We were meant to lose last night

Of course we were!

You have Sky to thank for the destruction of our chances to progress in the money spinning Champions League. They are the ones who hand Arsenal and all the other English teams the crazy money to scour the world and buy up all the talent. They hand us some pocket money too but the gulf between the payments is shocking. How are we as a club supposed to ever really compete when the playing field is on a * hill? Who would have guessed from a neutral viewer last night that we were playing an English team? Clubs these days that are heavily funded by Sky are just a cocktail of the best players out there mostly. We, who are not as well funded find ourselves scraping around the bargain bins looking for a gem who might just work.

This is not a fair system and it is not sport. They have turned the game of football into a game of monopoly.

This is why we were not supposed to win last night, Sky, the controllers of the game have made it so.

We may get a wee win here and there but were fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. Time to get back to basics and focus on youth and not money. Concentrate on building a team from our young players, educating them, developing them just like our best player last night and stop buying in * duds at heavy prices. We can't afford to keep ripping off the fans to try and keep up with these * by buying over priced players who aren't worth 1% of what they are paid.

 

It's a question of will the EPL bubble burst, and when. I'm not sure how could we help accelerate the process. Still, I think the board are also to blame, for not letting a bit more money be spent on a player. One 6M transfer every summer won't ruin us.

 

We Dont buy overpriced players imo ....We do the basics and the financial side very well ...Ive said it before but one of these days the Banks will want their money back as the debts cant keep going up ...i have cancelled my subscription to sky and if most people follow suit then the game in England will crumble just like the Setanta farce ...
Also if the uefa plan to introduce home grown players into the team then surely the EPL will not be the force once reckoned with ...We are sound financially and i believe our youth policy will only flourish

 

We need to bring in more than one player a season. We can't afford or just wouldn't spend 6 million on one player and spend more millions for players elsewhere.

 

disagree here!

we didnt win because arsenal wer better and got 2 flooky goals that got the boys heads down! are you saying sky would prefer arsenal in the cl other than celtic? i think not tbh! sky buy the rights to the biggest club tournament in world football so they wont be fussd who is in or out as long they make money and at the same time get value for it aswell.

 

I wanted to say that we should spend more money on a particular player we needed. Other transfers would also be possible, under the price of 6 mil.

 

C'mon mate the whole game is way overpriced and we do pay way ott for football. Not a single footballer on the planet should make more than a Doctor or Nurse in a fair world. The price of following football has spiraled out of most peoples budgets.

I used to follow Celtic home and away, every game near enough and could afford it no bother. Now I struggle like * to continue the tradition and I've no chance of affording every game.

The hike in prices has been used to pay more and more for players who are getting mega rich at our expense. Never is Fortune worth £3.8m, same with Brown. Crazy money. Overpriced. Tommy Gravesons wages, Bobo?

Anyway I've took the same stance as you with regards to Sky and cancelled everything. They won't be getting a penny from me either but I fear my protest will not stop the machine. Mon the Tommy Sheridan

The UEFA homegrown players thing is a step in the right direction but still will not eliminate the money that dictates the best teams.

We are in a sound financial position thanks to the fans undying love for all things Celtic but the club has to realise that as a 'family' we need their help sometimes. Shame we don't get it, all we see is pay more, receive about the same or less.

 

Money controls football, it's that simple.

But it's also down to a lot of other factors. For example, take the Spanish League, it is not totally and utterly all about money. Yes teams do have some stupid amounts of money but that's expected, but yet the rest of Spain can compete on any given day with the top clubs. Why? Grass roots. They teach football properly and always have done. The dutch are exactly the same. I think we're trying to put things right in training younger players to be more technical than strong but it's going to take time.

The SPL.. complete joke. No matter what anyone says, our league and standard is a joke. Us playing Arsenal last night and wanting a result is like us playing a Welsh/Irish league team and them being expected to get a result. Miles apart.

They need to change the format of our league completely. Get rid of 4 divisions and 40 teams. Make it one possibly two leagues and the rest are *, easy. Two leagues of 20 teams or 1 league of 20 teams. The standard would get better and the players who are promising will go to lower end teams instead of being snapped up by the likes of us and the huns only for them to rot in the reserves and never really get a chance.

It needs to change and the sooner it changes, the quicker the whole of the Scottish game will benefit.

 

We done all we could with what we have mate. Thats it. There wasn't another gear we could have shifted up into. Sky would prefer Arsenal in the Champions League before us I reckon.

 

Our game has been going this way for the best part of 25 years, As soon as televised games started becoming more and more popular we started to lose out, It is due to the fact that the population of England being approx 51 million (84%) of the U.K as a whole, Scotland is Approx 5.1 million, Of course initially there was alot more interest in the EPL so it was always out of balance, As the money rolled for them over the years they could afford superstars which interested the rest of the globe to thier League, Simples!
The Scottish league was most definatly left behind in the 80's.
There aint nothing going to change that now, get used to it.
For us to even Challenge Man U, Liverpool, Blackburn, Arsenal is * brilliant so some of ya need to dry your eyes and get real.

 

The sooner we join the epl the better.

 

You make some very valid points, particularly about how the Spanish and Dutch teach the technical skills at a very young age.

In my opinion though they can chop and change the league structure here in Scotland as much as you like untill the cows come home but we will always have a mediocre league, granted by concentrating on teaching skills and technique from an early age we will produce better quality players but not enough to make our leagues more competitive or attractive to huge TV money.

A MASSIVE injection of cash distributed among the teams over a period of time is the only way our league will grow......Similar to what the English clubs enjoy from SKY. Money to attract the best in the world, when the bigger name foreigners came to England at the start it was down solely to the cash available....most of them thought the league itself was inferior to both Spain and Italy, over the years the more players who came the league became stronger and more attractive for these guys to strut their stuff....Money will make our league stronger......and unfortunately for us we don't and never will have any.

 

I find it hard to just 'get used to it'. We are a club full of history and our greatest achievements have been in an era when football wasn't ruled by money but by the nature of the players and the game itself. We are rightly proud as to have been the first team from this island to win the European Cup, with a team full of normal guys from here. A feat that no-one these days can even dream of.


Now we have been forced into what we are now with the money and big business * all over the sport. Our ability to compete in European competition is all down to the standard of player our financial situation allows. Too much money that we the fans have pumped into the cub has been wasted trying to keep up with the mega rich, Sky bankrolled, English teams. Buying players for mad money to try and give ourselves a chance against players bought for even madder money.

Celtic need to really put a * load of more work into our game in this country to be able to stand on our own as a talented football club. They need to work more at grass roots level like PhatRon67 has touched on. Keeping on fleecing the fans in an uphill struggle does none of us any good. That is not what Celtic is all about in my eyes.

Celtic were a club built to help the poor and in need here in this city, yet all I see these days is people in this city becoming poor trying to keep up with the constant demand for money from our club and the demands of Sky and ESPN to watch our representatives play on TV. Its not right, its not sport and needs to be addressed.


Dry my eyes and get real eh?

 

We were meant to lose, it was fate telling us we have unfinished business with the Uefa Cup lol

 

I agree about grass roots level but apart from the usual boys clubs / local leagues, the only thing near me is Brazilian Soccer school which does teach technical sides of the game as well as various skills etc, thing is it is * expensive, Football admin at the top level have to release funds for these kind of programmes to be available to all kids with any kind of footballing ability, not just the money to go.

 

Good post, but for anything like this to happen very big changes would need to be made which wont happen because Sky just have to much power over football. Money talks and unfortunately it doesn't feel like thats going to change any time soon. We can all pray Sky's bubble bursts,

 

I may be mistaken but couldnt we have had a much better deal with sky last year? instead the board opted for Setanta (probally for a few quid more) and when they folded obviously sky werent going to offer the same amount of money. A case of the boards greed coming back to haunt them again...I fear like it will over Brown

 

Said it last night after the game, if we had the money they had to spend on players then we would be challenging at the very top. On a par with teams like Arsenal, Man U, Barca and if we had big money to spend we would go far as we are abig club. Its actually a smal miracle that with the pretty mediocre team we have that we are fighting these teams, going down last night we gave it a go and were unlucky, beaten Utd, Milan, Shakhtar so if we can do that with little or no money to spend imagine what we would be like if we had their millions to throw about but as long as we are playing in the SPL it's unlikely to happen.

 

The board opposed the Setanta deal.