Neil Lennon has gone into detail about the financial meltdown facing Rangers and expressed no sympathy for the Ibrox club.
The past week has seen the mainstream media finally catch on to the depth of the club’s problems highlighted by the desperate need to sell Nikica Jelavic to bring in much needed cash.
Ally McCoist is now operating under the financial constraints that Lennon has been working under since he took over from Tony Mowbray in 2010.
While Walter Smith was able to splash the cash on Jelavic and James Beattie at the start of last season the Celtic boss had to scour the world for cut price signings like Emilio Izaguirre, Biram Kayal, Gary Hooper and Anthony Stokes.
“I have a certain sympathy with Ally McCoist,” Lennon told the daily newspapers yesterday having earlier touched on the subject in a Sky Sports News interview. “He’s in his first year in the job and I’m sure that he didn’t envisage the problems that he’s had.
“But somebody must have seen in coming. Do I have sympathy in that respect for them? No. Have they brought it upon themselves as a club? Yes.
Explaining the reality of how Celtic have to operate Lennon added: “We have cut our cloth accordingly for years and had to bite the bullet a few times.”
Lennon’s comments come as the prospect of administration or even liquidation is freely discussed about Rangers.
An automatic 10 point deduction will apply in the event of administration but liquidation is a whole new area for the football authorities to deal with.
Liquidation would mean the end of the club formed in 1873 but a new club would almost certainly be formed.
How the authorities deal with a newly formed Glasgow club probably playing out of Ibrox Stadium remains to be seen. Any new club would have to be registered with the SFA and then apply to the SFL or SPL for membership.
There will be a will amongst some clubs to welcome the new Glasgow club into the SPL for commercial reasons but there are bound to be dissenting voices concerned about any such move.
At that stage Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster will need to earn their salaries and ensure that Scottish football is seen to be operating within the Financial Fair Play guidelines about to be introduced by UEFA.
Lenny speaks the truth as usual.
I don’t always agree with everything the boss says or does, but in this case i do.
I also don’t accept the premise that we need them. We don’t need them financially as our season ticket sales (in my opinion) has no correlation to that fact that we either do or don’t play them at least 4 times a season. We may actually have a better chance of getting into the English Premiership on our own as the memory of Manchester is still fresh in people’s minds in England, as is Seville (go figure the difference). In that scanario, we will grown to have new rivals, be in Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City or Man U.
We don’t need them for any ‘hate’ figure to rally against as we have never been a club that is anyi-anything. We are all about being FOR things. The tricolour we fly that is the flag or our founder is not Green, White and Gold, it’s Green, White and ORANGE and signifies the hope for peace (white) between the catholics (green) and protestants (orange). Our name was chosen with similar intent of INCLUSION. To suggest we “need” them to give a hate figure to rally against gives credence that we are in fact “just as bad as each other”, something that if i ever thought was true i could never have been a Celtic man and proud to be so.
I was at the Dunfermline game on 2nd January, a date in the calendar normally put aside for “getting over the hangover” and every seat allocated to us was taken, providing a vocal support that was (as always) fantastic. Nobody is telling me (surely) that all these people came to a freezing cold ground that day to display the fact that they were all about hating Rangers. They were there to support Celtic.
We don’t need them financially, nor in any other way, As Ian Archer said “they are a permanent embarassement and an occasional disgrace”. They did their 9 in a row by breaking the rules and therby giving themselves a massive advantage. They have been caught with their hand in the till. Let them cease to exist. I’ll shed not one tear for them, we will not suffer any dilutaion without them and we may even be allowed into the English Premiership and, who knows, with the money that brings in and the world wide appeal our club holds to attract top class players (and the money to LEGALLY pay them the levels they require), we may even bring the European Cup back to Celtic Park one day. Let that be the legacy of RFC.
worth waiting for you spend £5 i will spend £10, where is your voice now Murray mints you left the ship as it was sinking
JimB
Spot on! Murray needs to be investigated by HMRC as well, he was the one taking the piss initially, he needs his “sir” (sic) removing too.
KTF