The clubs wage structure

The biggest thing which I agree with is that our captain is always going to be top earner, so Calmac on £35K+ and closest to that will be around £30K I’m guessing.

Biggest issue is bloating the squad every 2 years with * that’s on 15K per week. A bonus system is probably only way we can really entice higher calibre players but even then it’s still a tough sell.

I would rather we live within our means though, pro’s & cons to each side but there’s no doubting the effectiveness with the amount of trophies we’ve won.

 

Lack of competition has a big impact on spending.

Firstly because there's little incentive to spend when your competitors are not spending. If Scottish football had increased wages in line with inflation over the last 20 years, Celtic would be forced to keep up. Domestic domination within our wage structure makes it tougher to justify spending lots more.

Secondly, we need to be realistic about how many players that can command 40k per week or whatever the 'next level' player can get paid, wants to come to play St mirren, killie, motherwell, Dundee, etc.

I'm not convinced it would allow us to attract significantly better players. What it definitely would do however is allow us to keep talent a bit longer who otherwise are happy here.

 

It's more than just money though, if players are good enough to take the step up to a bigger league, like O'Riley right now, I'm not sure there's a wage we can offer him to make him stay that clubs elsewhere can't match or improve on, he's also won everything he can here and will want to play at the highest level week in week out, not just a handful of european games a season.

People casually talk about just spending more to attract 'next level' players, but if they have similar offers from other teams the relative quality of our league is definitely a factor that goes against us.

 

I don’t think anyone would deny that the league is a major factor when it comes to attracting players. However, the major teams in Holland, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark and Austria all have that same problem. I don’t see the likes of Salzburg, Sporting, Olympiacos, Club Bruges, Feyenoord and Young Boys struggling to attract top players.

Money is a huge factor as well. When teams in the bottom half of the Italian and Spanish top flights can’t afford the wages for Lagerbielke or Bernabei, it shows how far our wage budget CAN go. I’m not disputing that some players may prefer to play for Lecce on £6k a week in Italy over playing for Celtic for £12k a week in Scotland but I’d bet the majority of the time, these players would choose the bigger money, with better exposure to the Premier League and guaranteed European football over the relegation fighting teams from the top 5 leagues.

When it comes to keeping players like O’Riley. I don’t want to keep him because it’s not realistic. Very rarely will a player want to commit his best years to us, especially when he can go and make double the money somewhere else, in a big league. It also puts us front and centre for progressing players to come to us. Do they want to go to Burnley on £30k a week, play yo-yo relegation every season or do you want to come to Celtic on £20k a week, play Champions League football, win trophies and play in front of a phenomenal support, with the potential to move to a better standard of team in the EPL within a year or so… we need players like O’Riley, Frimpong, Tierney, Van Dijk… we need these players to do well because we can show other players what can happen when you do well here.

 

As I alluded to earlier, the issue is our highest paid player is on c35k a week.

What was our wage cap 20 years ago - 30k im very sure as it was well advertised.

The purchasing power over 20yrs on the above is pathetic at a run of the mill, generic CPI level (I.e. most of the jobs every Tom, * and Harry does)

That’s before you talk about football inflation ffs.

 

And look at the quality of players we had then compared to now. We had players in the late 90s and early 00s who came to us in their prime that we would simply never get now. By staying still in terms of our wage structure, we have moved backwards.

Bingo. There are big teams in similarly tinpot leagues that have a better wage structure and attract better players than we do. We are where we are because our board choose to be there. We've a billionaire owner, we're incredibly profitable, but they're just content with beating Rangers every year and nothing more.

 

Football inflation is not normal though is it though you had media moguls like murdoch interfering in that aspect and giving far too much to premier league then oligarchs and oil states got involved


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Can afford to cut the first team squad if we have decent youth and a pathway for them


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We definitely hire too many players. We have 34 players in our squad, not including Bernabei. Sure plenty go on loan and some will be sold, but lets say we need 5 new players in we need to get 15 more out to make it a solid sized squad.

Given how often a 3rd choice keeper plays I don't think you need 3 keepers, you have your u23 as your 3rd. 6 CBs? What the * do you need 6 CBs for? I think we actually had 7 at one point with a loan last season. Your colts should be good enough to be 6th choice. 7 wingers, and again what do you really need 7 for? I'd say when there's only 3 I think deserving of game time.


We had 3 signings who did well last season and 2 of them were loans (we signed 9 permanent).

 

I agree with this.

I think we need to have 24 main players and the rest are topped up with young players coming from the youth team. I also think that, within that 24 main squad, you need to have players who are flexible in where they play. So, someone like Kvistgaarden would really appeal to me because he can play across the front 3 positions. I think you need a couple of players who can fill in when required, in separate positions to make the squad work well.

 

The players we had in O'Neills team we couldn't sustain even then, his team was built on debt, that's why we had to bring in a tighter wage structure after he left, we weren't living within our means and it simply had to be done, money was blowing up in other leagues and not ours, there was no way we could keep pace without * ourselves financially back then. We didn't 'choose' to stand still or go backwards, scottish football was left behind.

We're obviously cash rich right now and should be able to push the boat out more than we have been to try and bring in some good signings, but it's absolutely pointless trying to compare that era to now, football as a business in general has just changed too much.

 

I think the 'but we're in Scotland' argument is trotted out too often. There are teams in smaller leagues that have bigger wage budgets and remain profitable. As well as that, how do we expect the league to grow if the clubs with means never invest and try to grow their business? I think the board has the same attitude, entirely defeatist. If we follow the logic that we can never increase our wage budget in line with the leading clubs of other leagues while playing in Scotland, then we might as well just reconcile ourselves to interminable decline.

 

Wonder if big Peters salary and bonuses have been capped at same levels as late 1990's?

 

Exactly. Bingo!

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