So catastrophic has this been that, in any other company, the Chief Executive and chairman of the Board of Directors would be looking for new jobs.
Let's get one thing straight. Celtic chose not to invest adequately in the team during season 2008-10. Their rationale was this – that it would be in the club's financial interests to be “prudent”, to reduce debt and favour “banked cash”. Those of us who pointed to the fact that failure to invest in strengthening a defective squad would lead to us losing out on future revenues were decried as reckless or naïve.
The prevailing wisdom as espoused by that new breed inhabiting an increasingly notorious supporters' blog (it may be noted that an “independent” fan's site was able to publish the figures even before the official club website) was that this policy equated to wise stewardship of the club and it's much-vaunted pursuit of “zero debt”.
Well, while the accountants, the politicians, the spin merchants and their allies have been carrying on their programme of obfuscation, let's address some simple facts:
Debt increased from £0.97m to £3.13m
Turnover decreased by 22.8% to £36.11m
Perhaps it is time for someone at Celtic with the integrity, honesty or “moral courage” to confess that some of those fans who were so long taken for granted as fools, easily parted from their money, were right.
Celtic lost out on approximately £2m that would have been earned from the Peace Cup alone – due to the club's failure to win the SPL and automatic Champions League participation.
Celtic lost out on somewhere between £5m and £8 from Champions League participation.
The club also missed out on prize money that should have been attainable from the Scottish Cup and SPL title.
Now, while we await the accountants producing their boxes of tricks to tell us that around £10m in prize money and participation fees would not have wiped out £3.13m debts and left £6.87m over for player investment, let's look at the other elephant in the room.
Celtic plc – Dermond, Reid, Lawwell, Riley et al – calculated that they could pursue this policy and still expect Celtic fans to fund an approach that had abandoned the principles of competition, never mind the sporting traditions of Celtic. They were catastrophically wrong as attendances have shown.
They can point to the success of the away kit (conveniently overlooking the “international kit” that is unlikely to be needed any time soon) but more pertinent is the fact that increasingly the direction of Celtic resembles the flight of the bumblebee.
We are asked to believe that it is the “sustainable economic and business model” and financial stability” that “has delivered the continuing support of our kit manufacturer, Nike”.
And to think some of us thought that Nike invested in high-profile clubs with positive brand associations. We now know that they do not value a worldwide fan base and successful participation on the European stage but are instead keen to invest in businesses with the least radical accounting practices.
When the lies, selectively presented facts and evasion have passed. What will be left of Celtic?
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6 comments:
Tokzik, if you want to repost that without using the sort of gutter language you resorted to, be my guest. It may make your points more convincing to appear less like an uneducated thug.
Critical assessment and I would say I agree and accept the majority of your points, yet I have to say the business model applied with Celtic isn't a failed one but infact a hailed one in British football, £3 million debt can be paid more or less overnight - its pennies however look at them ones at the other side of the city whose debts are spiralling. I don't think its fair to be critical of a couple of million extra debt when there has to be changes in personnel with the transition of a new manager.
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for the comment.
My main point is that Celtic fans were asked to accept failure to make necessary improvements to the squad and then failure to secure a very winnable league from a position of immense strength - all in the pursuit of zero debt.
Now we have actually increased that debt, handed Rangers at least one and probably two titles they could not have dreamed of winning and are left with far lower income than if they had pursued a less cautious strategy.
When so much of a club's financial well-being is dependent on Champions League revenue, it was negligent to increase the risk that Celtic would fail to get there.
The old argument is that no amount of spending would have guaranteed winning the SPL. However, nothing ever guarantees victory but failing to address glaring deficiencies in the squad certainly increases the risk of losing.
And, yes, some people still think Celtic should be pursuing victory for sporting reasons, which seem far from the minds of our custodians.
Why bother. One Sided View Only.
Tokzik:
That was your best contribution so far. I invited you to resubmit your comment without the 4-letter words starting with f and c. That's hardly one-sided. I didn't even complain about the text-speak. I'm not going to beg you to repost your pearls of wisdom, presuming you can remember your opinion of that day. Fire away but try to keep the language to the sort you would use with your gran on a Sunday - when she is on weekend release.
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