In this week’s Huddle Breakdown, Alan and James take apart Celtic’s boardroom statement, describing it as condescending, incompetent, and contemptuous of supporters.
You say that any form of protest that would potentially hurt the team is ill advised and say that shareholder pressure is the way forward. Surely the only way to hurt this board is in the pocket. The only way shareholders will have an appetite for removing this board is if they feel the the fans will withhold their cash. Isn’t that how shareholders work? Unless you meant that the fans should gather their (currently few) shares and buy more as a collective to put pressure on them as a shareholder. I’m all for this but fear that would take a long time to accomplish. The short term pain of the club losing money for the long term gain of having a modernised club with forward thinking custodians seems worth it to me. I think we should actually withhold our money and redirect it into buying shares instead so we can use both strategies at once. The important thing is unity though. I don’t want anyone being put under undue pressure/bullied but any action works better the more people are pulling in the same direction. Think a union, think strikes.
I'm reluctant to get embroiled in the minutae of this as everyone is entitled to their views and there are high risks of division due to this.
Folk will respond as they see fit. And ultimately, DD will likely only ever leave if bought out. I agree with you that unity will be key and i hope that maintains.
Having to manage players who have been adversely affected by our dysfunctional transfer policy is just another example of how the club causes problems for itself. I can also imagine the next Daizen Maeda type player might be sitting there thinking twice before going to Celtic in the future. I don’t think it’s enough to say we’re paying you a lot of money just get on with it,
Have to say Alan your likening the board and supporters to a family relationship breakdown that is irreconcilable is simply majestic, well explained and very emotive and very accurate as regards our boards outlook. I always love the content, the stats, the different outlooks on how to view things etc etc that the show brings - that objectivity with most often quantitative data. However, your statement regarding 'irreconcilable differences' just smacked me personally in the face, in a good way, and brought a degree of clarity in that you were able to verbalise my scattered thoughts and disorganised emotional state regarding this situation into a more organised and more cohesive state in my mind. Thank you.
Hello John - I believe if you go to the post within the app, the upper right triple dot drop-down offers a download option for each post. Then, in the second from left section in the app there is a download area on the far right of the section.
Haven't used the functionality personally but hopefully works for you. Please keep us posted if it does or does not.
I appreciate it’s tricky establishing a product that’s free to an audience on Tuesday and behind a paywall on Thursday, but I respectfully suggest you stick with your USP - thoughtful, level headed, open minded, objective spreadsheet shagging. Yes, we’re all extremely pissed off; yes, we all see the randomness behind Celtic’s success and yes, most would like “change”. How it’s defined, comes about and measured is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, please leave the hyperbole and faux outrage to others. It can be gotten all over Celtic cyberspace👍
I believe that Celtic’s overriding strategic aim over the whole of the Dermot Desmond era has been to maintain a competitive SPL/SPFL.
In the 2000s, Celtic and Rangers traded league titles, there were helicopter Sundays, and both clubs competed in Europe and accumulated coefficient points. Throughout this period, Rangers acquired experienced players from prominent clubs in major leagues, yet maintained a wage bill substantially less than that of Celtic. An accountant wouldn’t be expected to miss that, but Desmond’s man, Peter Lawwell, never said a word.
When Rangers went bust, Celtic cut back spending, and we were soon watching unheralded players failing to qualify for the Champions League. Attendances and revenues dropped.
Those of us who love fanzines, blogs and podcasts often see the club in an international context. We want to be like Sporting, Ajax and USG. We live for the European nights. However, the 5-10,000 Celtic fans who stopped going to matches in the mid-2010s have a different perspective. They want all the matches to be meaningful. They want the banter with their friends, families and workmates.
When The Rangers finally joined us in the Premiership, the club recruited Rodgers and spent a bit on players. It quickly became apparent that the new club weren’t going to be able to compete. The purse strings tightened and Rodgers departed acrimoniously.
Since then, both clubs have had a few seasons of decent European adventures, but we know that the next few seasons will be much more difficult. The new regime at Ibrox won’t spend freely. I reckon that spending another (affordable and FSR-compliant) £5-10 million on wages would be sufficient for Celtic to ensure regular Champions League football. As a by-product, it would eliminate any domestic competition.
I don’t think Desmond and Lawwell want to do that. The club prospered in the 2000s when Rangers were cheating, and it declined in the 2010s when there was little domestic competition. Desmond and Lawwell will feel that those Celtic fans who stayed away in the Deila years validated their judgement. I don’t think we’ll be seeing a transformation any time soon.
I’d guess that the club’s strategy going forward will be to grow, slowly, in lockstep with our rivals. The first objective will be to accumulate coefficient points, and only to make big changes to investment in the team when both European qualification and meaningful domestic competition can be achieved.
As ever I enjoyed the pod. I am intrigued by Alan's comment regarding external agencies I assume having been invited by the club to present on modernisation. Raises so many questions regarding the motivation in engaging with such agencies when clearly there is no will to implement any suggestions. I am wondering if this was during the short lived Dom Mckay period 🤔
I think that it is important that, as Alan says, we do not give the players any excuse. It took 90 years to draw level with the Ibrox clubs title total. It would be a shame to go behind again after one year.
I wonder if staying in our seats for an hour or so after the game might be something to consider. I believe it would cause the company grief on several fronts.
Why do we think we have 100m+? Not arguing, I trust the pod, a lot of respect for Alan and Juco (no offense Martin and Laura, not sure how stato you 2 are as the fans reps on the various 'casts) on that side, I'm a economics idiot, the report obscures, thru a fire hose of data, and I don't know enough about finance to even interpret to just do a simple:
total revenue - total cost = profit
... equation to even look at 70% FSR rule to do the:
profit * 0.7 = max spend
Max spend - total spend = FSR result
IF FSR result is positive THEN
outcome = 'Healthy'
IF FSR positive result is big THEN
healthy FSR outcome = 'WTF?!!'
ELSE
healthy FSR outcome = 'Yay!'
END IF
ELSE
FSR result is negative: oh oh
END IF
... sorry, old coding stuff invaded my thinking :P
Can someone explain this to me? I have dyscalculia so hit me like I'm 5-years-old on this.
As usual HARD agree with Alan about decisions to punish Celtic don't hurt the board they help our opponents in the media and the SPFL. A lot of hurt and resentment leading to hosts of other pods cancelling Europa League away packages. I see their point and sympathize with the hurt but we are just hurting our club's chances, NOT it's incompetent board. HH
(Damn it! They take out my tabs... replaced each with 4 spaces. Took em out again! lol)
Hello Mark - these are very complicated issues and difficult to parce via comment section.
1. The cash balance as of June 30 and December 31 each year is a bit of a red herring. This has to do with the timing of when season tickets and UEFA-related revenues are received by the club vs when expenses are paid. The balance sheets reported for those dates are snapshots in time and not an accurate reflection of available cash. It is possible £100 million gets reported but that could be because of the increase in ticket prices as well as the delayed/increased UEFA-related revenues from the new format bleeding over into January, plus a home knockout game in February.
2. The FSR calculation formulas are available on the UEFA website. We do not know specifics for the inputs from past financial statements- they have not been transparent enough to be precise. But the wage-based 70% threshold is based upon players/coaches as a % of operating revenue + 3-year average of player trading gain/loss.
Thanks for the quick reply Juco, finances seem infuriatingly complicated.
I saw a competing pod breakdown the annual costs of the contracts for the new players and I have to say, surely they are either blinded by legit (?) anger and haven't thought it thru OR they are stoking anger to get clicks?
I mean if you get into the minutia of annual costs, then surely we are talking the fraction of fee (or is it by when it is paid?) and total salary for the whole squad, so that total of a 5th of all those new signings and their 5-year contracts is a fraction of the annual spend.
I know you said 'the wage-based 70% threshold is based upon players/coaches' but does also include the cost of sports scientists, scouts, the board, physios, club doctors, the electricity, loan servicing, travel for games, office staff and printer ink, the tea lady's salary and tea her stock etc too?
Sorry, it's just a lot of anger and I don't like the ambiguity as it makes for space for trouble makers and it makes legit (?) anger against the board very easy to undermine if you have insight into corporate finances.
I guess at the end of the day, I'm angry at that window, an opportunity squandered (again!), but I'm not 100% sure my anger's justified and even the people in the know seem a bit backwards about saying we spent x, according to FSR the limit we had was y, we should have spent y-z.... so could know if we felt short of a reasonable or an unreasonable expectation. DO I need to adjust my ambitions for the club or do the board need to get serious?
Love of the club can stop a person seeing straight - I'm no exception - and the ambiguity, as an autistic it's not a hing I cope well with, is rife for manipulation from all sides, the adversarial press, rival fan factions and the board. Spreadsheet, trustworthy (Yes, to be explicit, I DO trustteh pod) spreadsheet shagger, explain your working.
Hmmm. I want to see Celtic do well but I’d consider myself more an enthusiast than a supporter, and I tend to look from the outside.
I understand the notion of “don’t do anything that could diminish the team and the performance on the pitch” but that simply illustrates how just about any football club ownership has just about any set of supporters over a barrel.
We live in rentier capitalist world where subscription models for revenue streams are becoming (or have become) the norm and where the goal is to repeatedly extract money from semi-captive consumers.
Many years ago I had a very small amount of money in the Lindsell Train Global Equity Fund, a fund which included investments in among other companies Celtic and Juventus and which I think is still the second-largest shareholder in Celtic.
In an online article in 2018 FE Trustnet quoted one of the fund’s co-managers Michael Lindsell on its interest in Celtic.
One long shot (and he recognised that it was a long shot) was that Celtic might move into a different league or situation where media rights income could take off. Another perhaps more realistic possibility was that it could better exploit the potential of the Celtic diaspora worldwide.
However the article summed up a key aspect of the fund’s 2018 view by saying: “While there is nothing to suggest that the club will materially change in the short term, it is now run by businessmen who will likely monetise the club more successfully moving forward”.
Now, if financially driven major shareholders of Celtic were given unmistakable evidence that that was no longer the case it might just change their outlook.
But it is of course a difficult decision for a supporter who wants to be there to back his or her team.
You say that any form of protest that would potentially hurt the team is ill advised and say that shareholder pressure is the way forward. Surely the only way to hurt this board is in the pocket. The only way shareholders will have an appetite for removing this board is if they feel the the fans will withhold their cash. Isn’t that how shareholders work? Unless you meant that the fans should gather their (currently few) shares and buy more as a collective to put pressure on them as a shareholder. I’m all for this but fear that would take a long time to accomplish. The short term pain of the club losing money for the long term gain of having a modernised club with forward thinking custodians seems worth it to me. I think we should actually withhold our money and redirect it into buying shares instead so we can use both strategies at once. The important thing is unity though. I don’t want anyone being put under undue pressure/bullied but any action works better the more people are pulling in the same direction. Think a union, think strikes.
Hi Holysmokes
I'm reluctant to get embroiled in the minutae of this as everyone is entitled to their views and there are high risks of division due to this.
Folk will respond as they see fit. And ultimately, DD will likely only ever leave if bought out. I agree with you that unity will be key and i hope that maintains.
Having to manage players who have been adversely affected by our dysfunctional transfer policy is just another example of how the club causes problems for itself. I can also imagine the next Daizen Maeda type player might be sitting there thinking twice before going to Celtic in the future. I don’t think it’s enough to say we’re paying you a lot of money just get on with it,
Have to say Alan your likening the board and supporters to a family relationship breakdown that is irreconcilable is simply majestic, well explained and very emotive and very accurate as regards our boards outlook. I always love the content, the stats, the different outlooks on how to view things etc etc that the show brings - that objectivity with most often quantitative data. However, your statement regarding 'irreconcilable differences' just smacked me personally in the face, in a good way, and brought a degree of clarity in that you were able to verbalise my scattered thoughts and disorganised emotional state regarding this situation into a more organised and more cohesive state in my mind. Thank you.
Any chance of a non YouTube download link? New subscriber and could do with this to block out the passengers on the flight back from Malaga.
Hello John - I believe if you go to the post within the app, the upper right triple dot drop-down offers a download option for each post. Then, in the second from left section in the app there is a download area on the far right of the section.
Haven't used the functionality personally but hopefully works for you. Please keep us posted if it does or does not.
I appreciate it’s tricky establishing a product that’s free to an audience on Tuesday and behind a paywall on Thursday, but I respectfully suggest you stick with your USP - thoughtful, level headed, open minded, objective spreadsheet shagging. Yes, we’re all extremely pissed off; yes, we all see the randomness behind Celtic’s success and yes, most would like “change”. How it’s defined, comes about and measured is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, please leave the hyperbole and faux outrage to others. It can be gotten all over Celtic cyberspace👍
I believe that Celtic’s overriding strategic aim over the whole of the Dermot Desmond era has been to maintain a competitive SPL/SPFL.
In the 2000s, Celtic and Rangers traded league titles, there were helicopter Sundays, and both clubs competed in Europe and accumulated coefficient points. Throughout this period, Rangers acquired experienced players from prominent clubs in major leagues, yet maintained a wage bill substantially less than that of Celtic. An accountant wouldn’t be expected to miss that, but Desmond’s man, Peter Lawwell, never said a word.
When Rangers went bust, Celtic cut back spending, and we were soon watching unheralded players failing to qualify for the Champions League. Attendances and revenues dropped.
Those of us who love fanzines, blogs and podcasts often see the club in an international context. We want to be like Sporting, Ajax and USG. We live for the European nights. However, the 5-10,000 Celtic fans who stopped going to matches in the mid-2010s have a different perspective. They want all the matches to be meaningful. They want the banter with their friends, families and workmates.
When The Rangers finally joined us in the Premiership, the club recruited Rodgers and spent a bit on players. It quickly became apparent that the new club weren’t going to be able to compete. The purse strings tightened and Rodgers departed acrimoniously.
Since then, both clubs have had a few seasons of decent European adventures, but we know that the next few seasons will be much more difficult. The new regime at Ibrox won’t spend freely. I reckon that spending another (affordable and FSR-compliant) £5-10 million on wages would be sufficient for Celtic to ensure regular Champions League football. As a by-product, it would eliminate any domestic competition.
I don’t think Desmond and Lawwell want to do that. The club prospered in the 2000s when Rangers were cheating, and it declined in the 2010s when there was little domestic competition. Desmond and Lawwell will feel that those Celtic fans who stayed away in the Deila years validated their judgement. I don’t think we’ll be seeing a transformation any time soon.
I’d guess that the club’s strategy going forward will be to grow, slowly, in lockstep with our rivals. The first objective will be to accumulate coefficient points, and only to make big changes to investment in the team when both European qualification and meaningful domestic competition can be achieved.
Well Stephen, that is just about the most depressing post i've ever read.
Thank you, Alan. 😁
1 Timothy 6:10
As ever I enjoyed the pod. I am intrigued by Alan's comment regarding external agencies I assume having been invited by the club to present on modernisation. Raises so many questions regarding the motivation in engaging with such agencies when clearly there is no will to implement any suggestions. I am wondering if this was during the short lived Dom Mckay period 🤔
No this is ongoing and not even formal commercial relationships but wealthy shareholders offering free consultancy
Thanks for replying Alan hopefully these individuals are disgruntled enough by the snub that they join the movement for change
I think that it is important that, as Alan says, we do not give the players any excuse. It took 90 years to draw level with the Ibrox clubs title total. It would be a shame to go behind again after one year.
I wonder if staying in our seats for an hour or so after the game might be something to consider. I believe it would cause the company grief on several fronts.
Hi Denis it would inconvenience lowly paid workers mostly and given DD hardly ever attends, him not at all.
According to Celtic FC:
Celtic plc Interim Report December 2024
Revenue reduced by 2.1% to £83.5m (2023: £85.2m)
Period end cash of £65.4m (2023: £67.3m)
Why do we think we have 100m+? Not arguing, I trust the pod, a lot of respect for Alan and Juco (no offense Martin and Laura, not sure how stato you 2 are as the fans reps on the various 'casts) on that side, I'm a economics idiot, the report obscures, thru a fire hose of data, and I don't know enough about finance to even interpret to just do a simple:
total revenue - total cost = profit
... equation to even look at 70% FSR rule to do the:
profit * 0.7 = max spend
Max spend - total spend = FSR result
IF FSR result is positive THEN
outcome = 'Healthy'
IF FSR positive result is big THEN
healthy FSR outcome = 'WTF?!!'
ELSE
healthy FSR outcome = 'Yay!'
END IF
ELSE
FSR result is negative: oh oh
END IF
... sorry, old coding stuff invaded my thinking :P
Can someone explain this to me? I have dyscalculia so hit me like I'm 5-years-old on this.
As usual HARD agree with Alan about decisions to punish Celtic don't hurt the board they help our opponents in the media and the SPFL. A lot of hurt and resentment leading to hosts of other pods cancelling Europa League away packages. I see their point and sympathize with the hurt but we are just hurting our club's chances, NOT it's incompetent board. HH
(Damn it! They take out my tabs... replaced each with 4 spaces. Took em out again! lol)
Hello Mark - these are very complicated issues and difficult to parce via comment section.
1. The cash balance as of June 30 and December 31 each year is a bit of a red herring. This has to do with the timing of when season tickets and UEFA-related revenues are received by the club vs when expenses are paid. The balance sheets reported for those dates are snapshots in time and not an accurate reflection of available cash. It is possible £100 million gets reported but that could be because of the increase in ticket prices as well as the delayed/increased UEFA-related revenues from the new format bleeding over into January, plus a home knockout game in February.
2. The FSR calculation formulas are available on the UEFA website. We do not know specifics for the inputs from past financial statements- they have not been transparent enough to be precise. But the wage-based 70% threshold is based upon players/coaches as a % of operating revenue + 3-year average of player trading gain/loss.
Thanks for the quick reply Juco, finances seem infuriatingly complicated.
I saw a competing pod breakdown the annual costs of the contracts for the new players and I have to say, surely they are either blinded by legit (?) anger and haven't thought it thru OR they are stoking anger to get clicks?
I mean if you get into the minutia of annual costs, then surely we are talking the fraction of fee (or is it by when it is paid?) and total salary for the whole squad, so that total of a 5th of all those new signings and their 5-year contracts is a fraction of the annual spend.
I know you said 'the wage-based 70% threshold is based upon players/coaches' but does also include the cost of sports scientists, scouts, the board, physios, club doctors, the electricity, loan servicing, travel for games, office staff and printer ink, the tea lady's salary and tea her stock etc too?
Sorry, it's just a lot of anger and I don't like the ambiguity as it makes for space for trouble makers and it makes legit (?) anger against the board very easy to undermine if you have insight into corporate finances.
I guess at the end of the day, I'm angry at that window, an opportunity squandered (again!), but I'm not 100% sure my anger's justified and even the people in the know seem a bit backwards about saying we spent x, according to FSR the limit we had was y, we should have spent y-z.... so could know if we felt short of a reasonable or an unreasonable expectation. DO I need to adjust my ambitions for the club or do the board need to get serious?
Love of the club can stop a person seeing straight - I'm no exception - and the ambiguity, as an autistic it's not a hing I cope well with, is rife for manipulation from all sides, the adversarial press, rival fan factions and the board. Spreadsheet, trustworthy (Yes, to be explicit, I DO trustteh pod) spreadsheet shagger, explain your working.
Hmmm. I want to see Celtic do well but I’d consider myself more an enthusiast than a supporter, and I tend to look from the outside.
I understand the notion of “don’t do anything that could diminish the team and the performance on the pitch” but that simply illustrates how just about any football club ownership has just about any set of supporters over a barrel.
We live in rentier capitalist world where subscription models for revenue streams are becoming (or have become) the norm and where the goal is to repeatedly extract money from semi-captive consumers.
Many years ago I had a very small amount of money in the Lindsell Train Global Equity Fund, a fund which included investments in among other companies Celtic and Juventus and which I think is still the second-largest shareholder in Celtic.
In an online article in 2018 FE Trustnet quoted one of the fund’s co-managers Michael Lindsell on its interest in Celtic.
One long shot (and he recognised that it was a long shot) was that Celtic might move into a different league or situation where media rights income could take off. Another perhaps more realistic possibility was that it could better exploit the potential of the Celtic diaspora worldwide.
However the article summed up a key aspect of the fund’s 2018 view by saying: “While there is nothing to suggest that the club will materially change in the short term, it is now run by businessmen who will likely monetise the club more successfully moving forward”.
Now, if financially driven major shareholders of Celtic were given unmistakable evidence that that was no longer the case it might just change their outlook.
But it is of course a difficult decision for a supporter who wants to be there to back his or her team.
So where do we trial for the development squad? Will there be minutes or is there more of a Steve Clarke type approach? 😆
Jokes aside, fun episode as usual.