Renowned football finance blog ‘Swiss Ramble’ has been detailing the money involved in Scottish football in recent days, demonstrating the stark contrast in fortunes between Celtic and our closest rivals – Rangers and Aberdeen.
As part of a Twitter thread analysing the Dons’ 2018/19 financial results, it was shown that the Pittodrie club are second only to the Ibrox outfit in terms of reported losses, while Celtic have made a significant and healthy profit.
Much of the loss on the Dons’ part comes from the £4.3m stadium impairment of Pittodrie, though it is notable their wage bill has risen by 8% to £9.2m, without much return.
Aberdeen finished fourth in the Scottish Premiership last season and were beaten by Celtic at Hampden twice, in the League Cup final and Scottish Cup semi-final.
Between them, Aberdeen and Rangers have lost a staggering £16.4m between them, while Celtic have made a profit of £11.3m.
Chasing Celtic
The Hoops’ incredible ‘treble treble’ success in recent years has put significant pressure on the biggest clubs in Scotland to find a solution that ends our dominance.
Although Aberdeen don’t have realistic ambitions to win the league, they do pride themselves on chasing the national cup competitions and criticism has come Derek McInnes’ way for their failure to win anything since 2014.
Rangers meanwhile are apparently throwing everything at trying to stop us in the league, fearing that we reach our ‘ten-in-a-row’ goal.
It does, however, appear to be a vicious circle for the duo, who can’t see to find success on the pitch and are now further behind off it due to overspending.
Celtic’s big advantage
One of the most notable contrasts in Swiss Ramble’s analysis was the ability of Celtic to turn a profit on our key playing assets compared to both the Ibrox and Pittodrie clubs.
Aberdeen made a profit on players of just £300,000 and Rangers just £3.1m, with Celtic paving the way forward with a mighty £17.7m.
In recent years we’ve found a recipe for success in scouting, developing and selling on players to bigger, cash-rich leagues. If either Aberdeen or Rangers are going to get closer to us anytime soon, it’s something they must start delivering on.
That strategy, spanning a number of years, is now allowing us to make bigger investments in talents such as Odsonne Edouard and Christopher Jullien, both of whom have been stand-outs in recent months.
There’s still hard work ahead for Neil Lennon’s side to maintain the success we’ve become accustomed to, but it’s heartening to know that while things look brilliant for us on matchday, we’re also faring well comparative to our rivals financially too.
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