Stephen McGowan has delivered a highly critical review of Celtic’s Champions League campaign and the club’s supposed transfer strategy.
On the evidence of last night’s team-sheet and the Group E table both have failed miserably with supporters left wondering what direction the club is moving in.
Last week’s AGM was an exercise in self congratulations with Peter Lawwell claiming that the club is world class in many aspects, admired and respected worldwide.
With one point from five Champions League ties and Yang Hyung-jun the only summer signing to make last night’s Starting XI there are plenty of areas for improvement.
Selling Jota for £25m is lauded as great business but with no adequate replacements and a bloated first team squad numbering over 30 the benefits certainly aren’t visible on the park.
Other clubs unearth, develop and sell Jota type players fairly regularly while Feyenoord, Copenhagen and Shakhtar Donetsk deliver far better Champions League results with less resources that Celtic.
Digging deeper into the problems at Celtic, in the Daily Mail McGowan explains:
The painful truth for Celtic is that smaller clubs are doing a better job of trading players for huge sums and investing the profits in a better quality of player.
Despite a record revenue of £119m, Scotland’s champions are likely to end the year in 58th position in the UEFA club coefficient table.
In contrast, AZ Alkmaar have a revenue of just £30m and sit 32nd with a 400 per cent return on their investment over the last decade. LASK Linz raked in a fifth of the sums Celtic made and sit 47th. Sporting Lisbon brought in £108m in revenue, yet sit 23 places higher than the champions of Scotland.
Celtic’s fiscal approach is rooted in conservatism. Directors are risk averse and, as their rivals across Glasgow have shown, there’s a lot to be said for that approach sometimes.
While stockpiling money in the bank offers some insurance against failure to reach the group stage of the Champions League in future, spending less cash on players than they can afford makes that precise scenario more likely.
It feels at times as if the ambitions extend no further than beating Rangers to the Premiership title, reaching the Champions League, taking a few hidings, banking the money and spending a modest percentage on project players lacking the experience, power or pace to change the record. Supporters spending a sizeable chunk of their annual wage on season tickets, club TV and merchandise want more.
If the definition of insanity is doing the same things year after year and expecting a different outcome, it’s not just a new left-back, striker and goalkeeper Celtic need now. It’s a Harley Street consultation.
Brendan Rodgers is expected to host a media conference on Friday to reflect on the defeat from Lazio.
There is no point being in a competition were you are handicapped by those running your club. Nobody wants us to spend what we can’t afford but it would be nice for a change to spend what we can afford on the occasional 1st team ready player. Lawwell is always at the route of it all with his boss Desmond.
Lawwell really HAS to go, and take his son with him.
They are holding the club back.
Apart from the obvious benefit of playing in the CL ie the money it’s getting tiresome and depressing watching us in Europe getting tanned year in year out, never mind CL I don’t think we’d get very far in second tier Europa League either.I always wondered how teams so called smaller teams than us still manage to achieve better results ,ie Copenhagen ALKMARR,LASK, ROSENBERG etc always seem to do better than us ,and let’s not start on our other representatives in Europe who apart from SEVCO once are all failures in Europe, Aberdeen Hibs Hearts is it Scottish football that’s all wrong?
The chancers that sit at the SFA table read the same book as the Celtic board. No investment in the product.Scottish football is at the risk of going stale…if it is not there already.
Club is run by Big Dose of Nepotism DD has rigged the Board in his favour as he has most Shares & last wk Peter Lawwell was to busy taking Shareholders Congratulions for having Money in Bank than Taking his Manger to task over Embarrassing Failure in Europe. Domestically Already Out of One Trophy b4 xmas now Out of Europe PL Should be Sacked but DD is Happy to leave his Board intact & Distract Fans with fight with GB BOO!! Don’t expect Anything to Change at CP as long as DD & His Acolytes Remain in Charge….Get used to being Humiliated every year in Europe BOO! !
We , as fans who love Celtic , need to unite and get rid of our board . Starve them of money . It would’nt take long . Dont buy champions league packages ! And dont buy season tickets or merchandise . STARVE THEM OF MONEY .
Editor: Fans will struggle to give up Season Ticket books but an incredible amount of money comes in from merchandise sales, you can still buy Adidas quality without sending a portion to the Lawwell family.
“…Despite a record revenue of £119m, Scotland’s champions are likely
to end the year in 58th position in the UEFA club coefficient table…”
A potentially, simple solution.
Extend the Directors’ bonuses and payrises KPI’s to include the
UEFA club coefficient.
We rise up the rankings, [i.e. we make some, tangible improvement in Europe],
then the Directors can earn their full payouts:
we don’t rise up the rankings, then they don’t.
Maybe only then will our Board strive to deliver the required BALANCE
between hoarding a cash pile and investing in a better quality squad which
‘should’ do better against European clubs.
We should be doing better than ‘smaller’ clubs like AZ Alkmaar and LASK Linz,
and we could be benchmarked against clubs like Sporting Lisbon with similar
revenues?
The article above validates the feeling that the Board is in fact a hindrance
to the club – and curbing growth and development of the club & business.
Only one solution to this SACK THE BOARD .And a message for Brendan. ” The honeymoon is over ” time to extract the digit.