Celtic’s reward for the Group Stages is so great even this board must see the benefits of ambition.

Yesterday, one of our fan publications put up a list showing the enormous disparity in finances between clubs that make the Champions League and those in the Europa League—then an even greater gulf between those clubs and the ones in the Europa Conference League.

There is a widespread belief that we have a board of directors who are cautious to the point of farce. Some call them risk-averse. But when you look at those numbers, one thing becomes abundantly clear: if this board does not adequately prepare us for next season’s Champions League qualifiers, the risk they are taking is far greater than if they were to spend a moderate sum of money giving the manager what he requires.

The financial calculus here is very clear. To maximise this club’s revenue, we have to be in the top competition. And to get there, we need that better class of player the manager keeps urging them to sign. The last summer window was an excellent start—although it took longer than it should have and didn’t produce all the signings it might have. But most of us were okay with the manager prioritising.

That makes the snail’s pace of this window, and the selling of a key player in it, offensive to those of us who see what this club might achieve.

Now that we’ve seen how vast those rewards are, and now that we have a glimpse of the potential windfall for clubs that consistently play in the Champions League, that has to be the aim. No more budgeting to finish in the second-tier tournament.

This is where we belong. This is where we need to be. And this club should be using all its power to make sure we are there.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed, but you can certainly put yourself in the best possible position to succeed. For far too long, this club’s strategy has been about preparing for failure. Everything we do is about mitigating risk. That’s not the worst mindset in the world—if governments did it properly, disasters wouldn’t cost so much, kill so many, or do so much damage. But there’s a fine line between being cautious and being too cautious, and we’re on the wrong side of it.

The bottom line is that this is where you need to trust the manager and the players. This is where you have to have faith in the guy you’re paying a substantial salary to every year. He wasn’t hired just to win the Scottish Premiership.

He was hired to take us forward in Europe and make the kind of giant strides we’ve seen this year. If you’re not trusting him with the right funding and the backing to get us into the Champions League year after year, then you’re better off hiring someone who will work cheaply on a shoestring budget—someone who doesn’t have this guy’s credentials and who can be counted on to settle for less on all fronts.

At some point, this club has to decide what it’s all about.

Are we content to be the biggest fish in a small pond, or are we actually going to get serious? Right now, we’re not serious. We’re not a serious club. The proof? Selling Kyogo before the Villa game and to be here ten days without a replacement already through the door. That proves we are not a club that takes itself seriously.

This might sound crazy—maybe even insane—but the day I’ll know we are back as a serious club is when we set Champions League knockout qualification as a central aim. No more preparing to fail, which actually means failing to prepare. No more half-hearted ambition. Our minimum standard should be to be at that table every year.

And when we finally evolve into a serious club, getting to a stage in that tournament with the word “final” in it should be the objective. Let me tell you, the clubs that make it that far are the ones who believe they can and the ones who plan for it. They’re the ones who start by saying, “We will get there because we belong there.”

Do you think clubs that settle for merely qualifying out of the group—whose upper echelon down tools when they hit that mark, even with one crucial game left —are ever going to reach those heights?

The simple fact is this: whenever this club has reached for that next rung on the ladder, success has followed—trebles, European finals, quality players, and money flowing into the coffers. Whenever this club has chosen to play it safe—to rely on hiring cheap and bringing The Friends of The Man—we have gone backwards.

We can play it safe and enjoy life in the slow lane.

Or we can reach out, grab this opportunity, and keep piling up the accolades and the money. Frankly, the risk of standing still is now far greater than the alternative, and that alternative is measured in coefficient points, full houses, excitement among players and fans, and—most importantly to this board—in cold, hard cash.

If they don’t see the upside here, then they really are blind and stupid.

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