Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has been speaking about the finances of Celtic and Rangers.
Maguire was invited on to the BBC’s Scottish Football Podcast on Wednesday in the lead-up to Saturday’s derby.
The 17-minute show focussed on the finances of both ourselves and our rivals, and how much of a perceived gap there is.
Maguire was keen to talk up the strides our rivals have made, although Celtic fans may well have found the real story buried in his comments.
Maguire: “What we’ve seen over the course of the last few years is a narrowing of the gap between Rangers and Celtic.
“As recently as 2018, Celtic were generating £69 million more than Rangers. By 2022 that had dropped to £1 million.
“Albeit, that was on the basis of Rangers doing extremely well in getting to the final of the Europa League and that would have been beneficial to the club.
“Celtic still have advantages in terms of having a bigger stadium and they also have an advantage in terms of their commercial deals.”
So Rangers cut the gap in revenue to £1 million last year. In a year when they earned millions for their run to the Europa League final, surely that’s no real surprise?
In fact, surely the real story is that we still generated more money than our rivals, even with their £18.1 million European add-on. (Daily Record)
If the Ibrox side couldn’t even better us during such a season, will they ever be able to in the near future?
Maguire’s final comments on the size of Celtic Park seem particularly pertinent, with our rivals always having to make up the shortfall of having 10,000 fewer seats.
I guess we’ve got Fergus McCann to thank for that.
Roll on some more Champions League money next season, hopefully.
In other news, Connor Goldson has taken some inspiration from Ange Postecoglou in his pre-derby quotes
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