Dermot Desmond

why do we need to spend £30m anyway? the spl is a poor league, do you see any other teams spending this amount on players in the spl,this amount is great in terms of buying power, there might be a need to spend this amount if we are mingiling with the elite teams in europe,not this season

our name is elite in my eyes,but we are far from it in reallity

 

If the other teams did spend that kind of money it would be a much better league

 

i agree 100% mate great post

 

There is no way DD has put 60,70,or 80 mil into Celtic, under the rules of a plc he is granted one gift and its no where near 60,70 or 80 mil unless he buys the club outright.
A large part of his portfolio is in realestate its not like he has a few million sitting in his top drawer, part of that realestate is his Fitzpatrick Hotels chain and Ive said for years that they are more important to him than Celtic, and maybe they should be.
He came out there recently and said that we should or could be in the EPL, thats what he's hoping for.
You see his heart is not with Celtic and all this bullshit that he payed Roy and Robbie out of his own pocket and that he has spent this and that on Celtic, well thats just bullshit for the tax man would be all over that.

I'll tell you who spent 60,70 or 80 mil on Celtic, you and me and folk like us.

 

to be honest its like a stock answer for some fans " oh the board are to blame " , " oh its dermot desmonds fault " well to be honest everyone has a part to play in failure but geeez its a bit old because while our board are far from perfect they have at least set our club on a very sound financial footing and thats very important especially when times are hard all over the world . Every defeat is ard to take but the scattergun approach by some when it happens is boring its a fact that its never down to one person or one thing and as with the fans saying that because of the european results we are rubbish etc its a long old season and the time to judge is when we cannot win anything or the end of the season whichever comes first as for one lennys remit will be win the league and that is decided in may usually so lets stop the * and back the team

 

I agree 100%, but for the ones who are pro or anti DD all I can say that as far as Celtic go his hands are tied, being the majority stock holder only gives him one opportunity to put money into the club, thats not his fault thats the rules of being part of a plc.
Anyway lets get tore into Hearts.

 

Well, we haven't won the league for the last two years.

 

and £30 mill will guarantee us the league ? dont thinkso take alook across govan

 

Has anyone else thought that we can't just get players here by throwing cash at them? I mean I understand that that works in the EPL, but what world class players would want to come to a team in a two-horse race for the title, out of Europe before any group stages, and with pitch qualities like Motherwell and Aberdeen away? Throwing money at the world's best works in the EPL because it is the best league in the world, but I don't think it works here to a certain extent.

 

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> Is it just DD fault, there are a lot of things wrong IMO. The board are not in control of how they make ends meet anymore, they are going have to rely on us turning up now to get the money.



Our first game this year against St Mirren, the Attendance was 46,812; this is already a loss of 12,000 fans from last years first game figure. Why? because our season ticket holders don’t hold the same wait as they used to. The demand is gone and everyone knows they can pick a ticket up for any game out with the old firm, any time they want to.
There was a time when the only way you could guarantee a seat was to buy a season ticket and that is why we did it and anyone who wanted to go and see a better game of football than the Dunfermline’s and Hamilton’s of the world, stuck their name down on the waiting list and that cost you £25 for the privilege.

The control is back in the hands of the supporters and the board are going to have to try and get it back if they want to start generating the profits that they achieved not so long ago. Are they going to be able to achieve this by penny pinching? I don’t think so. We may never get back to a waiting list scenario ever again and this will be detrimental to our bank balance every year. You will see each year now that we don’t look like winning the league a dramatic reduction in our support which in turn cost us as it won’t be seats already sold that we are not seeing at Celtic park anymore.

This year it is quoted we have no more than 37,000 season ticket holders which will not be helping the cause, especially if we go on a bad run.

Add to that the season ticket lost revenue for the last 2 years, not winning the league for the last 2 years and spin offs for CL money as well as 3 full stadiums for games we have missed both years.

From the 3 CL games this year alone our take in money from the gate and catering would have been at least £5Million. Obviously over heads come out of this but you are talking about a profit of £3 Million by the end of it.

Last year we didn’t fill the stadium for any of the Europe matches

42,013 Rapid_______38,821 Hamburg_______32,000 Hapoel

A total of 112834 supporters for the 3 games

The year before we had

57,432 Aalborg______58,903 Man U________58,104 Villareal

A total of 174439 supporters for the 3 games a difference of 61605 people and a total loss of £ 1.8 Million on Revenue.

CL money itself (X2) would have been around the £20 Million mark

Last years home games attendance as follows.
58500,58500,58024,58000,46000,41000,56010,36827,58300,50000
41000, 44500.49000,30000,41000,27750,29650,24000,58000

An Average of 45582 through the gate last year.
This figure is down 12 thousand from our usual annual figure.

Now I know we still collected money for seats that where not used but this figure shows a potential loss of 200,000 supports a year which in turn is a total annual lost revenue of £6 Million. A figure we see this year as I was explain above.

We lost to Porto at our peak and went out and spent £350 thousand on Stephen Pearson that was it and add to that our captain Tom Boyd retired as well.

We have to go back 2001 to find the most expensive buy. A further 9 years and 86 different faces coming through the door since and average of 10 new players a year at a total cost of £51 Mil add to that the guts of £30 million loss in revenue the club still in dept to 5.5 mil as well as have not anywhere near the team they had in Seville.

A lot of mistakes have been made and as much there are many people on here who reckon the board are doing a great job, I beg to differ.










____

 

With £30 million, investment, buying Bellamy, Keane etc I think we would quite easily win the league.

What is your point about Rangers?

 

why would dermot pump 30 million into celtic while they are playing in scotland it would be a major loss and he would get no profit. how many times would celtic have to win the league and enter the champions league to repay his investment let alone make him a profit it is rediculous. as said before he has invested 80 million already through out the years. if we some how improve revenue and quality of league in scotland, or somehow break away from scotland to a richer league then surely then he would be sensible then to invest money. but it will never happen so get over it and back the team.

 

dont need £30 mill to finish above the Huns, thats my point they did not buy a single player for 2.5 years and yet they won the league twice and now we need £30 mill to take the tittle back

 

great post buddy

 

excellent post buddy bhoy

 

can anyonen say they would be willing to put large chunks of their own money into anything with NO CHANCE of getting it back i mean he is a business man and didnt become rich by making decisions like that . As for the epl clubs they have 50 mill for being relegated ffs so they can afford to throw money around but even down there they have clubs in financial trouble look at liverpool and be careful what you wish for

 

we went £30m into debt to get to seville ! £30m in debt to get to a eufa cup final and still fall short. that team coudnt even make the champions league that year and it put us £30m into debt for a team that coudnt make the champions league? so if we carried on from there it would be about £100m into debt to maybe make the last 16 or 8 in the champions league. is that really worth it? where do you go after that? do a leeds or do what rangers have been doing for the last 2 or 3 years? get a grip will you. man city spent £200m -£300m over the last couple of seasons and still coudnt even finish in the top 4 in the prem. a top 4 of which only 2 prob have a real chance of winning the champions league. how much do you want them to spend and how much do you want us to go into debt to achieve not a lot more? all these empty seats at parkhead are the boards fault according to you ??? are we not meant to be the best supporters in the world? "faithfull through and through " ?? shoudnt our supporters be buying a season book regardless what state our team are in? if you support celtic then the answer should be yes ! our board have done a great job so therefor i think your post is a lot of nonsence !!!

 

There are stastistics, stastistics and damned lies! Some of the pro DD brigade on here have given me a good laugh I have to say However to be fair, other points regarding him have been fair. He HAS given Celtic financial stababilty in difficult times and for that we should all be greatful I suppose[choking on my vodka]

He should be, and have done a lot more for Celtic than he has though and sadly, I don't think there are any circumstances where he will preside over a truely successfull Celtic team because he has never shown any indication that he has any real ambition for us, except the odd rant about the EPL. Even then I think he would happily see us just fight off relegation year after year down there. He has presided over a serious decline in our fortunes since 2003 and that for me is not good enough. I don't and have never expected him to "throw millions" at us but he just never sees anything through at Celtic and the MON years and Lennoxtown are just examples of this ie neither project completed. After Seville, we didn't need to spend tens of millions on the squad but a good quality goalkeeper would have been a start and perhaps a similar amount of investment could have seen us compete in the CL instead of the Uefa Cup. Is Lennoxtown finished? ...can you begin to see my point? As another poster on here has already said, we are just his toy! and that is what * me off more than anything else.

 

First of all, thanks for the compliments lads

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12 David Fernandez £1m from Livingston, May 2002 [BBC]
16 Ulrik Laursen, £1.5m for Hibs, August 2002 [BBC]
21 Magnus Hedman, £1.5m from Coventry, August 2002 [BBC]
10 John Hartson £6m from Coventry, August 2001 [BBC]
30 Steve Guppy £350k from Leicester, August 2001 [BBC]
03 Mohammed Sylla £650k from St. Johnstone, August 2001 [BBC]
06 Bobo Balde, £900k (fee subs. wiped) from Toulouse, July 2001 [BBC]
18 Neil Lennon £5.75m from Leicester City, December 2000 [Telegraph]
20 Rab Douglas £1.2m from Dundee, Oct 2000 [BBC]
08 Alan Thompson, £2.75M from Aston Villa, Sept 2000 [BBC]
17 Didier Agathe, £50k from Hibs, Sep 2000 [BBC]
09 Chris Sutton £6m from Chelsea, July 2000 [BBC]
05 Joos Valgaeren, £4.5m from Roda FC, July 2000 [BBC]

A total of £32.1 Million

Out

Simon Lynch , £130k to Preston, 7 Jan 2003
Olivier Tebily, £ 700k to Birmingham, 22 March 2002
Mark Burchill, £900k to Portsmouth, 24 August 2001
Eyal Berkovic, £1.5m to Man City, 21 July 2001
Vidar Riseth, £1m to TSV 1860 Munich, 19 March 2001
Mark Viduka, £6m to Leeds, 26 June 2000


A total of £ 10.2 Million inn

That is £ 22 Million we have spent.


Dazza, you are missing the point.



Back in 2003, the board only had to spend £22.2 Million which kept them in control of their own destiny as they where able to predict how much money they could make on a yearly basis due to having over prescribed demand.

Today, they are now looking to lose £30 Million in the space of 2 years and have no control on the budget as it comes in over the year.

I have not mentioned once to over spend in this post or the previous, but I do feel the board as I said before have made a hash of it and this can not go unnoticed. Being in business is about taking risks and this board have stopped doing so.

Would I be giving you a reality check to take you back to the 90’s when we had no more than 20,000 turning up to games. The past should be a good bench mark to what might follow if the team does not improve, we can’t afford to be blind in Business or we will end up with another Kelly scenario (if DD pull out ). All this faithful through and through doesn’t run the business.

May I add that I can remember standing in the jungle on a half empty stadium cheering on the Bhoys throughout those years?

Where would you rather be? Where we where in 2003, with good players wanted to play for us, or now, when we can’t attract has-been defenders and goalkeepers.

I take offence to your nonsense quote as I would never mock your opinion even though it differs from mine.








___

 

With respect mate, I think it's you who are missing the point.

Your figures only make sense if one key assumption is made - that players don't get paid anything.

Factor in the enormous wages we were doling out to guys like Balde (7.5 million to him alone), and you begin to understand how we racked up a 30 million deficit to get to Seville. Folk who say our big mistake was that we didn't invest again after the UEFA success are totally missing the point of how much we had risked and lost to get there.