In frequenting a few different Celtic forums, I come across this term quite a bit, Celtic are a selling club. It is a term that does not quite sit right with me, but because it is used so frequently I thought I would investigate to see if in fact Celtic are a selling club.
All information was sourced from the last ten years as I feel this was a big enough sample size to come to an answer either way. The good news is, well I think it’s good, that we have not been or ever will be a selling team.
First thing I decided to look at was simple enough. How many players have we signed and sold for a profit?
It turns out there are only a handful players that we signed that ended up making a profit when we sold them. Kenny Miller, Evander Sno and Stan Petrov are the biggest names and considering Sno and Miller were free transfers I don’t know if they help show we are a selling club.
We also had a few youth players that made us money, Aiden McGeady, Stephen McManus, Shaun Maloney and the likes, but we could sell them for anything and make money, it does not prove we are a selling club per se.
Petrov is the only player in the last ten years that we paid money for and made a substantial profit when he moved on and only because he signed an extra year knowing he was leaving so we would get money for him.
McGeady also made us great money, but the fact that both players requested to leave, again does not back up us being a selling club.
Now I know what everyone is thinking, today we are buying younger players with a view to sell in the future. I disagree with this. I believe we are going for younger players as a result of a huge change in the global transfer market, mainly our big spending friends south of the border.
Below I put together two tables to help back my theory on this. The first table is our top ten transfers paid in the last ten years and the second table is revenue earn, wages paid and total transfers paid and earned.
Scott Brown £4.4m
Marc Antoine Fortune £3.8m
Jan Hesselink £3.4m
Efrain Juarez £3.0m
Georgios Samaras £3.0m
Shunsuke Nakamura £2.5m
Maciej Zuarwski £2.5m
Massimo Donati £2.5m
Glenn Loovens £2.5m
Gary Hooper £2.4m
Revenue(£m) %Wage Wages (£m) Spent Earned
2010-11 52.557 62.1 32.66 3.1 2.0
2009-10 61.715 59.1 36.48 9.6 15.9
2008-09 72.587 51.1 37.13 10 5.2
2007-08 72.953 53.4 38.95 3.1 1.25
2006-07 75.237 48.4 36.41 9.9 5.8
2005-06 57.411 56.6 32.49 7.5 12.5
2004-05 62.168 60.2 37.42 7.2 0
2003-04 69.020 58.7 40.51 0 0
2002-03 60.569 54.6 33.07 0.5 1.3
2001-02 56.892 57.6 32.76 2.5 0.7
As you can see from the first table we don’t spend big on one player very often, but we can afford a £3m player pretty much whenever we want. It is not exactly a list of awe inspiring names, but it is the market we are in. In the year 2000 we spent £2.75m on Alan Thompson.
He was in his prime at 27-years-old and an established Premier League player. Now compare Lennon’s two signings, Efrain Juarez and Gary Hooper. Both young lads and fairly unproven, but this is what £3m gets you these days. In today’s market Jordan Rhodes is being priced at £5m and we are linked to 19-year-old Marcus Henriksen for £3m.
I really don’t think we are signing these young lads with a view to sell in the future rather than this is all we can afford to sign.
To back this up, check our revenue earned over the last 10 years. It is between £50-60m every year and only spikes when we reach the Champions’ League group stage. This pushes us through the 70 million barrier.
What this shows is that our transfer budget will be the same every year. There will always be around £4m in funds to spend in the summer. This is because we generate £20m in season tickets, £7m in sponsorship, £3m in prize money and tv deals and another £20m from various sources such as merchandising, pre season friendlies and player sales etc.
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Almost every club is a selling club. there are very few exceptions and that is because every player has a price.
If someone in the EPL decides that the best value for 9-10 million quid this summer is Gary Hooper,it is bye bye Gary. To be honest Celtic should be a selling club. The evidence you have presented above actually illustrates this. Celtic make pitiful sums of money selling players, more often than not making a huge loss; Juarez, Murphy being two that are going right now.
An excellent article appeared on Celtic Underground which highlighted the money made by clubs like Porto in the transfer market and the turnover of players within that club is staggering. The majority of them sold on for a huge profit.
That is the model Celtic should adopt if they are not doing so already. Sign then for 1m-3m, Champions League experience, win a couple of titles and a cup or two and then on your way whether you like it or not. Replace them with the same.
Good scouting and opportunities for younger home-grown talent is the way forward. Don’t go near the Champunship unless it is a Hooper. Look at the players Celtic could sell for a huge profit. Ledley, Ki, Kayal, Hooper, Mulgrew (who would have thought it!), Izzaguirre, Wanyama, Matthews. Not to mention some money to be made on McCourt and Stokes.
This is truly impressive and why Neil Lennon is flavour of the month with Lawwell et al, not the league win. We may have to cash in on one or two this summer.
Unfortunate but it is the way forward.
Totally agree John that’s the way forward while we’re stuck in Scottish football.
As you say look at Porto what would we give for some of Porto’s success in European football.
Football is a game only about money us fans are just secondary an afterthought, pay your money and accept what we give you.
No more is Football a game for the people it’s a money making exercise. Still I love Celtic and always will.
HH
And don’t disagree that we can make profit on these players. My point is that we don’t have too. You use Porto as a comparison. Someone else commented we pay more wages than them. Agreed, we have to pay players well to come to Scotland. Porto won the Champions League the year after our final and had four Starters in the Euro 2004 final. They have since won the Europa League again. Now a lot of people think this is because they sell players high and reinvest. The year they won the Europa League they beat Braga in the Final. Benfica made the semis and Sporting Lisbon made the semis this year. Four Portuguese teams in the Semi’s in the last 2 years.
If Scotland qualified for Euro 2012 and made it out of the groups with 4 Celtic players and Motherwell make it to the groups in the Champions League, our players value would near double. Then we might become a selling team and be compared to the Ajax’s, Porto’s and as Pat mentioned, Borussia Dortmund. Till then we can only dream.
We are more comparable to Shaktar Donetsk, who pay big wages to bring players to a two horse race.
A think you might be a wee bit out on some of the transfer money £3m for sammy 2.5m for glenda and 3.4 for JVH. If we have paid that for them somebody need a boot in the haw maws.
A think we sell players we would rather keep when its big money ie mcgeady and stan we got good money for mcdonald aswell i think so we dont sell because we need to we sell when we want to. so a dont think were a selling club. hail hail
Glad to know that for every Celtic fan there’s another idiot with a keyboard who will back anything the club does or looks like doing i.e john now to the real point no we shouldnt be a selling club and you are very right selling our players for huge amounts of money doesnt bring in good players it just brings in young talent like henriksen who i really hope we get as he looks a peach.
But hey as a club that is making a profit every season and has a great young team and the ability to find great young players selling is a silly idea if you dont have to why would you people point out Porto but Porto pay their players an arm and a leg, they have more draw because they not in the spl and they can sell guys for 30-40 mil.
We can’t, we never will and we never should. Porto have to keep high turnover to support the club we don’t and tbh you could hardly argue porto are that much better than us so yeh were fine no we aint selling and no we shouldnt and finally can people stop backing the club blindly and use there brains
Think you’ll find Celtic spend far more on wages than Porto.
I would agree with this. Again this is necessary because we are in league that is a two horse race, about to be a one horse race and our closest neighbour is the best marketed league in the world. The likes of Joe Ledley is being paid top money, when the summer we got him he had went to Roma for talks.
In saying that though, our wages have not changed much in 10 years. We will always have the same budget for the foreseeable future.
Paul, you may agree with this all you want but it has not been true over the last decade. Their respective annual reports/financial results are freely available. Do a bit of research
First of all conor, it’s a bit much calling John an idiot don’t you think? He’s a fellow fan getting involved in a debate and makes some valid points.
If being in net profit in transfer fees makes you a selling club then I agree with John that we SHOULD be one.
Hear me out:
Economists have shown that what you spend on wages is more important than what you spend on transfer fees. I think – given the financial restrictions of playing in the SPL relative to who we compete with in Europe – we should be treating the transfer market as an additional income source.
This means scouring the market for undervalued talent – predominantly players in their early 20s – and then selling them at a profit a few years later.
More of our actual spending should be on wages to attract higher calibre players. The economist Stefan Szymanski showed there is no correlation between transfer spend and success and what is far more important is your wage bill. Generally, the better the player, the higher their wage demands.
We should be targeting high calibre players on bosmans with higher wages – they will come to the SPL if you pay them. And, we are Celtic afterall, that will attract them too.
Basically, we shouldn’t be treating the transfer market as we have done in the past. It should be a profit-making part of our financial model. This income (in addition to our other income), with a stream-lined squad will mean we can afford to attract more experienced players in to compliment the ones we intend to sell for a profit. There will also be the home-grown players in there too.
I don’t think the club has done very well in the transfer market in the last decade. A lot of money has been wasted. Lennon appears to be moving towards the model I have described above and I believe it would make us more able to reach the Champions League.
For example, a couple years ago had this model been in full use, I think we could have been able to pick up Bellamy when he was available. Now, we have been linked with Rodallega for free and we should be snapping him up. His wage demands will be high but he fits into the higher calibre of player we should be aiming for.
When we get big enough bids for the likes of Hooper, Kayal, Wanyama etc we should sell. We should be able to make very healthy profits on all of them and shouldn’t be sentimental about them.
Look at Dortmund, they bought Kagawa for about £300k and have sold him 2 years later for £12m rising to £17m.
You are splitting your squad into top earning guaranteed performers and younger, lower paid players you intend to sell for profit later on. The other good thing about this is that every now and then you may very much want to keep one of these younger players and you can then offer them the pay to move into the top earner category.
I agree with most of your points. The problem is that we can’t really use transfer income as a variable to increase our wage budget. Say we do bump our budget to 40 million a year, we would need to net profit about 7-10 million every year. It is not a viable solution because of the instability. We might sell make that amount for 3 years, then we miss it and start accruing major debt because we are no longer living within our means.
You also mentioned Kagawa. Dortmund did not want to sell him. He is in the last year of his contract. Klopp offered a new one, he turned in down, sold. They got 12 million for him. If he played for us we would get 6 million. Dortmund are the German Champions.
What we could do is gamble on the Champions League Qualifiers and use Hooper as collateral. Keep all of our starters and make two fairly big name signings. If we make qualify, we are set. If not, bye bye Hooper.
Conor, John put forward a much more coherent analysis than yourself or indeed the author of this piece. No need to insult him, in my opinion.
I too referred to that guys article on Celtic Underground but the link and my comments were quickly deleted by this website-it clearly relevant to the discussion, so I don’t know why it was deleted, though I have a fair idea.
Off the top of my head, I seem to recall that Porto’s turnover is about 60% of Celtic’s (maybe a wee bit more), but they have consistently done better than us, unfortunately.
You could define them as a selling club, but to be honest, this term is nonsense-far too simplistic. All but Barcelona and Real Madrid could be classed as selling clubs, as even players at Man Utd or Juventus would happily leave to go to Spain.
If classing a selling club is to look for a net transfer profit, then this surely is nothing to be ashamed of…better to get good money to reinvest, rather than let players that we’ve spet millions on, leave for free-naka, hesselink, sutton, loovens etc.
Just my opinion of course
“If classing a selling club is to look for a net transfer profit, then this surely is nothing to be ashamed of…better to get good money to reinvest, rather than let players that we’ve spet millions on, leave for free-naka, hesselink, sutton, loovens etc.”
Nothing to be ashamed off. As our AGM figures above show though, we don’t need to make a net profit on transfers. We don’t need to sell, therefore we are not a selling club. I am sure we are not adverse to making profit but we are not a for profit business. Any money we make will be reinvested back into the playing staff. We would probably end up back in the negative again, because we have a set budget.
Porto might have to sell players to balance their books. They might need to make a net profit on transfers. We do not. Hence we are not a selling club.
Ok, Paul-by that very selective definition of a ‘selling club’ (that our finances do not make it a necesity to sell) then yes, Celtic are not a selling club. I think other definitions would be more appropriate, but it’s just semantics)
The more pertinent point is this, surely; according to you, we are not a selling club (fair enough) but people on here previously pointed out that Porto for instance (and there are other clubs) have smaller budgets, yet are far more successful than us, through being a selling club. If a smaller, poorer club has adopted the opposite strategy to what you are advocating,and been more successful than Celtic when doing so, then it would indicate that by Celtic not being a selling club, we have suffered. no? Selling at a high price surely allows smaller clubs like Porto to reinvest capital at a far higher level (and acquire a better player) than they would otherwise be able to do.
The semantics are unimportant-what is more important is the football results and frankly Celtic have underperformed in Europe for the last 3/4 years
I disagree with the general argument in the article, but at least you put forward your point of view. cheers. hail hail
We can’t follow the Porto model if no one is willing to pay for what we produce. In the last 3 years Porto recouped(Euros) 40 million for Falcao, 22 million for Bruno Alves, 13 million for Raul Meireles, 24 million for Lisandro Lopez and 18 million for Lucho Gonzalez. Hulk is being touted for 40 million this summer.
You notice that 4 of those players are South American. How can we compete or be compared to that?
I would love 20 million for Gary Hooper. Who would pay it? How much do you think we would have gotten for Henrik Larsson after the UEFA Cup final? Would we have gotten 10 million?
I think we should take a risk and bring in a couple of higher profile free transfers, offer them a bit of cash and make a push for the champions league. If we don’t make it, sell Hooper and one other to balance the books.
Porto are in a strong league with multiple teams capable of winning it and doing well in Europe. Their national team is one of the best in the world. We can’t be compared to them.
How would you implement it?
good article paul, agree with earlier points that you are out on some of your figures, but hey i couldnt get them exactly right just now either.
celtic are not a selling club, we are the same as about 90% of other teams, we sign players who represent good value at the time and if someone meets our valuation of them they leave, if not they stay. they either then see out their contracts or they sign new ones.
if our current squad matures into a great team they will be sold, as teams bigger than us will want them and they will pay good money and good wages. thats the reality of football stature and money are the 2 key elements.
Now as for those who say we should follow the porto model..FORGET IT AND GET REAL!!
they DO NOT have work permit rules to meet like us. So they can go and sign south american 15-17 year olds for small sums, we cant! we wont get permits for these players and when they are old enough and meet the criteria for us to get a permit they are already 5m+ players. so to compare us to porto is illinformed as they operate under different conditions to us.
The transfer figures were difficult to nail down. You could definitely show me different figures that what I have. I tried to get it close though but might be over on a couple of players.
You pretty much summarized my points, thanks for that! If someone offers us 10 million plus they are gone. That is a Scottish transfer record, you don’t turn it down. If we were a selling club though, why not accept Southamptons offer for Hooper? Or when a couple of teams were interested in Ki last summer, why not cash in?
As for Porto, I cannot for the life of me see how we can follow the Porto model. Signing players from Brazil is huge. When we played Braga they had as many Brazilians as Portuguese. We can’t compete with that.
Steve, re: Porto wages v Celtic wages. I think you are mistaken.
With regards to the last 10 years, Celtic’s wages were higher than Porto’s, on 8 occasions-unless their annual reports are wrong, which is highly doubtful
Ok that makes sense. I have not done any research on the wages at Porto but with the amount of money they make they have to be offering high wages otherwise the men at the top are making a few bob. Apologies, but I could still see us with a comparable wage bill with most of the top Portuguese teams.
Ha, Mojiebhoy, Paul Morgan, same person. Just in case you get confused.
The article is quite a poor opinion and view, from my perspective. It seems far to selective and written almost solely from the heart and not the head, with not enough analysis or depth in it.
I far more agree with Jon and Pat’s take on it.
Replying very late to this so no one will read it. Don’t get your point Conor. Call me an idiot if you want but if you think we are in Porto’s league then I suggest you start watching football as a hobby. Or watch it sober. Agree with Paul the Portuguese league does have strong teams whereas Scotland does not.
I know its sacrilege but Celtic are not as big as some fans think we are. This ain’t 1967, 1974 or even 20 years ago. We have been left behind. Celtic need to build from the bottom again as far as Europe is concerned and that means managing your resources well. You know who to buy and precisely when to sell. To allow players to walk away for buttons because you want to hang onto them an extra year is bad fiscal management. Whether you like it or not that is the name of the game.
Scotland is a stepping stone. Players have no real allegiance to any club. Sure they will say the right thing and mean it at the time but unless they are very average there will come a time when they will want to move south (One of our average players, Bangura, admitted he was using us as a stepping stone when he signed!).
That’s where the real money is, that is where the real challenge is. I think Conor you will find that this is actually the opposite of what everyone at Celtic Park is saying. They will tell you that players are lining up to sign for Celtic, they are not. Celtic may be attractive, Scotland is not. Nothing wrong with getting these guys when they are on the way up and they can help us progress where it counts, in Europe.
I am still here, lurking. Vaild points mate and I do 100% agree it is bad fiscal management to allow players to walk for nothing. We will sell Gary Hooper, we will not sell him this summer unless he hands in a transfer request or someone puts in a 10 million bid for him. Unfortunately I also agree we are now a progressive step in a career path, which is a reason we should be bringing through young players, a little bit more loyal.
A simple question though, why do players from Portugal sell for more than a player from Scotland?
cause they are a lot better!!