McCoist fears £3m budget
After McCoist’s traditional seems-like-a-good-guy/shares-the-same-ambitions-as-me welcome to the new club’s latest Chief Executive the realities of 18 months of Gretna-like overspending are beginning to be felt around Ibrox.
With the cost of a five star stadium and state-of-the-art training complex eating up the best part of £10m a year slashing the playing budget is the most likely source of savings to keep the club solvent.
However it’s highly unlikely that anyone will offer a transfer fee for stars like Dean Shiels, David Templeton, Steven Smith, Dick Foster, Steve Simonsen, Andy Little, Ian Black, Emilson Cribari or Ross Perry meaning that the club may be forced to pay players to leave as they did earlier in the season with Carlos Bocanegra and Dorin Goian.
Massive playing cuts and a hike in season ticket prices are needed to keep the Third Division champions afloat but despite the seriousness of the situation McCoist has his attention set on toppling Celtic!
“If I have a budget of £3million and Celtic have a budget of £20m then it would be extremely difficult to compete with them, an enormous task,” the £850,000-a-year Ibrox boss explained. “Rangers and Celtic have always had the highest budgets.”
While Celtic invested in their stadium, infrastructure and scouting network to build their business up it seems that McCoist wants to fast track his way to the top.
In order to have a £20m playing budget Neil Lennon has had to sell players like Aiden McGeady, Gary Hooper, Victor Wanyama and Marco Fortune while maintaining payments for Income Tax and National Insurance to HMRC.
Tough decisions have had to be made at Celtic to reach the current levels of performance with income coming from three main sources- ticket sales, commercial deals and participating in the Champions League.
Sevco income is almost solely dependent on ticket sales with McCoist giving his traditional conflicting views on the need for supporters to stick with the club and avoid a ticket boycott.
“The fans must continue to buy season tickets if the club is to survive, improve and progress,” he explained. “I’m sure, the way things look at the moment, there’s no appetite for talk of boycotts but I won’t tell the fans what to do. All I can do is state they will have a major bearing on how we move on from here.”
Sevco Financial Director Brian Stockbridge recently told a meeting with supporters that the club would have £1m in April, a month before season ticket renewal forms are sent out.
A £3m playing budget would allow McCoist to have 20 players on £3,000 per week which is more than triple the SPFL Premiership average.