Celtic manager Tony Mowbray puts his head in his hands as Steven McLean draws Aberdeen level for the fourth time in Saturday’s key SPL encounter at Pittodrie. The 4-4 draw, coupled with Rangers' 3-0 defeat of Hibernian at Ibrox puts Walter Smith's side firmly back in control at the top of the SPL. With only 13 games left until the end of the season, the title chase may be disappearing from Mowbray's grasp as that 10 point difference seem larger than ever.
There are still two Old Firm fixtures to come - wins in both games would put the cat firmly amongst the pigeons again, but Celtic's defensive frailties need to be sorted out if they're to avoid dropping more points along the way, a point made by former Celtic player John Hartson, who played under Mowbray at West Brom.
Off the field, the latest financial results brought little comfort to the Parkhead club. A decrease in turnover of around £8m to £36m, together with a fall in profit and a rise in club debt only serves to underline the urgency for Mowbray to deliver a league title and European qualification (the drop in revenue was largely attributable to "disappointing" European competition) to prevent the financial trickle becoming a full-scale haemorrhage.
The financial results do not include spending in the recent transfer windows and which saw big names such as Edson Braafheid, Marc-Antoine Fortune, Jos Hooiveld, Diomansy Kamara, Robbie Keane, Ki Sung Yueng, Landry N'Guemo, Morten Rasmussen, Thomas Rogne and Zheng Zhi joining. The spending is offset by the departures of Gary Caldwell, Willo Flood and Barry Robson to Middlesbrough.
On the positive side, Celtic chairman Sir John Reid underlined the fact that season tickets sales, sponsorship and merchandise have all been "holding up well".
Celtic are at home to Dundee United on Saturday; Rangers are away to St Johnstone.
I'd argue the only "big name" signing in the list there is Robbie Keane.
ReplyDeleteThe rest I'd only ever heard of through speculation. And YouTube videos, á la Kevin Keegan
One of the large factors not talked about in the latest figures released for Celtic is that staffing costs have increased by a huge factor in the last year (Celtic have just under 500 staff in comparison to circa.400 when Martin O'Neil took over).
ReplyDeleteLack of income from TV and moneys owed from Setanta and the subsiduary channels (Celtic TV), have seen chunk of Celtic's turnover drop. It'll won't be until the full finacial reports a year later that these will start to even out a little (celtic did not do a mass culling of staff when the setanta deal broke down, so they're carrying costs with no income as they rejig the interactive model). In that sense a minimum dip of £2million in the 6months figures was expected.
Celtic were also carrying an awful lot of dead weight players, with Gordon Strachan ammassing a squad of 35 'first team' players. As an example until 3 weeks ago Celtic had 5 first team over-21 goalkeepers on their books (4 of them full internationalists). Long term contracts to the likes of Dianbobo Balde and Joel Per Doumbe all add up, and in some form are included upon the last set of figures released. Reguardless of the outcome of European Football next season, a large drop in staffing costs (roughly 50 people will be moved on) will present a more accurate state of finance at the club at this time next year.
Sir David Murray once called me "an amateur economist" in an interview with the Sunday Herald after i had pointed out that if Rangers were in debt over £30million after Sir David Murray had underwritten a £51.8million share issue that entirely went to wipe out the existing debt, then the debt of Rangers 2 years ago was over £80million. With an ability to add 30+51 and realise that it's over 80, I (like your goodself) can do some basic maths; and see that Celtic's financial interim report in which they released 80 notes of a breakdown for full transparency is not in a bad shape whatsoever, unlike say... a different club who released 9 notes on their interim financial results (on time for the first time in 4 years) and who have a new chairman who claims to not owe the bank any of the £30million pounds you and I as owners of HBOS have given them. Apparently it's not a debt, it's a repayable line of credit.
Lines of something possibly...
**One side note if i can, Celtic have brought in 11 players this season (4 on loan, 3 on free/marginal transfers) while moving out 20 players. To do this, be second in the league, and still be making a profit is remarkable and close to unique in British or European football. It's not all doom and gloom :)