The board

See, this provides way more content than that shambles of a club statement.

Interesting that they double down on BR having final say on club signings...

 

More content, but same excuses that just don't fly.

Why do we need cash reserves to meet UEFA sustainability? Pretty much only a small handful of clubs have money at bank, most run at debt and spend more than us while doing so.

The manager approval comment is still, to most of us, pointless.

"Brendan's you're either getting player X or no one*

"Aye okay, player X it is then"

Is still technically manager approved, but it's not the managers choice.

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Could literally make that up.

 

You could, but not sure why you would because it's * stupid. We should have been forgetting about them and moving onto another target that was achievable in that window.

 

I believe it is the first time, but I don’t believe it holds any weight, honestly. They’ll just ignore it.


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Surely if we can arrange for the whole stadium to raise Palestine flags in a UEFA game we can all agree on a boycott. It shows we can rally together for a cause.


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The thing about the whole situation that irks me the most about this board is the complete arrogance and contempt they hold to the fans.

They know full well they have * up, they know well they are responsible, but they will never be held accountable and they will never acknowledge fault. What they will do is bank of the fans being mugs, what they will do is bank on fans not being educated enough to see beyond the bullshit spin they put forward. The reference they made to FFP or sustainability regulations is not plausible, I am an accountant so I can read their balance sheet and income statements and I can distinguish the utter bullshit from that. I'm no expert in FFP or sustainability regulations but I can interpret the basics enough to know it's not even remotely washable the story they are trying to sell.

There are possibly people on here more aware of astute on what FFP and sustainability regulations hold so feel free to correct my interpretations here. I feel it is hugely important for all of us fans to impart knowledge and understanding collectively on these measures so we cannot have the wool pulled over our eyes here.

Our "financial model" as the club put forward is to be financially stable and debt free. I don't think any of us have a major issue with this although when we have billionaire owners who don't put their hand in their pocket for anything and only take from the club where other owners are parting with the cash it is a sore enough one to take and certainly an approach that does leave us an advantage.

My first understanding of FFP is that we are allowed to have a maximum loss of €5m in a three year period. And you can record up to €30-45€m if the clubs owners are willing to cover these losses so even if we are in breach of that figure we suffer no loss if our owners are willing to cover that figure.

I don't know if those assessment periods are defined as in Period one is 2025/26 - 2027/28 or whether they are rolling periods where each of the past 3 seasons are examined every year. I would assume the former is the most likely so that's what I'll be testing here. I don't know the current assessment period and whether 24/25's results are year 1, 2 or 3 of the current assessment period.

The next distinction is that not all expenditure is taken into account which means a small loss could actually equate to a small profit in FFP terms once certain expenditure is excluded. From what I've read these include investment in stadium, training facilities, youth development and womens football. Now it's important to note that the majority of the infrastructure development like stadium and training facilities will never hit our profit it anyway as it is deemed capital expenditure and will most likley only impact the balance sheet. As far as the what is included in womens football and youth development, I'm not sure. Does it cover youth academy running costs, salaries associated with managers and academy players etc I can't tell but I would presume so? I'd really appreciate some clarity on this from anyone that knows as if it does its a huge issue.

We have lost Cummings, Borland, Vata, Kelly, Doak and many more in the past 2 seasons alone to English clubs because we refuse to pay anywhere near the market rate for promising young prospects at our club. If the money it would have cost to retain them (I fully believe money could have tied down all these young players) would have actually have had not impact on what we could and could not spend then is outright disgraceful and severe mismanagement. Doak alone went for £25m a matter of weeks ago. It's downright gross incompetence.

I can't really stand over any figure that can be excluded from this with certainty but say for argument sake, we say that we have £3m of annual allowable expenditure from our accounts that is related to the youth development and the womens team.

If we had just ended an assessment period in last years accounts we would have had

21/22 - Post Tax Profit of £5.89m (round up to £9m after removing allowable expenses estimate)
22/23 - Post Tax Profit of £33.33m (round up to £36m after removing allowable expenses estimate)
23/24 - Post Tax Profit of £13.3m (round up to £16m after removing allowable expenses estimate)

So effectively you are looking at a profit of £61m in the assessment period. Convert that to Euro at a flat rate and it probably comes in at €70m for argument sake so effectively we could have easily complied with FFP rules by spending on average €20m extra per each of the last 3 season and there's a huge distinction to be made when it comes to transfer fees here.

The most common misconception fans have with transfer fees is that if we spend £11m on Engels that is shown the set of accounts the transfer took place - its not. The transfer fee is written off over the course of however long the initial contract is signed so I will outline how a particular scenario would have impacted our accounts and our FFP compliance.

If we bought 2 additional first team players £7.5m each on 4 year contracts @ £30k a week in 21/22. It would have had an impact of £3.75m expenditure through player amortisation and £3m on wages. It would have effectively reduced our bottom line profit in that season down to around £3m.

If we followed that up in 22/23 with 3 players in @ £8m each on 4 year deals @ £35k a week. It would have led to an additional £6m amortisation (adding on to the £3.75m in 21/22) and an additional £5.5m in wages. So effectively our profits would have dropped down to £21m.

If we then followed that up in 2023/24 with by adding another 2 players at £8m and one at £12m in the final year with them on 4 year contracts at weekly wages of £40k each. It would have seen had added on £7m in yearly amortisation to the £9.75m from 21/22 and 22/23 and another £6.25m in annual wages which would have led to a loss of £16m in 23/24.

None of that accounts for the sales of any other players which would likely have occurred in that time. If we had spent £67m on 8 players in that time we would likely have also let 8 players go. So our wage bill and amortisation costs would have reduced in that time and potentially a big windfall might have came if they were big money sales.

With that scenario in play we would have turned in a profit in that assessment period of £8m (€9m) comfortably over the threshold by €14m.

The cash reserves would largely have been eaten into by that time with £67m being spent on transfer fees and an additional £26m on wages coming to around £93m but that doesn't factor in any additional transfer sales that we'd invariably have received if we had sold an additional 8 players or the wage reductions we'd have seen. Say for instance, we sold those 8 players for an average fee of £3m each, that's boosting your cash position by £24m (that's a conservative estimate). Say the savings of those players being taken off the wage bill amounted to £6m then that is a total cash boost of £30m. The reality is that by undertaking that type of ambitious and aggressive approach we'd still be in compliance with FFP, still debt free and still have cash reserves of £14m. (£77m-£93m+£30m).

Our board rely on being able to tell lies because people know no better.



It's important that fans know this and can sniff out the bullshit, we have too many people who use this as a genuine talking point, who take the bait that it is legitimate. It does not stand up to any form of scrutiny whatsoever. There's a reason our board don't communicate only via statements and via official club media outlets, they know fi the right people are asking the right questions they can't avoid the blame.

 

We did it with Balikwisha

 

The board saying the reported spend being much higher than reported is extremely worrying. He know 3 of the 10 players signed were out of contract and 2 were loan signings - so that leaves 5 permanent signings.

We know 2 of those 5 permanent signings were from the J League and would were faily modestly regarded so I'd say the reported fees were on the money there. That leaves 3, we know Nygren was in the last year of his contract. I could be wrong but I also think this was the case with Balikwisha too. And we know that we paid over £5m for Tounekti.

Bar maybe Nygren I don't think we concluded any bargains in this window, we shopped in markets where we knew we wouldn't have much of an outlay, free agents, players in the last year of their contract, Japan and Scandanavia. We picked up a couple of loans for players who weren't in the first team picture at their respective clubs - none of that amounts to significant investment.

The other line about "multi-million bids being rejected". * *, who can you sign in today's market for under £1m other than development players of J league players. Hibs, Hears and Aberdeen are now more or less entering the realm of multi million players. Was Breum one of the multi-million bids rejected.

The contempt is off the charts, the way they view us as hapless, gullible fools is even more galling.

 

I am no expert on the sustainability rules but do know they do apply on a rolling 3 year basis, so it’s not a set period of 3 years.

To me those running the clubs basically only plan for dooms day. They can see the Scotland European coefficient slipping, which means that not only guaranteed CL football is gone, shortly any European football could be missed out on in a one off season or two.

I believe they are showing their hand as being ultra conservative and clearly demonstrating Desmond and other wealthy investors have no appetite to invest in the club, as you rightly point out.

They have looked at a scenario where we don’t win a league two years from now and therefore enter the Conference League qualifiers with two or three rounds just to get in that.

Rather than look at a scenario going into this summer of we have won the league, we have one qualifier to get a CL bounty, we will be seeded let’s give it a good go. Not to mention if we strengthen for that, we put ourselves in a good place to win the league and again guarantee one qualifier to reach the CL cash next season.

They have completely overlooked these opportunities, and instead have essentially started downsizing the club to prepare for what will be another self fulfilling prophecy, just like not making the CL this year.

This pessimism and conservative approach is absolutely strangling this club and putting in place a glass ceiling well below our true one. We all know we won’t win the CL but having a season like last year where we make the knock out of the CL and give that tie a good go and on occasion with a better knockout round draw maybe go a round further should be possible.

Combine that ambition with a better operated player trading model and I think the majority of fans would be more than happy. Instead, we have essentially built up a cash pile for the sole purpose of saving Dermot and his chums from ever having the slightest possibility of digging into what would be pocket change for them for an odd season.

That statement will look even more ridiculous come next week when this years accounts come out with another sizeable profit on them.

 

I just keep reading back through that statement and I'm in more disbelief everytime I read it. Literally every paragraph can be de-bunked as pure *. They genuinely think the support are idiots.

 

I said very similar to this, I also think the cheap punts if BR wants them to get on with the signings he wants he will go along with cheaper signings that shouldn’t take much time just to get them on to the ones he actually wants.

That is wrong on a player level but it is likely the reality of working with the idiots he has too.

 

Mate I totally agree with you on the having to invest to qualify and that is a massive part of the problem, that if the answer is to invest they hide in their shells unless you absolutely have too. It’s hard to put into words how incredibly lucky we got with Ange as if we had lost that title too I think the outlook of Scottish football could look very different just now. However, instead of learning from that we just keep putting ourselves back in these scenarios.

My understanding is if Scotland’s coefficient remains where it is just now (or anything below 15th), this season, then if we failed to win the 26/27 Premiership we would have no guarantee of European football in 27/28 and at least two qualifying rounds to get to the Conference League. Even if we win the Premiership in 26/27, we would have at least 3 qualifiers to make Champions League and an outside chance we don’t get anything.

Next season will be the same set up as this one, only the cup winner isn’t guaranteed a Euro place as that dropped off from last years performance. Basically there is a one year lag between your coefficient being applied to the European football for that season. E.g. this season is based on 23/24 not 24/25.

 

Thanks for clarification on the above and that just compounds matters. This season (2025/26) we would have gone into on the back of around £33m post tax profits in 22/23, £13m in 24/25 and what will be record profits of possibly about £50m in 24/25. We would have gone into this season with record cash reserves probably well over £80m.

We would have gone into this season and being able to easily spend an additional £40-50m at a tilt at really looking to make progress in Europe without a worry in the world of breaching FFP or sustainability regulations, without a fear in the world of not having the money to keep the club solvent. Those worries did not exist.

Instead we took probably the most conservative of all the conservative windows we've ever hand under this board. It just staggers belief that they expect those lies to not be called out. It shows you how big a disgrace Scottish football media are when they can't call it out themselves. They will spin the story about ungrateful fans, they will contract your Charlie Mulgrews or Neil Lennons to call the fans spoiled in bluff pieces defending the board.

 

I genuinely laughed out loud this morning when i found out that Celtic have THIRTY people working at the Celtic TV/Media team.

The quality of Celtic TV is so * hilariously bad its ridiculous. Go watch ANY club channel. Falkirk, DUTD, Hearts, SEVCO, Aberdeen, Raith * rovers, and its 10x better than Celtic TV.

Im sure 26-27 of the blokes are golfers.

 

My dad has a season ticket for Alloa as he stays just down the road from the stadium. During lockdown the quality of the streams for their games was better than Celtics.

 

The problem we have got unlike the old board of 1994 who were skint and struggling with income these cretins are sitting on as I type this with over £100 million in the bank and even if every season ticket holder didn't buy a season ticket next season they can quite easily live off that money that's in the bank and going to take years to get rid of this dinosaur board .