believes we need to strengthen in at least four positions, including a new midfielder, whether we sell Matt O’Riley or not. This is interesting and telling, as it’s broadly in line with what most fans believe as well.

£200 is an awful lot of money.

It’s an awful lot at any time, but fans are being asked to pay increasingly just to watch football. Season ticket prices are up, TV packages to watch your favourite team are spread across three different services, and more strips are being released than ever before. There are three new Celtic strips every single summer now, with costs that just keep going up.

It’s definitely difficult for a lot of people to keep up with that, especially for parents whose kids just want everything that the club releases.

£200 right now is a huge sum to ask fans to find, especially when the club itself doesn’t seem to pay much attention to the concerns of the supporters in the stands.

In fact, the club doesn’t appear to pay much attention to the needs and wishes of the guy in the dugout—and that’s much worse.

This is not a window that has covered anyone in glory, and those who apologise for the board can say what they like in defence of them, talking about how they spent big money on Adam Idah and Bernardo, but none of it’s going to wash if we’re not a lot stronger when this window shuts than we were when it opened.

Fans want to see signs of life. They want to see that this club takes the Champions League seriously and doesn’t just see it as a cash cow, a means of stacking that enormous surplus ever higher.

We talk all the time about being a world-class operation.

We certainly charge world-class rates. There are top-tier teams who won’t ask their fans to pay as much per game in the group stages as we will, and we also expect a corresponding level of ambition that matches those big sums fans are asked to find.

Right now, I don’t think fans are convinced that the club has that level of ambition, and it’s certainly not visible when you look at how this transfer window has gone.

So, before this board sends out those forms, before this board asks fans to put their hands in their pockets and pay a big chunk of money for those four matches, this club has to start getting real. The club has to start showing that it does take this competition seriously, that it does intend for us to push on and improve in it.

We’re a pot three side this year, and although that doesn’t make as big a difference as in previous years, because we’re going to get two teams from each pot regardless of where we wind up, there are opportunities here for us.

There’s a chance for Celtic to make a bigger splash in this competition than they have in quite some time. A lot of these games are going to be winnable, particularly the home matches. If we get favourable draws in the home games, there’s no reason why we can’t rack up some points. Those points, as everyone knows, are important not only for the coefficient but also because they generate cash on their own.

In addition to that, every penny we spend now is money we don’t have to spend somewhere else down the line. If we invest now in three or four quality players to take this team to the next level, then instead of having to buy four quality players next summer, we only have to replace what we sell and bring in one or two.

That’s how we could grow and develop the squad; one or two quality additions every single year. As Brendan Rodgers pointed out the other day, we signed 10 players in the last summer transfer window for a combined cost of £18 million. Almost all of those signings have flopped. Had we spent that £18 million on three players of the right quality, we would be in a far better position than we are currently in. That’s the blind spot in the policy.

There’s a cost to putting these things off.

As I said in the piece on O’Riley, we can probably get by with some loans with an option to buy this week, but it is absolutely critical that we bring those players in.

Fans want to see results.

There are those of us who have been banging the drum all through this window that the business wasn’t being conducted speedily enough, and all through that time, we were told that things would pick up in the last couple of weeks—and here we are in the last couple of weeks.

There are people in our support, in the blogosphere, who have stuck their necks out on Celtic getting serious business done in the final stages of this window. I have to believe that some of those people were given a direct steer by the club itself.

Those people are going to look like absolute chumps if this club doesn’t deliver.

The manager won’t be terribly impressed either.

He could not have made it clearer what he thinks the priorities should be and what his targets are. He doesn’t want to just sweep aside domestic opposition here in Scotland; he can do that with his eyes shut. This guy is a world-class operator, and he’s proved that.

You only have to look at the way his team is playing right now to see that he’s already improved it. Certain players are flying at the moment, and I’m going to talk about that a little bit later on.

But this manager has his sights set on something bigger than Scottish football. He wants to be the manager who takes us forward in Europe.

He wants us to make a splash on that stage, and we’re not ready for that yet.

As good as the performances have been in the early part of this campaign this is still the same squad that ended last season, and that squad was not good enough to compete at the Champions League level. It still isn’t, especially at the back, where we are badly in need of at least two quality players: one in the centre of defence and the other on the left-hand side.

It was music to my ears to hear that the boss thinks we still need another midfielder because I wholeheartedly agree. I also know that we need a backup striker.

And that’s your four positions right there, the four positions the manager is talking about. This is without even wondering whether we should bring in another wide player.

The performances of Daizen Maeda, the improvement in Luis Palma, and the obvious quality shown by the star of the season so far, Nicholas Kuhn, not to mention that the old warrior James Forrest looks as good as he ever has, should give us confidence. We also have Yang Hyun-jun, and we shouldn’t forget him.

That’s a core group of players there, and that does take some of the pressure off as far as that’s concerned. We could probably get away with what we have in the wide areas at the moment, at least until January when we can re-evaluate.

So, we know what the manager wants. We know the positions he’s prioritised, and we know that he is adamant that he expects those players to be delivered. This is about the manager getting the support he requires as much as it is about the supporters getting value for the money they’re about to be asked to spend.

Even with a system where you can pay the tickets up front and not have to spend the £200 in one go, this is still expensive stuff. It’s a lot of money for the fans to find.

I hope sanity prevails and they charge less, but I have a feeling that £50 per game is broadly in line with what they’re thinking. For at least two of those games, you might even feel that fee is justified when you see the calibre of opposition coming to Celtic Park. Pots one and two don’t contain any novices—there are no easy games in those sections, and they will fully justify the tag “glamour games” and all that goes with that.

But fans want to know that the club takes this challenge seriously. Fans want to know that if they spend that money, it’s because the club has already laid out its own significant sums to strengthen the squad. I’m not going to criticise the club for charging premium prices but they can only expect to get away with that if they’re putting a premium product out on the park.

That’s what we’re going to find out in the next week or so.

Whether this club is serious, whether this board really does intend to try and take us to the next level, or if they’re just going through the motions. We don’t have long left, and there’s a lot of business to get done.

The least they can do is hold off on sending out the details of those ticket packages until fans can properly evaluate how hard the club itself has tried when it comes to preparing us for that tournament. And if the club doesn’t get those deals over the line, I hope they reflect that failure in the prices they charge.