Not Actually that Crucial a Summer as of August 2023...beginning to now think everything isnt fine!

100% it’s feasible, but it takes good scouting and a bit of luck too.

TBF, the Wacker partnership will help with the academy’s best going on loan there. The gap between the 4th division and our first team squad is just too wide.

Those 4 you mention definitely don’t tight * on the fees. They are definitely out laying in the £5m-£20m rage to find the gem they can sell on for big fees.

We really need to get a wage structure where we can pay more wages for good quality signings, which will help sell us as an option. If we can’t compete on wages then we go to the back of the queue based on our league. We’ve seen a player will go to a * league (Saudi) if you pay them good wages.

With regards to Doak, he’s only left because of wages, we need to work out how we can increase wages while giving youth a pathway. Sure we are never going to compete with Liverpool, but if Doak is a fan of Celtic then if we can reduce the gap, then we are part way there.

Thinking outside the square with ideas such as we have a “youth star wage”, where we break the bank for a youth player and possibly match some of the EPL youth wages. Similar to a scholarship, with possibly a personal sponsorship from a Scottish company.

Selling players like Jota need to fund our transfers while revenue and CL qualification needs to fund our wages.

 

We're always going to have a tough time competing on wages though, not saying we can't afford to push the boat out a bit on a few players at the moment, but if we increase our wage bill too much overall it makes us more dependent on player sales working out to keep us in the black, and I can see why the people in charge would be a wary of that. As long as we're in this league, and the useless * in charge can't scrape together decent level tv deals, there's always going to be a ceiling on our guaranteed revenue making it a bit of a balancing act to budget properly somewhere in between.

 

Benfica B, Porto B and Jong Ajax all play in the second highest divisions in their respective countries. Having their talent playing senior football on that level makes the leap from reserve team to first team football less dramatic compared with the Scottish league setup. We won't be able to replicate those clubs youth development until the league setup in Scotland is revamped. I would't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

 

On your first question the Celts down under Podcast done a good piece looking at clubs who many would consider our peers in European football. E,g. Not too 5 leagues but best teams from leagues ranked 6-20 by UEFA.

It is a lengthy podcast but very informative, concluding with basically saying Benfica and Ajax aren’t our peers they are on a different planet. Last year alone Benfica spent over €100m but brought in €270m. Those figures are skewed by Enzo Fernandez but taking him out of it they spent over €55m and brought in close to €150m. So to answer your question they reinvested a third. However they got massive fees for Fernandez and Nunez that made the bulk of that up.

The season before that was more normal spent €25m received €50m so half invested there and in 20/21 they actually spent €115m brining in €82m so made a loss. However, as you say their academy is superb and a lot of that simply comes down to Portugal produces better players than Scotland, supplement that with some South American talent and your on to a winner for them.

Ajax are similar spent €113m last year and took in €216m but that was dominated by Ten Hag signing Antony and Martinez. Which would be a bit like if Ange decided to take Kyogo and Hatate say to Spurs and pay more than they are really worth. The year before spent €18m and sold €46m, the year before they sold €109m and bought €63m. Interestingly with Ajax I would argue since they started spending more money they haven’t been as good as they were previously in the transfer market. Lastly 19/20 they sold €218m and bought €60m.

So by comparison in 21/22 which was our biggest year we brought in around €38m and spent about €26m. What those teams do is turnover their squad more regularly and being in better leagues and having better European performances they get far bigger fees, then reinvest. Supplement that with a constant 2 or 3 academy players coming through and guys signed maybe the season before stepping up to fill the place of the players sold.

Realistically I think we are trying but we are more in completion with the top Belgian sides where the most your selling guys for is like €20-25m and an 8 figure sale is a big deal. Even the likes of Salzburg through their links to Leipzig do a lot more business traditionally than we do. They have sold €76.5m and spent €24 already this summer.

It is quite depressing but essentially if we want to even emulate these clubs at a smaller level you need to be selling when prices are right and be good at scouting and bringing through your own. Our academy even counting all those that go young as these teams lose them too, doesn’t produce anything like what we should expect from it.

Edit: another thing worth mentioning is all those leagues have media deals well in excess of Scotlands. They have bigger populations and in Portugal the big 3 get to sell the rights to their own home games, as well as a share of the league deal for their away games.

 

I really appreciate this thoughtful and informative reply. I wish I could give it more than one like. Thank you!

 

People often go on about Ajax and Benfica’s academies being the main reason why they make so much money but the 4 examples you posted above where the result of good scouting (Martinez, Antony, Nunez & Fernandez) and none of them came through Benfica or Ajax academies.

 

Holy * rralised our first match of the season is only next Sat so get some new targets in asap.

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Aye, we’ve nae chance of beating Ross County with the current squad.

 

We need to look at Ajax and see what they are doing.

Similar to Benfica, Porto, Italian clubs and Spanish as well, but different markets.

Ajax capitalise when they can on South Africa, Africa as a whole, along with Scandinavia.

100% we can do better with Scandinavian talent from an earlier age.
We could also start becoming a bit of a talent spotter for the Asian market as well, provide an opportunity for players to come over at 17/18/19 for a few years and if good enough, get their big moves, if not, they'll at least be able to go south to a decent level or back home with experience.

As for the level of reinvestment, no idea.
I'd imagine not all of incomings go back out.
But surely a good chunk will to continue the cycle they have built.

If you don't, your system gets a slow patch and sets you back.

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Agreed on Scandinavia. We're going down the East Asia route, as it is quite untapped by bigger clubs. Maybe we could try North and Central America.

 

Can't see much happening with incomings now until very close to end of the window. For us to go to the next level I think we need big money signing in the middle of the park to play in a 3 with McGregor and hatate. Also think we need some quality at lw, gk and lb

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Benfica had a sell on clause. We'll owe them some.of the Jota money.

 

I'm in the minority on this, but I feel that before we can think of emulating Ajax and the likes, with an established style of play, and a system that is a conveyor belt of serious talent, we need to focus on something that is more realistic, but unpopular.

Results as a way of building up our reputation.

Right now, we can't get really big talent to come here. But if we could get some good, consistent European outings a few seasons in a row, it would help. However, it would require us to do something most people here hate, because it's unappealing, and because Rangers do it.

Negative football. I'm sorry, but it works. We try to be modern and play technical football, but it requires an insane standard of players. We should use negative football as a cornerstone of the club strategy to gain recognition in Europe (a bit like WGS' results), so that young players see us as a club they can go far with, because we will have dumped out a few giants by parking a tank, let alone a bus.

An important thing would be to bring defense experts to coach in the academy and first team. If everyone is drilled and clued up on tactics, they can assume their place as the cog of a machine, regardless of natural ability. Should use our Catholic roots to get people from Italy in.

Since a lower standard of player is needed to pull off defensive football, we should be able to assemble a tough team with our current level of spending.

Within a decade or so, we'll have gained enough reputation that a switch to more modern football will be possible because better players will fancy us.

 

No offence, but it's posts like this, why we need a dislike button at least.

Can't believe you've just compared us(to them), want us to be, and advocating for negative football.

Absolute mental.



In short, Ange proved you can go toe to toe with European clubs playing good football. It just needs a little more added to it. Which is what we should be aiming to do.

Not playing two different styles for league and Europe.

Convince players to come and develop here because of the off chance we negative football our way to some draws to scrape in to the knockouts?
Aye, that's gonna convince folk to develop their football, when we don't play modern football!


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Real Madrid simply adapted to our crazily adventurous style and beat us convincingly. We are so far away from being able to go toe-to-toe with the big boys it's depressing. We could not beat an organized Shakhtar even once. Our reputation takes a hit every time we get smashed. A tactic that asks less of the players is definitely necessary.

There's no guarantee we'll get a result by playing negative football, but the chance is higher than when we press Real in their own half.

Players develop even at Union Berlin, who are a side we should emulate, IMO. I get Rangers are odious, but Union Berlin or even Lens shouldn't be bad examples.

 

Playing a decade of turgid football will do nothing to raise our profile or make us more attractive to foreign players, especially when the financial gap between us and the big leagues is only getting wider, what an absolutely mental take. The huns managed to grind their way to a european final, has it made them attractive to top talent?

 

If they had followed it up with a few more years of good European results (that would mean the result wasn't a one-off), they would have attracted better players.

 

This thread's class

Same posters writing the SAME comments almost on a daily basis.

"Any day now"

"Expect signings to made very soon"

"I'd expect us to sign a (insert position)."

"Plenty of time left".

" Expect us to make moves (insert week after date of post, rinse and repeat) ".

Thread has actually derailed now into a "how can we be more like Ajax / Benfica model"... Because the square root of * all is happening