Chelsea splashed out £280million in the last transfer window. One club. That’s more money than Celtic and Rangers will put out on new players over the next 20 years. Combined.
But everything is relative. Cost of living crisis? What cost of living crisis? The less well-off clubs are bracing themselves for the electricity bills that will soon be dropping through their letter boxes as energy costs soar. And preparing a case for daytime kick-offs to be introduced this winter so that floodlights become temporarily redundant on the basis they’re too expensive to switch on.
But, so far as Celtic and Rangers are concerned, money – the spending of it or earning of it – is no object when the Champions League group stage begins this week. Rangers can charge eye-watering prices for their home ties in the competition because they know supporters will raise no objection in the form of a boycott.
Celtic fans have devoured their club’s more competitively-priced package deal and ignored the official request not to travel to Spain for the tie against Real Madrid if they don’t have tickets for the occasion. Celtic will get 1800 tickets. Madrid will get an invasion force, even if the group has been decided before the last round of fixtures.
Domestically speaking, the gulf in the Premiership between these two and the rest is widening – but not to the extent of discouraging supporters from attending one-sided matches. There is now an apparently insatiable appetite for watching palpably weaker teams being trampled underfoot by the Old Firm.
That was underlined at Tannadice last Sunday when the Celtic fans gleefully chanted “We want 10” while Dundee United were subjected to the equivalent of a public flogging. There was a time when a nine-goal mauling would have meant reservations being expressed about the quality of the league.
But ritual humiliation is now regarded as being a good thing. And it’s only going to get worse. Celtic added eight new signings to a title-winning squad in a busy transfer window for the club. Rangers have been less active due to there being only so many players you can train properly while also keeping open a pathway to the first team for their academy graduates.
The rest? We’ll call it low key and say no more about the arrival of players from the “Who’s he?” of British football. But this week sees the boot going on to the other foot in full view of the public.
And acceptance levels will be under scrutiny in a more competitive environment than Celtic and Rangers fans are currently experiencing on a domestic level. There is, on the face of it, no reason why Celtic should beat Real Madrid, home or away, for example.
One is the 14-times winner of Europe’s top trophy, managed by Carlo Ancelotti, a man who has personally lifted it on four occasions with a variety of clubs. The other exited three different European competitions last season on a descending scale of efficiency.
It will go one of two ways for manager Ange Postecoglou. The first win at Celtic Park over the Spanish side since Billy McNeill’s team did it 42 years ago would cement his iconic status as the club’s manager. Or else a defeat will be a test of the human condition as it reveals itself when fans are disappointed.
It’s like Ange said after his team had dismembered Dundee United, the public’s verdict now comes on the final whistle via the outlet of social media – the place where people in a permanent huff go to air their unlimited grievances. The only given is the spectacle on
Tuesday night will be a raucous, emotional, adrenaline-fuelled assault on the central nervous system.
Zadok The Priest is back in a parish where the Champions League’s signature tune hasn’t been heard for five years. The sound of the opening bars will be drowned out by a noise like a controlled explosion in a confined space to facilitate the release of unrestrained joy.
Rangers will start their group in Ajax’s Johan Cruyff Arena. Further down the line will come the Estadio Diego Armando Maradona belonging to Napoli. Ibrox could be renamed The Giovanni van Bronckhorst stadium if he can take Gers to the knockout stages and access even greater wealth than has been amassed so far in Europe under his astute guidance.
The door to the bragging rights was thrown open, on a localised basis, at Celtic Park yesterday. The continental version of the game will be more exacting but take intensity up a notch. The rest of you, meanwhile, can watch the thermostat.
