Celtic’s statement to the Stock Exchange on Thursday afternoon could’ve been easily summarised as Jota jargon for the benefit of the balance sheet.
It said: “Celtic now expects earnings for the year ended 30 June 2023 will be significantly higher than expectations, which were formed before the conclusion of the season and prior to player disposals.” “Significantly higher” can be quantified as the £25million pocketed from Saudi Arabian club Al-Ittihad in exchange for the Portuguese winger.
“Player disposal” is the bean counters’ way of describing a transfer in financial analyst terms but it doesn’t quite tell the full significance of the story. It’s like me describing my wife of the last 52 years as my significant other and not going into greater depth. The fee for the player disposed of, added to the considerable sums of money Celtic already have in the bank, estimated at £50million, means the club’s statement could’ve easily been abbreviated.
It could’ve simply said: “We are loaded.” Eight of the top 10 outgoing transfer fees paid for players in Scotland over the last 10 years have gone into Celtic’s account.
And they’ve used the money wisely to win all but one of the league titles played for over the same period of time. The one they didn’t win, of course, was the one they wanted most of all because it would have given them Ten in a Row.
Michael Beale was in on the act of depriving Celtic on that occasion and the pressure on him to once again deny the club with more money than the rest of the Premiership’s clubs put together will be enormous in the season ahead. I wouldn’t pretend to know how much money Rangers have in the bank but I’m guessing qualification for the group stage of the Champions League is a financial priority in the early part of the season when there are, so far, six incoming transfers to be paid for.
It’s all very well for Michael to say he’ll be going “hell for leather” to get there but what about the leathering he’ll get, metaphorically speaking, for the hell of finishing second to Celtic in the domestic league? That’s an awful lot of pressure for one man to bear but that’s the reality of Beale’s situation.
He’s right to say there was a sense of hope when the league was won in 2018 and that has now turned to expectation. What the expectation is based on exactly, when Celtic have won 11 of the last 12 league titles, isn’t immediately clear to me, but that’s the pressure Michael and Brendan Rodgers are under. In the eyes of the hard-core Old Firm fans, Europe is a vanity project. It’s something you do when you’re taking a break from the really high-pressure games at home.
The final caller I spoke to on the radio on Wednesday night, who was a Celtic supporter, gave me the definitive, unequivocal answer when I asked if he and his fellow fans would demand Rodgers’ head in the event of a second-place finish in the championship. "One hundred per cent,” he said.
Neil Lennon has paid tribute to Celtic’s principal shareholder, Dermot Desmond, by calling him the most important figure at the club over the last three decades. Never was a truer word spoken and the supporters who sneer at him and call the Irishman an absentee landlord should ask themselves one big, important question.
Can you imagine the place without Desmond and his 30 years’ worth of financial support and leadership? High among Dermot’s priorities, it has always struck me, is ignoring any opinion other than his own, which is completely his prerogative.
His main preoccupation is success and we can call Ronny Deila to the stand to confirm the price of letting him down in that regard. What would he do if the team across the road on the other side of the city took the league back from the one with all the money that was “significantly higher than previous expectations”?
When money talks it normally explains why those who have it usually finish higher than those who have less than they do. Or else you’d better have a really good reason why that’s not the case. A balance sheet isn’t a trophy but it’s supposed to signpost the way towards them.
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