Lefty Gomez, a pitcher for the New York Yankees in the 1930s, famously uttered the phrase, “I’d rather be lucky than good.”
It’s a line that’s often misquoted, but it’s essentially true for some people. When I look at our boardroom, I think there are people in there who are so lacking that the only thing saving them is the absence of a serious challenger. These are the luckiest people on the planet. We have a rival that is even more capable of self-harming than they are. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe that will get them by.
I put up a piece last night about the Ibrox club’s transfer window. Now, you may have read two versions of that piece because I often use text-to-speech when I want to do an article quickly. Once it’s finished, I tidy it up. Last night, because I had both eyes on what was going on in the transfer window, I accidentally published the unedited text-to-speech draft of that article and left it online for two hours.
So if you were a little puzzled and thought that maybe I had posted it whilst absolutely pig-eyed drunk, it was just a simple mistake. It was rectified, and the proper version is now online where it belongs—with an apology to everyone who had to sift through whatever it was. If only it had even made as much sense as word salad.
The general point of that piece, though, was that their club has had a terrible transfer window—not just in terms of failing to strengthen the team in any meaningful way, but because their principal task was to cut the wage bill dramatically. And they absolutely failed to do that as well.
Their websites have tried to spin this as a positive—claiming they retained the “strength” of their squad. This is a squad that’s 10 points behind ours having played a game more. They’ve even tried to suggest that they held out against bids for some of their top players. That was the purpose of yesterday’s piece: to expose that as a complete fraud and to mock the very idea of it.
First, they were in no position to resist huge bids, as they are desperately in need of cash and are burning through it at an alarming rate. Secondly, I don’t believe there were any such bids in the first place. It’s all pure rumour and speculation, and most of it is coming from the club itself. And they’ve never told lies before to make themselves look better, right?
What I marvel at is that club’s ability to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, in much the same way ours do.
And that’s why I don’t believe—and will never believe—any suggestion that we are somehow engaged in some conspiracy to keep them competitive. Because it doesn’t matter how much we downsize or go backwards, they’re capable of self-destructing in a manner that renders anything we do redundant.
They’re talking up interest in some of their new players, which frankly does not exist. And in doing so, they’re only unsettling these guys and empowering their agents to demand more money. That’s a mistake they’ve made before, to spectacular cost. It’s why James Tavernier is still at the club as the highest-paid player in Scotland.
The valuations they put on their players, in an effort to keep some sort of parity with Celtic and the fees we can generate for ours, are laughably high and will put off any prospective buyer. They just don’t get it.
They don’t understand how we do this. And although I have some real and sustained criticisms of the way we do business, in terms of getting the right value for players, it couldn’t be simpler: these are guys who play every week in a successful side that plays good football. And we don’t hawk their names around Europe, desperately trying to entice someone to pay money for them.
It’s a well-known fact that they offered Cyriel Dessers to nearly every club with a chequebook over the summer. No one was biting.
It’s also a well-known fact that they did the same throughout the early part of this month. Apart from the ridiculous fee they were asking for, the very fact that they were advertising this guy as being for sale was like hanging a sign around his neck saying, “he’s not good enough for the Scottish Premiership.”
So how did they ever expect to get money for him? They only stopped after his goal at Old Trafford, when they thought it might spark some genuine interest from abroad. It was too little, too late.
It’s also well known that they were ready to sell Hagi if any club made an offer. But they made a strategic mistake—every bit as stupid as the one Celtic made when we sold Kyogo before finding a replacement, making that replacement harder to sign.
They pre-announced that they weren’t going to take up the one-year extension in his contract. Then they announced that they’d offered him a new deal on lesser terms, which no player worth his salt—and no agent worth his fee—is ever going to sign. So what they effectively did was try to sell a player they had already made clear would be available for free in the summer.
No one was exactly rushing to pay £2–4 million for him.
Tom Lawrence is still on the books, having been offered to just about every team in the English Championship in the hope that one of them would take him. But the people who run those clubs aren’t stupid. They can look at his injury record just as well as anyone can. So he remains there, on a huge salary, contributing very little.
Then there’s Yilmaz. They probably did get an offer from Turkey for him, but the manager personally vetoed it—despite the fact he’s not the club’s first-choice left-back and never will be, as they try to boost the value of their Brazilian “wonderkid.”
And this is where the prediction that myself, Joe, and Eric made in a recent podcast is already proving true. Patrick Stewart, whose job it is to cut that wage bill, has been bounced by the manager on this one and has already derailed his own project.
Exactly what we said was going to happen is happening. Stewart has a mandate to do a certain job, but he will never be allowed to do that job. Pressures both inside and outside the club will make sure he doesn’t stand a chance.
They’re going to face all the same challenges in the summer as they do now—except those challenges will be even greater because of the strain on the wage bill caused by failing to move these guys on.
The only prescription Stewart will be able to offer is more of the same, only in a more extreme form. And if the manager is already banging the drum about what he’s being asked to do now, he’s certainly not going to want to do it in the summer.
All they face are hard choices. All they face are difficult times.
The unique situation over there is that both the manager and the directors are weak. And although their weaknesses cancel each other out to a certain extent, every battle will have a winner and a loser. Clement thinks he’s won this one because he’s retained most of his squad.
But for now, at least, Stewart is in command of the ship. He kept his word that there would not be dramatic transfer business in terms of incomings. When he said “one, maybe two,” that’s exactly what he meant. Clement bucked and tried to resist as much as he could, but the CEO won that battle. One loan signing and a pre-contract deal for the summer were all he got.
But in general terms, stupidity won out.
The dramatic budget cuts did not come to pass, partly because there weren’t many interested buyers for their junk, and the few players who did catch attention were so ludicrously overpriced that no one bothered.
It was a wholly negative transfer window for them. They got nothing right. They did not bring in a single player of note. They did not sell a single player at a high transfer fee.
And because they’re a mess, our board still thinks it can cruise. They think they can weaken our squad without it doing any damage.
And they’re probably right. But only because that club across the city continues to be a shambles. The day they start running in a proper, structured fashion, our board will be put to the test.
Thankfully, that day still seems like a long way off.
Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images
James the Conspiracy Theory’ you alluded to implied that Celtic in collusion with Sevco, a la 5WA mode perhaps, sought to restrict transfer expenditure to ensure a minimal, but ultimately winnable, gap between the Clubs.
No that is not the case. It is more damming and reprehensible than that, our Board has consciously and intentionally
chosen to adopt this modus operandi as they seek to preserve the O## F### Business model. ‘Just a bit and no more’.
They may publicly rail at the term and try to downplay or disown the phrase but what they do in fiscal terms is to confirm,
in their view, the existence of the Duopoly and that they are steadfast in their preservation of the Status Quo.
The Board have limited the Football Club’s aspirations to the SPFL Title and the luck of the draw in EUFA qualifying matches. Anything at this point is a bonus. They don’t care if the Team is ill prepared and get ‘horsed’ in every game.
The PLC will be guaranteed another €30/40 million thank you very much. The players and the fans may feel the shame and embarrassment of the performances. The Chairman and CEO ( if he’s allowed to by PL), will be in their pomp at the AGM as they point to another great year of huge profits and Directors bonuses and Share Dividends. A triumph for the Business’.
No shame or embarrassment in that for them, it’s only Business after all.
James please, please please, get an EDIT BUTTON on the site.
I read a story about the tribute act getting Cerny for the cut price fee of just under £7m. We know the reality over there, even if they waste that amount on him they’d be overspending to stand still. I honestly don’t want to talk about transfers anymore though. Neither does Rodgers, it was hard to tell if he was pissed off with the situation he’s been put in or by the same question on repeat from the hacks. Unfortunately it’ll come up after any poor result.
Fillipe Fillop has laid it out to them beautifully (and to exonerate himself of course)…
“Zizz used to be a club that had plentee money but doezzz not in zee ”mowwment”
Pity Brendan wouldn’t say in his soft Irish lilt –
“This used to be a club that had no money but now has far too much”
NOW FUCKIN GIVE ME A PITTANCE OF IT (AT LEAST) !