Celtic need the EPL soon.

There was a valid point made about the debt in the EPL being inflated by the current insurge of wealthy sugar daddy owners. To a degree this is true, and becomes an a huge, ominious stormcloud of an issue if and more likely when those interests decide it is time to withdraw their investment.

Were Ambramovich to pull out of Chelski they would be in serious, serious trouble, and that is not the only prominant EPL club in that position, Liverpool's situation is far from secure & the Glazer's still have to pay off a loan inexcess of £1/2 BILLION for what they borrowed to buy Manyoo !!! And these are just 3 of the big clubs, who all get huge Champions League money & massive slices of TV revenue. This says nothing for the situation some of the smaller clubs are in.

Leeds dramatic fall from grace was based on the ill-conceived notion that they would be able to secure regular Champions League football. The failure to do so has seen them spiral downwards ever since. Arsene Wenger was speaking last week of the importance of Arsenal's continuing success as a football club stems from it's viability as a business.

However, this is also true of teams closer to home, For example, look at the precarious position that Hearts are in.

Desmond might be the majority stakeholder in our club, and have a controlling interest, but he does not own Celtic. The fact is that very, very few football clubs work at a profit, and those who do, the margins are not huge.

The question of Celtic's depature (& I stress, Celtic's departure, not the O** F***'s) must be more than a decision between the lure of english money & the declining quality of Scottish football...

What I believe is most prudent, and is the position of the board, aas outlined by Peter Lawwell's remarks last week at the Leaders of Football conference, is to retain a 'watching brief'. This is to look at the various proposals if and when they evolve. Once again, this whole debate has been caused by the Scottish media's inability to accurately report what is being said, because gossip and scandal-mongering sell more newspapers than the truth.

It would be inappropriate to comment before we saw the details of how or what form such a radical move would take. That then, is the time for debate. Until then, this is all pure conjecture & speculation.

 

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this earlier in the thread or not but something just struck me the other day.

We, as Celtic fans, have become accustomed to being able to watch all our away matches live on the telly. Living where I do, I find this to be invaluable in keeping me in touch with how the team is playing. If we go down to the Premiership there is no guarantee that even half of our away games would be shown live on Sky. How would people feel about that if it were to happen?

Personally I would be pretty devastated. I need to be seeing most of our games. Either by taking trips away to see them in the flesh or watching them on the telly. At least by playing in Scotland we will always be guaranteed a lot of live matches to watch.

Just a thought.

 

20 years!! all due respect mate but if you believe that then yer head is up your * tbh? they may made some profit but it doesnt stop that the epl teams combined are almost 3billion in debt now does it! and also player wages is about to break the 1 billion mark too! the problem is you dont want to believe in fixing what we have and you would rather run away from what needs help.

 

well said!!

 

How is gettting to the premier league even possible?

 

Scottish football is 20 years behind even the worst FAs in Europe. It is ran by an ineffectual bunch of suits who have no intention of changing things, and is slipping closer and closer to oblivion under falling attendances, lack of quality and a lack of investment.

You don't seem to understand the nature of the problem. We have outgrown the SPL. It offers us nothing, and we are wilting from a lack of investment and competition. Every club must always have its eyes on improving its position, on taking the next big step.

What is the next big step for Celtic? Not Europe, because it's becoming more and more weighted in favour of the elite clubs. The only alternative that offers us big investment and competition is England.

 

car, train, air, sea... lots of ways I'm sure.

 

So your argument for not leaving SPL has now devolved into an emotionally charged character assassination.

SPL isn't going to be "fixed".
EPL is the most reasonable alternative.
But if you're so deadset against EPL, there are other alternatives.
Such as making a joint domestic league with Ireland and Norway.
But, again, there is no indication in the slightest that SPL will ever be fixed. The people running both SPL and SFA won't do it and they're only 1 part of a problem that runs deep through the entire youth system that has proven capable of only accentuating certain limited traits in footballers and weeding out the rest.

 

Being patriotic won't change the fact our national league is utter * & won't get any better.

 

cant be fixed ! wont be fixed?this can be fixed and yet you want to be dissmisive of the idea and rather jump ship to gain a penny! if the top clubs in scotland got together and all agreed that they want change? then the sfa will backtrack and think hard and seriously about it! all this cant,wont pish is abysmyal tbh! as iv said the full revamp of scottish football can and needs to happen! and the sfa takeing full control of scottish football for a start.

the english dont * want us down there anyway! so why keep purseing this?(and yes the money thing comes into this i forgot)im sick to * death of people not careing about where we belong and what needs to be done! and jumping ship and licking the * of england is not an option.

 

The revamp of Scottish football is such a vague term though. In fact I'd go as far to say that it's not the competitive structure that's flawed at all, it's a combination of the Scottish/British culture, our comparatively small population for such high-regard for ourselves and our unfortunate situation of being bang next to England and its riches.

 

You're living in a fantasy world.
What top clubs?
What exactly are they going to get together and agree on?
Why reason(s) do these other "top clubs" have to agree with eachother?
And exactly what will they hold over the SFA (and SPL for that matter) head?

 

Some people on here dont understand the debt concept, if a club registers a 100mil debt it does not mean the club is in crisis, or even close to administration. 100mil is only how much they owe the banks, but if the club has 400mil in liquid assets, the banks wont even bother looking at the clubs for immediate repayment. A liquid asset can be anything from a players market value, the stadium and land value, club market value, even a players name rights, something that if the bank did want their money immediately could be sold over a short spand of time so that the can recoup there money. This is what we lack in the spl, our players arent valued at much, the club realistically doesnt have a huge market value (poor tv rights, poor league and average european results). Personally i believe the board is spending as much as we can every season, it wouldnt make sense for them not to. Every season it looks like we are spending less and less as this is due to our club value, player values, etc becoming smaller and smaller within the current market, therefore is prob the reason behind the board wanting to do something about the competition we play in, otherwise we will get smaller and smaller every season in comparrison to the other clubs in the football market. This sounds like gibberish to some people, but trust me in what i say, iv done a financial degree at university.

Football is now a truely global sport with alot of money generated, and gone are the days of the 60s, 70s where you can rely on local talent to produce results, Scotland economically and population wise is to small to even think the SPL will grow and expand. We need to expand if we want to be competitive on a global scale, in 10-15yrs time there is a realistic chance that the SPL co-efficient will get so small the winners of the league will be in the first round of qual for cl, kicked out every season, due to poor quality players and have no european football at all.