When my mother in law came to visit us in London for the first time some time ago, we were sitting in the sun outside a bar by the Thames having a drink. She seemed to drift off into space as she’s prone to do. Turns out she was just people watching. As fingers clicked and she was ‘back in the room’ she uttered the words that pretty much sums up life in London. ‘Is everyone in London basically a spiv?’

When Rishi Sunak announced the government’s Job Retention Scheme to help employers cope with the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, I’m fairly certain no-one was expecting it to be exploited by Premier league football clubs, then again no-one was assuming chairmen like Daniel Levy would take advantage of a scheme designed to assist vulnerable businesses and employees in this way. It’s not as if Levy’s club is the eighth richest club in the World is it?….Oh wait.

Perhaps my mother-in-law has Londoners bang to rights after all.

For those unaware furloughing means the government paying up to 80% of an employee’s normal wages if a company is struggling during these testing times. Since Spurs announcement Newcastle United and Norwich City have followed suit and announced that they will furlough staff wages, not including players or coaches.

Levy released a statement via Spurs website outlining the club’s position yesterday:

“We have seen some of the biggest clubs in the world such as Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus take steps to reduce their costs,” he stated.

“Yesterday, having already taken steps to reduce costs, we ourselves made the difficult decision – in order to protect jobs – to reduce the remuneration of all 550 non-playing directors and employees for April and May by 20% utilising, where appropriate, the government’s furlough scheme. We shall continue to review this position.”

We probably shouldn’t be that surprised, Levy after all is a man who awarded himself a £3million bonus for the completion of Tottenham’s stadium despite it being massively over budget and eight months late, he doesn’t really worry about having a brass neck.

The use of the word appropriate in the statement is perfect however. This opportunism is as far removed from appropriate as you are going to get. This is simply not what the scheme was set up for.

Now you can argue if the loophole is there unscrupulous businessmen like Levy, who earns an wage of £4million a year, without his hefty bonus and Mike Ashley whose worth is measured at £2.5 billion are bound to take advantage of it, however this government scheme could easily be overloaded and end up ceasing if people like Levy and Ashley take advantage. The fact it’s not watertight legally is because the Government had to move fast to protect jobs. Surely a combined 25% wage cut from Harry Kane and Levy himself would more than cover the 550 salaries Spurs intend to Furlough? It stinks.

Until today Celtic had yet to make any statement on the financial position of the club. I’d certainly hoped that when they did they’d exclude the accessing of this furlough scheme from their thought process.

Sadly that’s not been the case. Celtic have confirmed that staff, including youth coaches, will now enter the scheme with the club making up the remaining 20 per cent to ensure employees receive their full pay.

Celtic should be showing the way on this one. We should have taken the opportunity to confirm the club will meet the contractual salaries of non-playing staff – in particularly those on low wages – from our own reserves or from savings on the wages of any player salary cuts and of course those on the Celtic board such as Peter Lawwell.

Spurs decision was probably all to do with clawing what they could back as the cost of the stadium spiralled and a lack of Champions League football for next season will impact their plans for next season’s transfer market. It is shameful opportunism.

In short this is embarrassing for Tottenham Hotspur and the other clubs who have followed suit. It will also amount to a PR disaster and it’s something we should have been doing our utmost to avoid.

I’d hoped it was not something Peter Lawwell and the Celtic board would even see as a possibility. When public services are already stretched to breaking limit and we’re all standing on door steps clapping the amazing work our public services are doing, it might be worth remembering that a lot of those staff are still without the equipment and resources they need to carry on their jobs safely.

It will be the public purse that will need to foot that bill. Money from which the likes of Daniel Levy and Mike Ashley are happy to plunder, for what amounts to a drop in the ocean to them. Though Celtic may not quite have that same level of income I’m personally far from comfortable seeing Celtic take advantage in this way either. I get it that others will have a different position, believing that all of the Scottish clubs should be taking advantage of this scheme to safeguard as many jobs in the game as possible. And while Celtic is a modestly wealthy football club, the television revenues south of the border means that these English Premier League clubs have significantly bigger turnovers than Celtic’s despite very few of them being clubs of comparable stature to Celtic.

There are teams in Scotland who will benefit from such schemes and when insolvency is the alternative the government’s Job retention scheme is there to help. For our bigger clubs it should only be as a last resort. Are Celtic really at that stage? Can we not find other ways of funding this for the time being?

My mother-in-law wasn’t 100% right, not everyone in London is a spiv. For the likes of Daniel Levy and Mike Ashley -based on recent behaviour – the cap fits.

I’d hoped Peter Lawwell would have recognised what a PR disaster it would be and wouldn’t follow suit. Sadly it seems I was wrong. As mentioned above, I realise that there are alternative opinions on this and we will happily publish your thoughts on this – email editor@thecelticstar.co.uk and tell us what you think of today’s news.

Niall J

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