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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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!!