Dave King has taunted the Celtic board over his claim that they would fold like a pack of cards when the pressure was applied.
Celtic entered this season having won the last 11 domestic trophies but by mid-January the title race was virtually over with Stephen Gerrard’s men more than 20 points ahead.
On the playing side it has been a massive turnaround but even more so with the advantage that Celtic have built up- and frittered away. It seemed that Peter Lawwell and Dermot Desmond had every angle covered.
Since Gerrard was appointed manager in May 2018 Celtic have raked in over £50m from the sales of Stuart Armstrong, Moussa Dembele and Kieran Tierney with that sum topped up last month by selling Jeremie Frimpong. At Ibrox they have brought in around £3m by selling Josh Windass, Daniel Candeias and Greg Docherty.
Reaching the group stage of the Champions League can add £30m to turnover but Celtic have only hit that jackpot twice in the last seven years despite having a seeded route to the riches.
As recently as 31 December 2019 Celtic’s six month turnover eclipsed the Ibrox turnover for the year 2018/19 but that provides little comfort to Celtic fans- and plenty of satisfaction to King.
The South African businessman stepped down as Ibrox chairman last year but remains a director and one of the biggest shareholders in the company that looks poised to win this season’s SPFL title.
Picking up on an interview that King gave with a podcast, the Daily Record reports the former company chairman saying:
I spent a lot of time thinking about Celtic. That was the benchmark, that was the standard we had to get to. Looking at the performance of Celtic in their build-up to Nine In A Row I don’t think they were taking full advantage of the extra resources they had at that time.
They had no real competition. Aberdeen ran them close a couple of seasons but with Celtic’s resources even that shouldn’t have happened. I just felt if we could have real go at them and get in their faces then they would fold like a pack of cards
We just had to get in there and start competing with them. They’d had it too easy. They were in a league of their own effectively for nearly six seasons because of absence of Rangers.
So I Iooked at their European performances and foreign teams weren’t giving them the respect they got in Scotland so I felt if we could get in their faces they would struggle.
Over the last 18 months Cluj, Copenhagen and Ferencvaros have inflicted costly defeats at Celtic Park, in the autumn Sparta Prague beat Neil Lennon’s side 4-1 home and away.
Last month Peter Lawwell announced that he would be retiring at the end of June but the club has still to comment on the managerial review announced at the start of December.
