Why do Celtic have so much money in the bank with so little intention to spend it on improving the playing squad?
From a business perspective, speculating to accumulate would pay dividends as the buy, develop, sell model would continue just at a higher scale than the lowest echelons of the market. From a football perspective, the club would have more chance of competing with pot 3 and 4 teams, and using the Parkhead crowd to bridge the gap against pot 1 and 2 teams as we did in not too distant days of old. The outcome of that – more prize money.
Surely the whole point in having money is to pay bills and then to buy better players. If not, why sell? If the purpose of getting £30m for Matt O’Riley is not to use that money to buy a couple of quality players to make Celtic stronger then why are we making these sales?
Two years ago Celtic lines up in the League Cup Final with a midfield trio of Mooy, Hatate and McGregor. O’Riley was on the bench. The front three was Maeda, Kyogo and Jota. Giakoumakis and Abada were at the club that season too. We had a solid defensive pairing of Starfelt and CCV. Since that game the club have seen their bank balance grow to over £100m. Yet the squad is now weaker.
O’Riley, Mooy, Starfelt, Giakoumakis, Jota and Abada have gone. On the wings we have brought in Kuhn, Palma and Yang; none of whom are as good as Jota or Abada. In midfield we have brought in Bernardo, who is not as good as Mooy or O’Riley. Idah comes in up top, it’s arguable as to whether he’s as good as Giakoumakis, while Liam Scales occupies Starfelt’s spot.
£100 – £130m yet no tangible progression. This doesn’t bode well for Europe, and means the perpetual benchmark is simply to finish ahead of a poor Rangers side in domestic competitions, which every bookmaker anticipates us to do year in year out and have done since their previous incarnation went bust.
Where is the ambition for more? Celtic is an iconic club with a name that resonates in Europe for the club’s exploits in the 60s and 70s. There were fleeting moments in the 80s (beating Real Madrid at home and being cheated by Rapid Vienna in the latter stages of the Cup Winners’ Cup), the 90s are well known as a nightmare, then we had Seville and some very respectable group campaigns and runs to the last 16.
Are we to forget Barcelona, Milan, Liverpool and settle for beating Dundee, Ross County and the new Rangers at a canter forevermore?
It’s high time we spent some of our cash, upscaled the selling model and combined domestic success with European progression.