Celtic the selling club- fact or fiction?

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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If we get knocked out of every competition and finished outside the top six we would still generate £50m in revenue and have a similar budget to what we have every year.

We are actually very well run considering the league we are in. So with our budget being the same the value of our target stays the same. Alan Thompson for £2.75m or Marcus Henriksen for £3m, who do you choose?

Let’s say we are a selling team and we accept a bid for Hooper at £6m. Decent profit made. What are we going to do with it? Reinvest £5m in Jordan Rhodes? Would we really sell a proven 25+ goal a year striker and bring in an expensive, admittedly potentially great player?

Rhodes would need to score 30 to make that worth our while. Say we do start with a budget of £4m and Hooper sale brings us to £10m available for transfers.

Would we spend that on one player to improve the team? Not a chance. That money will be reinvested in a couple of £3m players. Maybe we will get the next Hooper or maybe the next Juarez. Logically though, it does not make sense to sell one of your star players to bring in potential.

Now some fans have been saying that we should become a selling club like the Porto or Ajax model. Apparently Porto kicked on after the 2003 Uefa Cup and we stagnated.

We can’t compete with these types of teams. For one they have a bigger population than us and play in a more competitive league. Also they frequently produce Portuguese and Dutch internationals, Ajax had two players in the World Cup final and three more in the same starting eleven that were former players.

They regularly sell world class talent for £10m plus. Porto sold Falcao for £40m last year to Atletico Madrid and Hulk will go for £40m this year. One of those players covers our entire wage bill for a year. Porto also have a small advantage of being able to sign players from a certain wee country in South America called Brazil.

As I said, we can’t compete with them. I wish we could sell that kind of talent.

We might become a selling club if Hooper scores 40+ including at least five  in the Champions League and increasing his price  tag closer to £15m. Or if Adam Matthews, James Forrest or Victor Wanyama have an outstanding season in the Champions League and we get bids of £12m plus.

Anyone will go for that kind of money. Unfortunately in the SPL we are very unlikely to receive anywhere close to that yet. We will be lucky if we can get someone to break £10m.

This is why I believe we are never going to be a selling team. We simply don’t need to be. Selling a couple of players for £6m is not going to be long term beneficial for our playing staff. Our wage budget will not change because of this, we aim for about £32-37m every year.

Hooper has two years left on his contract, unless he begs to leave he will be with us till next summer. If he scores another 25-30 we will want to keep him. If he turns down a new contract, then we sell him. That does not make you a selling club though, that is just good business. If Robin Van Persie does not sign a new contract with Arsenal this summer, adios amigo. That does not make Arsenal a selling club?

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