BBC Scotland reporter Brian McLaughlin has issued an ominous warning on Celtic’s finances.
Neil Lennon spoke to the media on Friday afternoon with the focus firmly on retaining players ahead of bringing in new faces for the 2020/21 campaign.
With income effectively turned off in the middle of March clubs have had to make big decisions with no definite signs of when fans will be allowed to return to Celtic Park.
Banking 50,000 sets of Season Ticket money had been the bedrock of Celtic’s finances with a mix of transfer fees and European prize money adding to sponsorship and merchandising to keep the accounts healthy.
Playing staff and executives agreed in April to wage deferrals but with little in the way of guarantees McLaughlin believes that big cuts are in the pipeline which will inevitably rule out any incoming transfers.
32 minutes into Sportsound today he discussed Celtic’s finances:
One thing on that, on the finances, the main thing that I took from it yesterday is that Celtic are absolutely not immune to this. There is a lot of talk going about over this war-chest of cash that Celtic have accumulated over the last couple of years, of 30 million pounds.
Celtic are leaking millions of pounds per month just now. They may have some money in the bank but it is diminishing at a vast rate on a monthly basis.
Of all the clubs in Scotland Celtic have the highest overheads. So, at the moment, we heard Neil talk there about deferrals, deferrals end at the end of this month. Wage cuts, I would not be surprised at all. Peter Lawwell and the rest of the Celtic board are now getting to the stage that they do really need to look at serious cuts here.
As things stand Neil is urging for fans to be allowed in, and I know John Collins has got a great view on this, of being allowed some fans inside the ground. Even if it’s 10% that is still 45,000 empty seats at Celtic Park and simply you just can’t have that
Only one SPFL Premiership club had a Going Concern warning in their 2019 accounts, it wasn’t Celtic.
