Will We Ever Spend £5 Million Or More On One Player Again?

I didn't know he sold him behind his back, but i'd love that to be clarified. Just did a quick google and he basically told him he would be 5th choice? If the manager has been told he has space for 4 strikers or whatever and has one that he isn't that keen on that can be sold on, is it so bad for PL to come in and make it plain that he's not wanted?

 

Gordon Strachan has said publically that Lawwell sold Kenny Miller against his wishes.

 

The only article I can find after a quick search is the one that quotes misser:

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/all-well-with-lawwell-strachan-1.959655

I am sure that WGS said something similar later on as well. If he did not then i stand corrected. I am nearly sure he did though.

Still the direct quotes from Miller seem to back up the story all the same, that is if you trust his first hand account.

 

The disconcerting thing is that 5 million pound signings 15 years ago would actually be like a 10 million pound signings today with inflation. I very much doubt we will spend that kind of money under any circumstances tbh. When you make the last 16 of the CL and then sell nearly 20million worth of talent when hooper and Wanyama went and you still don't spend you never will. The problem I have is that long term the cheap option always ends of being a false economy because it costs you Champions League money and puts off season tickets and merchandise! We have wasted so much money in recent years on 2million pound second rate European players when we could and should have been buying proven quality. Take two year ago when we bought Pukki and Balde, two cheap options who played maybe a dozen games between them. Surely if we had combined their wages and transfer fee we could have gotten someone who would have played more games and scored more goals!

 

Great post

 

Thanks. Don't get me wrong overall Celtic have (since the start of the Lennon era) done some remarkable transfer business but in general you get what you pay for! You always get the feeling with Celtic that if they are going for two players it's not who is the best player that is the defining characteristic its who is the cheapest player. You can be financially negligent by not spending/investing enough in the team, as well as spending too much!

 

Great article aye

 

As much as i hate to say it we wont spend £5 million on a fee in the foresable future,

 

Well Pukki and Balde were flops there's no doubt about that, but what about the other small signings? VVD, Griffiths, even Forster, Wanyama and Hooper, when you consider the fact that about 50% of the time we get it right then maybe we're doing this right. But I have to agree with you that it'd be better if we could buy one almost "marquee" signing, something to sell kits, Johnathas sprints to mind. Big signings mixed with small signings is the way forward, not one or the other

 

Could you please tell me the last marquee signing cause im getting rather old :icon_mrgreen:

 

Don't know if you could call them "marquee" but in 2006/07 season we bought Graveson (2m?), Scott Brown (4.5m), Massimo Donati (3m) and JVoH (2-3m).

Imagine spending over 12m in one season.

 

Yeah, Lawwell is definitely good at his job, and we won't ever end up in trouble as long as he's operating as he currently is.

Which is fine as long as we can get to the end of the season, look back and be happy with another year where we didn't end up in financial trouble. If that's the main aim of the club, then we're winners.

If it isn't though, and we have ambitions of pushing on then the current way of doing things simply won't work. Ever. We could get £20 million for Van Dijk this summer and I pretty much guarantee that we'd spend no more than £5 million on any single player.

If we don't pay spend more than £3-£5 million on any one player, and we don't pay any player more than £30,000 per week then there's a glass ceiling in regards to the quality we can get, and that quality is going to be of the Wanyama/Van Dijk level, which is worth between £8-£12 million for us.

When we do get players of that quality we'll maybe have them for two years (three if we're really lucky) before they realise they're not going to be offered more than £25,000-£30,000 per week and head elsewhere where more money is on offer.

Unfortunately, that level of player is only ever going to see us make the group stages of the Champions League with the odd progression past that point occurring now & then.

So yeah, what we've been doing for the past five years or so is where we'll be at for the foreseeable future, which is fine if the SPFL title, a domestic trophy and some games against "big teams" in the Champions League if we negotiate the qualifiers is enough to keep you happy.

 

I don't really know how I feel about Peter Lawwell.

On the one hand, he is very intelligent and great at what he does. I sometimes worry that we could not replace him and how we'd fare without him.

However, I then think for the salary he receives, he probably could be replaced. There has to be businessmen with the same savvy and same ability as him.

His pay packet is well beyond what he should be getting. For a 'company' that averages £50m-£60m every year, with maybe £10m-£15m more in exceptional years, £1m per year is too much.

There are larger 'companies' who pay their CEO's half that, maybe even a quarter of that! I find it bizarre that he earns probably 4x what the manager does and is the second highest earner behind Scott Brown.

I know he is good, that's why Arsenal wanted him but he wouldn't have anywhere near as much influence and power as he does here, plus he's settled so I suppose there is that.

 

Is that not enough to keep you happy ? It will only change drastically if we play in a different league set up, be that EPL or a new European league.
It is also worth remembering, should this ever happen, that already a fair few complain about the cost of watching Celtic. If ,or once, we move to another league ticket/Season tickets will likely take a hike in price then as well.

 

Not really, no. I think we should be using the money we get from these £12 million sales to bring in players worth maybe £5-£6 million and bump up the wage structure a bit.

Rather than sign a guy for £2 million and sell him for £10 million two years later we should be looking at signing a guy for £5 million and selling him for £15-£20 million a few years later, all the while reaping the benefit of his time at the club.

I'm not advocating signing guys with no future upside by the way, I'm talking about solid investments that could reap a sizeable profit down the line.

Unless we make that step then we'll never actually progress as a club, which is a shame as we have the potential to do so.

 

The thing is we haven't went to plan over the last 5 years, we only qualified for the Champions League twice.

We need 5 times out of 5, especially with the money doubling.

 

If we stick to the current spending pattern and the wage structure in place we don't have a hope in * of making it five times out of five. not a * chance.

 

totally Agree!

Some fans think if we spend £12m in one window we will end up like sevco! aint gonnae happen

 

We should, we dwarf anything we'll face in the qualifiers, wages and transfer fee wise.

We should have no problem winning the SPFL to get access to the qualifiers.

 

Those were in different summers.