Peter Lawwell

Was the £2.3mil bonus he got a larger amount of money than all but 2 of our transfers over the last 2 years?

 

Ajax do publish financial accounts.

Ajax turnover was 118m Euros (£101m) in 2016/17 where they reached the Europa cup final and 92m Euros (£79m) last year. Celtics was £92m in 16/17 and £102m in 17/18

So over the last 2yrs Celtic have brought in £194m in comparison to Ajax at £180m.

The 28m figure (may even be quoted in euros) comes directly from Marc Overmars before their clash yesterday with Real Madrid.

https://www.balls.ie/football/ajax-real-madrid-406863

So Ajax earn less than us, spend less on wages, were in a European final just 2yrs ago and humped Real Madrid last night. That's where Celtic should be looking at instead of using excuses of "Well Valencia, Zenit, Athens outspend us" etc.

 

Fair enough, I think the board deserves a bit of credit for those signings in that case, as they were obviously not much to do with Rodgers.. a bit lucky they have hit the ground running and lucky Lenny was available too..

If we secure the 10 I’d like to see new direction and innovation after that though.. but PL will deserve enormous credit for all his faults if he delivers that history.

 

4. Sinclair (£3.5 million) Kouassi (£3 million) Ntcham (£4.5 million) Edouard (£9 million)

 

Our 3 best players are probably Tierney, Mcgregor and Forrest. They have come straight from our academy with Johnston and Christie breaking through now too. It's great to see young Scottish talent coming through the ranks.

 

The credit they deserve from those signings doesn't even come close to making up for the criticism they deserve though. Given the financial advantage we have and mountain of cash we are sitting on, it should never even have been a possibility that we were in a title race with a hun team that are in financial turmoil, had a complete squad overhaul and are being managed by a completely average rookie manager.

We left a door ajar that should never been left open. Hopefully we learn lessons and get back to exerting our dominance, backing our manager and remembering that the football club should take precedence over all else.

 

No one was talking about spending £4 million + on every player. The idea was to invest the money gained from selling our high value players: spend more in key positions and combine those higher value players with the younger Scottish players. Exactly what Ajax have done.

Incidentally, Ajax spent £14 million on Blind in the summer yet their wage bill is lower than ours. How can they operate in that market when we can't?

 

I'm not disagreeing with you, we could and should be doing better but Rodgers was clearly not the manager who could do that. Stick a higher value player beside Jack Hendry and he'd still look like a turkey.

 

They also spent a further £30 odd million on four other players. Yes their wage bill is lower then ours, but if we were afforded the luxury of actually knowing everything then I would assume these players get some rather sexy sexy signing bonuses as a lump sum to keep the wages down.

We don't have the ability to spend £45 million on transfer fees in a season without the absolute certainly of being in CL which would only account less than half that spend. Celtic operate in a league that can not afford to outlay that much money on a semi regular basis on player recruitment without it being utterly guaranteed that we see regular CL participation and the selling of players of a value every window over what we got for Dembele.

 

What title race ?

 

Fair play to the hero Minimalist.


Banned again but back soon.

 

We were on level points (albeit with a game in hand) prior to bringing in Weah, Burke and Toljan.

 

It's also worth noting that Ajax, since the 16/17 season up to now, have made reportedly £159mill in player sales. In the same period we've barely even reached £40mill in player sales.

That means something. Perhaps their league is just better valued then ours, let's assume they signed VVD instead of us, would he have gone for £12mill to Southampton? unlikely.

He'd have likely gone to a bigger club for double the fee to then probably end up doing a similar, if not bigger money move that he did to Liverpool.

 

The door was left slightly ajar primarily due to the managers pish team selections at various times this season if we are honest. The most obvious and painful example, for us, being at mordor when McGregor was played as a * left back while he opted to play Brown and Ntcham together. This is hardly something the board can be blamed for.

 

Good article on CQN about Ajax beating Real last night, and ties it in with what we should be aiming to achieve in Europe.

https://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/ajax-force-celtic-to-ask-some-hard-questions/

 

Their youth system is years ahead of ours as well as having a B team in the division below the top Dutch league, they have some unbelievable talent coming through just now. We need to be investing big in our youth set up and keep pushing to get the colt team into the lower leagues.

 

try as we might, Scotland is a financial * pit that no one other than those inside it have any respect for.

Scottish football as a whole will need a massive, massive overhaul that would take decades to bear any signs of success for us to start looking like an Ajax team that knocks out Real Madrid.

 

I agree that the team selections were baffling, including the one at Tynecastle which was predicted by JohnJames 36 hours before the game and a full write up about the fact Rodgers was trying to show the lack of depth in the squad (despite signing all the guys that he was making a point about )

I still think the summer was very poorly managed. If Lawwell knew Rodgers was engineering his exit then he should have broached the subject and forced a decision.

Stashing away the piggy bank and going into the season with a disgruntled manager, a CB who had refused to play for the club and allowing a dressing room divide to fester cost us Champions League qualification and but for the significant impact of the loan players that came in, could've cost us even more.

 

When you looked at their run of fixtures I was never concerned..

 

In my heart of hearts I knew we were always going to win it but given the advantages we have it should never even have been a conversation. Hopefully lessons have been learned and we kick on.