It is undeniable that the result of the match tomorrow at Celtic Park will have a material impact on the title race.
The fact that which club wins the Cinch Premiership for season 2023-2024 is now in coin-flip territory is a damning indictment of everyone at the Parkhead club.
A potentially fatal combination of hubris and hesitancy has created this storm that could achieve perfection.
Across the city, the Sevco High Command will, once more, roll the dice.
They prefer to ask for forgiveness rather than permission regarding what is allowed.
UEFA’s new FSR ordinances deliberately remove domestic associations from evaluating financial sustainability.
Now that the title race is so close then the “statistical anomaly” could be the tipping point.
As Alan Morrison of Celtic By Numbers has patiently outlined, it’s “a pattern of assistance”.
That is the simplest explanation for the publicly available data as per the featured image.
Very much as a case of Occam’s Whistle.
Of course, the broadcasters and local media do not care about any of this.
For them, it is Old Firm Day, and the profitable pretence of an ancient rivalry is fully back in business.
There will be much gushing on the airwaves about a fierce struggle for dominance dating back to the late 19th century.
To indulge in this is to airbrush the events of 2012 as if they never happened.
Well, actually, they did.
Without European revenues, the old Rangers were insolvent.
When they were being creative with their UEFA license application in early 2011, the managing director of the Ibrox club, Martin Bain, and Celtic’s CEO were in correspondence about selling the Old Firm as a package to the EPL.
I can only imagine the panic in the Parkhead boardroom at the time had they learned that if the rules were applied fairly, then Rangers would have been disqualified from European competition for the following season (2011-2012).
Of course, that didn’t happen.
In the end, it was Super Salary’s tactical genius in the dugout that was the hinge factor.
Being eliminated by Malmo and then Maribor meant that, in effect, Rangers didn’t have that vital European revenue anyway.
After that, the carefully compiled spreadsheets by Craig Whyte and his colleagues didn’t make sense.
My reporting on this site at the time confidently stated that the Ibrox club would hit the buffers before the season ticket money started to come in.
When the reality of the EBT decade started to spill out, side letters and “imperfectly registered” players, it was clear that this was a massive failure of oversight.
It was always about Hampden and not Ibrox.
The cheating occurred at the stadium John Brown played for because a Nelsonian Eye from Mount Florida was cast over the place.
Either that or the organisation that once employed Hugh Dallas is seriously incompetent.
The other component of the financial shit show at Ibrox was the local media’s venal silence.
It took outsiders to upend it all:
HMRC inspectors, and even a journalist in Ireland.
Two months after that Herald front page, I stood in the foyer of the Hyatt hotel in Philadelphia as the Celtic CEO told me, “This has cost us five million”.
He was, of course, referring to the death of Rangers.
I reckon that the same chap who is now club chairman must be delighted to have his Old Firm business partners back from the dead.
If Sevco wins the title, the automatic access to the revenues of the expanded Champions League will guarantee many Old Firm days.
The only blemish on this professionally packaged event tomorrow will be the absence of away fans.
However, I’m sure the home crowd will cope well with a dearth of the Ibrox klanbase inside Paradise.
At least the Stenography Corps will not have the task of studiously ignoring more nativist spleen and outpourings of anti-Irish racism.
In fairness, that is something that they’re pretty adept at.
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God bless you Phil and your lovely family.
Thank you for all you’ve reported this year. I look forward to every post. Happy New Year when it comes.
As of around 2:30pm we are eight points clear of Sevco. Yet if they win the two games in hand that reduces to a two point margin despite the fact we’ve taken six points off them. I think we are going to have to take all twelve points from them to retain the title, and that might not be enough if we keep dropping points to teams we should be taking care of comfortably.
There were some fine passages of play today, but there were also some truly awful, individual and collective blunders, and a good team WOULD have punished us. We took the points, but not much else from that game. We can’t let the result gloss over the very obvious problems/flaws/deficiencies – take your pick – which we have in several areas of the team.
The question on everybody’s lips today should be “Who the feck told Barbie that thing on HIS TOP lip resembled anything like a moustache?” He should be straight down to Tam Shepherds looking for his 30 bob back. Has anybody ever seen a more ludicrous facial adornment?
Celtic can live without a version of Rangers. That has been proven and so can the rest of Scottish football. There is plenty of revenue in European games to supplement domestic money and if other domestic club actually allowed us to fill their grounds, they’d make more money too. Today anything they got, we gave them. They were toothless and we were wasteful.
Spot on. I watched the game in my bitter wee village in Pumpherston surrounded by so called mates 90 minute bigots of course 🤔🙄 and took their money and spent it on drinking their tears.
Without a version of Rangers our season ticket sales plummeted. We closed a section of a stand because we couldn’t fill the ground. We are raking in the cash from Europe just now, on the back of Sevco results. THEY earned us the automatic CL place. We have done ZERO in Europe for years! We have struggled to get through the qualifiers to get to the group stages of ANY European Competition. You are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think we are automatically going to make a lot of money from Europe. The fans will NEVER tire of watching Celtic beat any version of Rangers. We do NOT need a strong Rangers, but we need a Rangers.
The Celtic Board wants a strong rival…. They are keen to do everything they possibly can to help them….
Help our manager and team?
Not quite so keen…..
Sooner Desmond and his lackey is away the better.
My brother once said to me when celtic wer closing in on 9 in a row “you think refs are bad now wait till wer going for 10. Between 2017 and 2019 morelas had 5 red cards then it all dried up getting away with punches and stamps, the 10 is gone but now wer gunning for theyr fake 55. I’m now convinced a meeting took place between sfa and refs association mustering up a plan to end celtics 23 year domination. Stats speak for themselves before var we wer paranoid with introduction of var the corruption is there for all to see. I’m not renewing my ST weather we win league or not iv had enuf.
This game will not be a league decider. We have a few first team picks out and I hope for a positive result.
Both teams will drop points to the season end for sure. I hope Celtic get 2 or 3 quality players in to boost our chances.
We have a lot of very good young players but a couple of PL commanding players will increase the overall quality and hep the younger players too…
We need to spend.
I believe Broony coming back for Kewell that might send a positive through the team.
HH and c’mon the Bhoys…!
Living in Canada unbelievable what’s going on no wait, that’s normal for Scotland the land of we are the people just another day in an anti-catholic land.
Great free kick goal from Taverner, after the free kick was awarded for a dive.
Celtic denied a penalty, no VAR check, no offside image released.
Yellow card for celebrating.
Goldson over the ball and should have seen a red but instead dives and tries to get the other player sent off.
See how it works…
Scottish fitba os rotten
Something I struggle to get my head around here. If PL was truly upset at the death of Rangers, because it cost Celtic £5m, why would he be happy to see them win the title this year when it would cost us £60m.
This season is literally, double or quits. We either double the financial advantage over them, or they are right back level with us, and twelve years of superiority are down the drain.
Celtic do NOT need a strong Rangers from any business point of view.. They need a Rangers, any Rangers, and the fans need and want a Rangers, but only to poke fun at and ridicule.
I think this is where most (but admittedly not all) the fans in the stands are at odds with the occupants of the boardroom. There is no doubt in my mind they would be happy to see Sevco flourish as they think it’s an essential part of Celtic’s business plan to be 50% of that rivalry.
Personally I’d like to have seen the process of ‘Espanyolification’ taken to its logical conclusion. I think the blazers at Celtic Park see that as carrying a risk of ‘Linfieldisation’ for us, as once Belfast Celtic were no more Linfield were free to totally dominate a moribund and meaningless Irish league.
Juventus don’t need a strong Torino to be successful any more than Bayern need TSV 1860 Munich. They should have thought bigger in 2012 and seen it as the historic opportunity it was instead of a threat.
Well they better start thinking big now, because a European League IS coming! We can be part of it and with our fan base become a truly global superpower in the game! Or we can stay in the Scottish set up and be subjected to the same bias and bigotry that our club has suffered from since its Inception.
Go global or remain parochial!! Those are our options!!
Wish they would retitle it Game of Chanties or something equally as fitting.
They prefer to ask for forgiveness than permission for what they are allowed to do is one of the finest statements I’ve heard in a long long time – well done !!
Completely nails it. And let’s face it, in Scotland, there will always be plenty of forgiveness for any team playing out of the Bigotdome, no matter how great the transgression!
Good to see the sevco show going as well as the faltering one of their right wing zionist partners in crime. Amazing how real Journalism has been attacked and slaughtered by the pair who hold a real hate of truth, tolerance and justice.
Occam’ s Razor times 10 , Phil ! Only in Scawlin !
Sadly no clubs will speak out regards this blatant 2 fingered salute to them
The entity at ibrox has Carte Blanche to do as they please .
Rules are ignored on the pitch and off
Not one person in the media will call it out
Surely a club who made another financial loss recently are now paying allegedly 40.000 per week to a loan player must set of alarm bells .
Who is funding this
What connection do they have to the club .
Where has the money come from .
This is a slap in the face to every well run club in Scotland
They know they are playing with one arm tied behind their backs .
As the SFA will not question anything regards this .
Oh for a Fergus McCann or Turnbull Hutton type character they would ask questions
Old firm fc are going all in for the Champions League pot to the detriment of everything FSR warns against. They will risk it all as they know there will be no repercussions albeit a slap on the wrist as the money will be already in their bank before any action is taken.
Unfortunately, they will be given every assistance.
I hope Celtics custodians aren’t as complicit.
Watching Sky news right now, the narrative appears to be how Celtic have refused their poor fans entry with no reminders of the actual reason why this all began. Nothing on the recent VAR scandals, the amount of games without a penalty conceded either, absolutely nothing on the topics screaming out needing resolved.
Just a big up for old firm day.
Deflection and misdirection always the order of the day up here sadly.
Keep up the good fight Phil.
It’s obvious to see that the new loanee comes with astounding stats so no wonder sevco are throwing everything they’ve got (or not got) to prise the league from our grasp. Doh!
This derby game could decide the league but it will also show Celtic fans just how much incompetent meddling is going on in the background.
The fact that Celtic haven’t called out the pattern of assistance says it all about the Board. HH
The PLC … let down the Celtc support on so many occassions concerning Sevco 2012 it’s nauseating. From the 55 garbage to the titles gifted , The Celtic PLC Board hasn’t lifted a finger to support the Fan base in our belief that RFC 1873 died with their boots on . Now we have the Sevco 2012 signing expensive plsyers against all we were told … where is the Finance coming from ??? Brendan is fighting a battle with one hand tied behind his back while the Peepul get to dowhat they like …. the VAR Penalty fiasco must be investigated …. we’re all pissed off at the Corruption in Scottish football , and the new Sevco manager is havingan easy time because of it.
Careful with that, it’s not a belief, it’s a fact!