Dave King has taunted Dermot Desmond and Peter Lawwell as the Celtic hierarchy batten down the hatches over their self-created crisis.
The South African based businessman has stood down as chairman at Ibrox but not before he created a climate of ambition that has sourced a number of investors prepared to put money into building a successful team.
Across the city Desmond and Lawwell have congratulated themselves on their fiscal prudence while missing out on £30m Champions League windfalls in each of the last three years despite having a seeded route to assist their passage.
In each of those three seasons Celtic have gone into the Champions League qualifiers under prepaired. In 2018 Jack Hendry was at centre-half against AEK Athens, a year later Callum McGregor was left-back against Cluj with Boli Blingoli on the bench with Chris Jullien.
This year Neil Lennon had no signings with him for the pre-season friendlies in France, when Ferencvaros won at Celtic Park in August Lennon had Vasilis Barkas playing his second match in goals with Albian Ajeti on the bench after a season of very little football at West Ham.
The unregulated nature of Scottish football avoids any form of Financial Fair Play allowing any source to pump in cash with the goal of picking up UEFA prize money while their main rival sticks to Stock Market rules and pays their Chief Executive £3.5m a year.
In 2012 Celtic could have pushed the case for Financial Fair Play but that would have paralysed their Old Firm business model, at the same time the SFA created the Five Way Agreement which provided a different set of rules to assist one member club.
Was anyone at Celtic involved in 5 way agreement?
PL- No and I’ve never seen it#ticagm
— Celtic Underground* (@celticrumours) November 27, 2019
Many Celtic fans are furious at the complacency of the club ‘hierarchy’ who yesterday erected barricades to keep fans well clear of the main entrance to the club.
The Old Firm balance has now swung in favour of the Ibrox company with King putting the boot into Celtic despite the helping hand of friendship extended over the last decade.
The Daily Record reports the former Ibrox chairman saying:
Celtic are still coming from a position where they have resources. It is really going to be up to the Celtic investors to react to the Rangers’ resurgence.
We are in a strong position and we are well funded and we would be going from strength to strength. The question is what would be the reaction of the current Celtic’s shareholders to that?
At the moment, I can certainly see it being more balanced over the next couple of years. It certainly wouldn’t be the level of dominance that Celtic enjoyed because we were so far away from them
Tomorrow Celtic’s first team squad will use a Park’s of Hamilton coach to travel to the match against St Johnstone, new Ibrox chairman Douglas Park is the head of Park’s of Hamilton.
