In 2018, Rangers chairman Dave King was the chairman. A man who could exchange words with the Dalai Lama, King was adept at lobbing verbal grenades into Glasgow’s east end. Nowadays, he prefers to lob them at the people who run his former club.
It’s been six years since King predicted Celtic would collapse like a house of cards if Rangers won a league title. When they finally did in 2021, those words blew up in his face like a stick of dynamite in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
While King spent the week throwing media barbs at the Ibrox investors he once managed (challenging them all to go for broke), Celtic put the finishing touches to a set of financial figures showing a profit of £13.4m, annual revenues of £124.6m and cash reserves of £77.2m. If those are the cards that are dealt to them, you wouldn’t want to see them with a winning hand.
The Parkhead club, the first Scottish team in history to spend £30m and end a transfer window in profit, are making more money than Sue Gray and their ostentatious wealth creates a problem Rangers would give anything to solve. How do they spend their £100m?
Amid the excitement of the 5-1 thrashing of Slovan Bratislava, hardly anyone realised that Celtic had just won another £1.8m to add to the £40m already on their way. For Rangers to earn another £1.8m in the Europa League, they would have to win five of their eight games. Hearts would have to win all six of their Europa Conference League games.
The Champions League and player swaps mean Celtic are now in a financial league of their own. How they use the money will dictate how long they keep Rangers in a state of internal turmoil. Or how long they prevent a deal between Hearts and Tony Bloom for player data from upsetting the status quo.
Arne Engels’ performance against Slovan Bratislava showed why he cost Celtic a record fee.
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers has urged the club to be braver in the transfer market.
Dave King predicted Celtic would collapse like a house of cards if Rangers won the league title.
Football’s obsession with financial sustainability doesn’t help. This season, UEFA will cap player and coach salaries, transfer fees and agent fees at 80 percent of a club’s annual revenue plus the average profit made from player transactions over the previous three years. Next season, the figure will be reduced to 70 percent.
Even then, 70 per cent of what Celtic earn will be significantly more than 70 per cent of what Rangers bring in. Especially when the sales of Calvin Bassey, Joe Aribo and Nathan Patterson fall off the radar for three years.
To take advantage of their financial advantage, the Parkhead club will now bet less on £2m projects.
There is nothing wrong with a strategy of signing players aged 19-24 with international recognition and affordable wages. Poor execution was always the problem, and Brendan Rodgers urged the club to step up and show a little more courage.
Capitalism in its purest form, the Champions League is a billionaires’ playground where you get what you pay for.
And the performance of £11m record signing Arne Engels against Slovan Bratislava reinforced the belief that Celtic should now spend more of their budget on the Odsonne Edouards and Jeremie Frimpongs of this world and less on the likes of Alexandro Bernabei and Gustaf Lagerbielke.
If Scotland’s automatic Champions League qualification goes the way of Marco Tilio, a few more Arne Engels on the pitch would be a sure thing for a rainy day.
In order to be considered a Champions League club, Celtic need not only to sign like one. Sooner or later, they will also have to build like one.
First impressions count. And, having spent £20m modernising their Barrowfield training ground, the board will have to come up with some sort of plan to replace a crumbling main stand built for heroes of a bygone era.
When Europe’s top players step off their bus on Champions League nights, they approach a 1980s facade and pass through flimsy glass doors that are locked on windy days to stop them flying off their hinges.
They walk past faux-leather sofas in a modest reception area as foreign journalists climb the stairs to nibble on packets of Walker’s shortbread biscuits in a crowded, past-the-expiration date press room.
And every time they do, Celtic’s claims to being a Champions League club seem as flimsy as the glorified wedding marquee erected in the car park for post-match interviews.
A feasibility study was carried out in 2022 into the cost of a new Main Stand and it was determined that a new structure would cost £100m. Now it is much more.
Chief executive Michael Nicholson blamed “limited financial capital” for the failure to start construction then.
However, when the Matt O’Riley and Champions League money comes through, Celtic will find themselves starring in their own sequel to Richard Pryor’s Brewster’s Millions. Lots and lots of money and no obvious plan for how to spend it.
If the SPFL don’t take the League Cup seriously, why should anyone else?
The League Cup has become the old vase on an elderly aunt’s mantelpiece that no one wants to throw away with the local rubbish bin.
It doesn’t matter if you are sponsored by Viaplay, Premier Sports, Carabao or Viagra.
The pencil lead is missing and there is no way to put it back in.
The big clubs devalue the product by putting out marginal players. In the end, there is no European place at stake. Apart from a day of glory for St Mirren or Kilmarnock from time to time, their only value is derived from a domestic treble for Celtic or Rangers.
If the SPFL insists on pressing ahead, using competition to bring in obscure broadcasters, the least it could do is ensure a level playing field.
When it comes to the use of VAR in the Premier Sports Cup, there should be no middle ground. It is either used in every game or none at all. Allowing Premiership clubs such as Motherwell and Aberdeen to opt out of using it in the quarter-finals to save £15,000 is an affront to sporting integrity.
While SPFL rules allow for two of this weekend’s four quarter-final matches to be played without VAR, the English Football League values sporting fairness more highly.
In last season’s Carabao Cup, VAR was not used in the semi-finals because Championship side Middlesbrough did not have video technology equipment at the Riverside Stadium.
While Liverpool had the whole match on fire at Anfield, both semi-finals were played without him because England recognise that you cannot have justice for some and not for others.
A country that takes VAR – and integrity – seriously ensures that every match in the same competition is refereed to the highest possible standard.
Anything else is a flawed and poorly thought-out two-tier system of bureaucracy.
If the SPFL wants everyone else to treat the League Cup as a serious competition, it could always lead by example.