Downsizing is a Myth

Heard an interesting fact tonight since 1st July 2010 our profit on player trading until today is £19m.

and Neil Lennon is the only celtic manager who never spent more that he raised, Stein, McNeill, Hay, Brady, Macari, Burns, Jansen, Venglos, Barnes, O'Neill, Strachan and Mowbray all spent more that they raised, no wonder Neil got sick of it, also Neil gave up a £250k loyalty bonus and refused to sign the exclusive confidenitality agreement, he was told at a meeting the day before he resigned his summer budget would be £2m plus 50% of what he raised until we guarenteed champions league football as we always budget for Europa League anyway but if we got to group stages of CL he would be given another £3m.

 

All aboard the train De la Sack!

 

exactly you have hit the nail on the head.

 

The board are very good in the way they operate their business plan, it is a 5 year plan and we are coming to the end of the current one this season so need to wait and see where we go from here!

But sensible and sizeable investment is needed on the playing staff.

Lawwell to his credit has got top money for some players though £1.2m for Craig Battie, £5.5m plus 20% sell on for Ki and Hooper, £800,000 plus £1m add on for ledley for palace staying up, he is quite thrifty auld pedro.

 

If we have spent approx 5 million per window in the last two summers then i can believe what you say about this summers budget.
We must be burning some serious cash somewhere if despite CL they are only willing to give out 5 million per summer.

 

yer right it is going to running the business and cash at bank.

Here is my opinion on this summer:

If we indeed have cash at bank of £12.76m (as at 30/6/14) then if we dont make CL then we have that as a fall back and if the manager has no budget or need for any players then we can use the cash and if we need to raise say £8m working capital then we can either sell VVD or FF but i would sell several other players such as

Tony Watt £1.2m
Amido Balde £1.5 (if that belgian team are willing to pay that)
Efe Ambrose for £3.5m

Now that raises £6.2m of the magical £8m, just absorb the other £1.8m as either debt or overdraft and put some players out on loans and you could get say 6 youngsters out on £100,000 loan fees per players that way you keep your two best players and then next summer when the zombies might be back the ST sales will go up as well as prices and that is your £1.8m back!

Then you can decide how you want to move forward.

 

When there is money being stockpiled, ala the 12 million pounds, then there is a problem. That is a serious amount of money. When you've got money like that stockpiled in the bank, then you are not reaching your full potential. You are actually cheating the fans. If we spent, say, another £5m it could've brought in a quality playmaker. And if we spent the money we did on Balde, Griffiths and Pukki, we could've bought Finnbogasson. Instead, we prefer to do this spreading the risk *, hoping to get ££££ more in profit.

Do you know teams like Sporting Lisbon and Benfica are in 100 million of debt. Ajax are in 25 million of debt. If we ran into 5 - 10 million of debt, it would make very little difference to our standing. Having 12 million stockpiled is more worrying to me than going into something like 6 million of debt.

 

exactly ciaran, but people on here are spooked if we get £100 of debt we will go same way as sevco, you can get debt but dont run with it for years and years right enough we did that in the early 2000's

its all down to Lawwells and the board bonus, lawwells is made up of 75% business bonus (balance sheet) 25% team perforamce bonus so failure to qualify for CL costs him circa £250,000 but if we post profit even of £1 he gets his £750,000 bonus.

 

Didn't know that last bit. Football is * * now, they should start a balance sheet champions league and forget about the football and the fans altogether.

 

Lawwell takes £1.3m per year our of celtic in wages and bonus!

Most * get a % of their salary not almost 4x their salary!!!

 

Thing that annoys me is we are a football club, not a business. Making a profit is absolutely not the point of a football club and if we have £12M sitting in the bank, what good does that do for our team? Answer is nothing. Its cheating the fans who pay to watch, its cheating the history of our own club and its hindering our progress especially in Europe. I want to see passion, ambition and vision going forward as a Celtic fan, not a lovely bank sheet with a bunch of * in suits rubbing their hands come bonus time.

 

Aye, well after getting my honors I hope to become an auditor so we'll see about those "bad accountants" haha.

 

best of luck

 

There are benefits to stock-piling cash. I am not saying it is the way to go, but if you can get players for free/cheaply either because they are out of contract or products of a youth academy or just scouted unknowns, then you can do two things:-
1. refuse offers for players you want to keep, no matter what the offer, and
2. pay your star players as much as you want.

Think of the Larsson scenario. He was a unique individual who appreciated what he had at Celtic, but nowadays, Southampton could offer £25m for Larsson; Barca could offer £50m.

If you have spent little or nothing in transfer fees for five or six years, and have £70m or £80m stock-piled, then if you think Larsson is worth 10,000 extra season tickets per year and 40-plus goals per season, then you can refuse those offers and meet Larsson's wage expectations.

When the next Messi emerges at your club, you do not need to sell him aged 18 or even 21 when you are offered £5m. You can keep your top players and pay the wages that Man United or Bayern pay.

The first five years would be "The Austerity Years" and would probably be lean in terms of trophies, but once you had stockpiled tens of millions in un-spent transfer money you could not have your feet held to the fire by richer clubs any longer and no player need leave simply for money.

 

you cant have those years at celtic the fans would not allow it!

FFS look at the fall out from wednesday there, imagine, no CL or trophies for 6 years but a good balance sheet.... but good point and idea

 

It would not surprise me to find that we had the 5<SUP>th</SUP> highest wage bill in British Football in 2005. It would shock me if we were in the top 25 in 2014. This, however, is only down to Sky TV in England. Each EPL club gets minimum £60m in TV money. In 2005, it was probably closer to £35m per season. Then as now, Celtic gets less than £2m.<?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

 

Where are you getting this figure? I don't believe for a second we have £12m stockpiled, our board just aren't that stupid.

 

The cash at bank will be sitting at £12.76m in the accounts published in the next 6 weeks.

 

Ok, you've piqued my interest. That's a * stupid incentive structure if true. Can you back that up with any evidence?

 

We'll see, then. If the accounts show what you say they will and we don't spend a reasonable amount of it before the window shuts and it's not doing some clever accounting thing I don't understand or earmarked for some project like safe standing, then I'll gladly eat my words and join the clamour for answers.

If...

Still doubt that will be the case to be honest, though I'm not as sure as I was 5 minutes ago before I read what you put about Lawwell's bonus structure.