The numbers show that Celtic cannot afford a Champions League gamble.

Last night, a couple of other sites did a comparison between how much we earned and how much the Ibrox club earned just from European football this season, and that number is so stark that it casts a big light on what our board has to do in the summer.

We earned three times what they did. And that’s in spite of them getting to a quarter-final. That’s the disparity between the Europa League and the Champions League. There are three elements of this that our board had better be considering.

First is the gap between the two clubs.

If we go into next season and do the same again—make three times from our European run what they make from theirs—that virtually makes it impossible for whoever takes over that club to pump in enough money, if indeed they intend to do that, to even draw level with us. We can just keep widening the gap as long as we’re in the top competition.

The second thing to remember is that the gap between the Europa League and the Champions League is so vast that we’re risking a greater sum than ever before by sending our team into the qualifier unprepared.

See, back in the day, when a good Europa League run and a good Champions League run only earned you a couple of million difference, it might have been acceptable to take the risk. But if you fall out of one competition and into the other now, you are leaving so much money on the table that it would be unpardonable for our club to leave the manager short in that qualifying game.

The third thing to consider is this—and I’m not saying this is necessarily going to be a problem—but imagine we drop into the Europa and they get the Champions League pot of gold all of a sudden. They would make three times as much as we would for a European run. That would weaken us and strengthen them at the same time.

And that too is an unpardonable risk to take. It’s an entirely different scenario if we get through and then they get into the group stage with us; that’s just one of those things that might happen. But what we cannot do, what we cannot allow, is for us to fall short while they get the prize.

Not one of those three scenarios is in any way acceptable.

There are obviously “least worst” options among them, but we shouldn’t even be thinking about that. We should be equipping the team properly before that qualifier even comes around. The manager should have his players—his own players—already in the bag, and the futures of all of our existing players should be decided before that match kicks off.

Now this is where you’ll hear the argument that we can’t afford to take a chance like this. And that argument, of course, is absolute rubbish.

The reasoning behind it goes: what if we spend all this money and then we don’t make the Champions League anyway? We’ll have gambled and failed, and that will cost us. We’ll have to cut the playing squad and the playing budget and everything else.

None of that is true.

Yes, we will lose a significant sum of money—we’ll have left a significant sum on the table—but it’s up to us at that point to make the best of it. The one consolation is that I think we’d do rather well in the Europa League.

There would be more coefficient points and more money than we’ve ever won in that competition before. And I think an automatic place in the last 16 would be well within our reach. They managed it with a vastly inferior squad to ours.

As for financial sustainability regulations?

We hardly touch them.

Even if we spent money on transfer fees and additionally on wages and didn’t get to the Champions League, yes, there would be a shortfall in earnings, and we might be brought closer to that threshold—but as I’ve already proved conclusively in a long article I wrote on this very subject, we’re nowhere near tripping the three-year wire.

This thing operates on a three-year scale and accounts for averages. We wouldn’t be anywhere close to trouble.

We also operate a very good transfer trading strategy. And if we kept that up, we could conceivably sell two key players the following year to make up any shortfall. There’s no danger to us in one year of not making the Champions League groups—not even if we push the boat out a bit in trying to get there.

We’re always going to have options to trade our way out of a problem like that. And let’s not beat around the bush here. If we qualify this year, the money we earn gives us a better chance of qualifying next year, when there are even more qualifying games just to get there.

On the other hand, if we fail this year, the task becomes harder next year as a result. And if we fail two years in a row, the advantage we have right now in terms of wiggle room for financial sustainability is almost certainly going to be dramatically reduced. That has all sorts of impacts going forward.

It’s just not worth the risk.

The rewards are so high for qualifying, the downside so obvious, that we’re taking a bigger gamble not doing this than we ever will by going for it. If it pays off, it’ll pay off all the way. Not only will we be there, but we’ll be there in better shape than we’ve ever been and with a manager and a team more ready for that stage than we’ve had in years.

If you fail to prepare, then you’re preparing to fail. It really is that simple.

And this board—and this club—has taken that attitude for far too long. The worst thing about it is that they almost boast about preparing to fail. We budget for failure. Which is prudent, yes, but it can also hold us back, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been on the outside looking in as often as we’ve been on the inside looking out.

Everyone knows how crucial this summer is going to be. They’re trying to get Rodgers to commit to the club, and I think a lot of that is going to come down to how well prepared he feels we are for that qualifying game. If he thinks we’re gambling with that—if he thinks we’re not going to push that extra bit—then that might decide the issue for him before the season even properly gets underway.

We cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of acting like a club that thinks it’s a privilege just to be at the top table. In order to be there regularly, consistently—and to look like we belong there—we have to act like we belong there. We have to be strong, and we have to project that strength.

Too often going into these qualifiers, we’ve looked weak—or worse, we’ve deliberately weakened ourselves before them. The events of January, when we sold our number one striker and then didn’t replace him, sent a very clear message to people all over Europe that we were not to be taken seriously.

Fortunately, Rodgers and the players disagreed.

But people know. People out there are well aware that our board is not so ambitious. And that’s a perception we simply cannot afford to let set in. We’re going to find it very hard to attract good players, and we’re going to find it very hard to retain good coaches. That will no longer suffice. This is not a risk worth taking.

Our latest podcast is up now … it’s called Treble Yell.