Thursday, 15 January 2009
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Monday, 12 January 2009
Why Celtic shouldn't spend much this transfer window
From CQN:
Seeing into the future is a gift that few people have. I'm not saying that anyone at Celtic has that gift. However, whoever was setting our fiscal direction was doing us a very big favour. There has been some debate over the years on here (and elsewhere) about what our approach to debt management should be. The current financial crisis (and it is a crisis) has vindicated our approach.
Debt Nutter 1 Nutters 0.
However, this isn't only a credit crunch. It is a cash crunch. Those who usually have oodles of the stuff now have very little. Including - or especially - the banks. This means that those who are owed money simply want it back. They don't want to extend terms or remortgage. Why? Well, banks need to be able to meet demands of consumers. You want to make a withdrawal? The system requires that you get it. Now.
The minute a financial institution can't pony up? Nothern Rock.
So,where am I going with this? Burnley.
It is common practice for teams to buy players with something like 33% down with subsequent installments. It is also common practice for teams to move these payment dates down the road by offering a premium. Or stretching the patience of the selling club. VERY ironically, you may want to cast your minds back to Killie moaning for their Boyd money.
Not any more. Teams want their money. They can't just get more from the bank anymore. They need to collect what is owed to them. No extensions. Burnley want their money.
So, to murray's predicament. They will survive financially this time. They will find 3 million by March 31st.
Impact on us? Not much. We will sit tight, not getting any stronger than we are, while they get weaker. In the short term, Gordon needs to ensure we keep our eye on the ball and avoid our usual winter slump.
Longer term, things become much more interesting. In these uncertain finacial times, the only things that are guaranteed are players contracts. As english teams wonder how much less their Sky money will be in 18 months time, they will be careful about extending already inflated contracts. Players will not allow clubs to push them out. A journeyman in england on a 30k per week deal will know that his next deal will likely be for much less. Players will see out their contracts. Think Bobo.
After that, their will likely be a fair number of decent players on Bosmans. Who will be in a position to access this market? Teams with cash.
Don't be too hard on Peter Lawell if we don't spend much in the next 2 windows. If Gordon can get us title number 4 with an already strong squad, the next 5 (or more) might just come a tad easier.
Lots has been said (rightly) about Fergus and our debt to him. Our recently retired Chairman has done not too badly for us, too.
Seeing into the future is a gift that few people have. I'm not saying that anyone at Celtic has that gift. However, whoever was setting our fiscal direction was doing us a very big favour. There has been some debate over the years on here (and elsewhere) about what our approach to debt management should be. The current financial crisis (and it is a crisis) has vindicated our approach.
Debt Nutter 1 Nutters 0.
However, this isn't only a credit crunch. It is a cash crunch. Those who usually have oodles of the stuff now have very little. Including - or especially - the banks. This means that those who are owed money simply want it back. They don't want to extend terms or remortgage. Why? Well, banks need to be able to meet demands of consumers. You want to make a withdrawal? The system requires that you get it. Now.
The minute a financial institution can't pony up? Nothern Rock.
So,where am I going with this? Burnley.
It is common practice for teams to buy players with something like 33% down with subsequent installments. It is also common practice for teams to move these payment dates down the road by offering a premium. Or stretching the patience of the selling club. VERY ironically, you may want to cast your minds back to Killie moaning for their Boyd money.
Not any more. Teams want their money. They can't just get more from the bank anymore. They need to collect what is owed to them. No extensions. Burnley want their money.
So, to murray's predicament. They will survive financially this time. They will find 3 million by March 31st.
Impact on us? Not much. We will sit tight, not getting any stronger than we are, while they get weaker. In the short term, Gordon needs to ensure we keep our eye on the ball and avoid our usual winter slump.
Longer term, things become much more interesting. In these uncertain finacial times, the only things that are guaranteed are players contracts. As english teams wonder how much less their Sky money will be in 18 months time, they will be careful about extending already inflated contracts. Players will not allow clubs to push them out. A journeyman in england on a 30k per week deal will know that his next deal will likely be for much less. Players will see out their contracts. Think Bobo.
After that, their will likely be a fair number of decent players on Bosmans. Who will be in a position to access this market? Teams with cash.
Don't be too hard on Peter Lawell if we don't spend much in the next 2 windows. If Gordon can get us title number 4 with an already strong squad, the next 5 (or more) might just come a tad easier.
Lots has been said (rightly) about Fergus and our debt to him. Our recently retired Chairman has done not too badly for us, too.
Sunday, 11 January 2009
Deep pockets' policy delivers just debt and disappointment for spendthrift Ibrox club
THE SCOTSMAN
Deep pockets' policy delivers just debt and disappointment for spendthrift Ibrox club
THE PARLOUS position in which Rangers now find themselves completely flies in the face of conventional football wisdom. And the warning issued to Celtic by owner David Murray, on his 10th anniversary in charge a decade ago, that his rivals had better have "deep pockets" to face down the challenge he was setting by allowing manager Dick Advocaat to splurge ridiculous sums on players, now rings hollowly.
Ultimately, Celtic's pockets have required only to be half as deep because they have tended to spend twice as wisely. Their capacity for deriving mighty more bang for their buck is what underpins the Ibrox club's current whimpering.
Since 1997 alone, David Murray has overseen £120m-worth of additional investment into the Ibrox club. Subsequent to Fergus McCann's 1994 Celtic takeover, the comparative figure across the city is £59.5m. Moreover, in 2000 Rangers pocketed £25m from a partnership with NTL that Celtic unwisely rejected in believing it did not represent good value... only for the company to later merge with rival Telewest. The Ibrox club have given the lie to the theory that the team writing the most eye-watering cheques in any environment will enjoy the most eye-popping success.
In reality, Rangers should have made themselves untouchable when ENIC bought a 25% stake in their club for £40m in 1997, as they homed in on a ninth straight championship success. That humungous advantage was essentially squandered when, in his treble-bagging first season of 1998-99, Advoccat was responsible for a £32m gross outlay on transfers – then a record for a British club across a single season.
By late 2000 – helped by the potty purchase of Tore Andre Flo for £12m – the Dutchman had been responsible for incoming transfers totalling almost £60m. Rangers' finances have never properly recovered. In order to address liabilities that rose to £51m from £9.5m across 1999-2000 alone, Murray launched a rights issue. Almost £10m of his cash and £20m from South African businessman Dave King only temporarily attacked the debt mountain. By 2004 this was K2-sized at £74m, necessitating a further share issue that raised £51.5m, of which £50m came from Murray's own businesses.
"It now means that we are in a position where we do not need to sell players. Rangers can now look forward to a bright future," Murray said at the time. It hasn't arrived, with Celtic making many more of their pennies count. McCann rebuilt the club's ground and the team's fortunes with an initial £12m investment, supplemented by a £10m share issue. Since then, a 2001 rights issue to the tune of £22.5m – when Celtic's debt had risen to £30m – and another worth £15m in 2005, both underwritten by major shareholder Dermot Desmond, have been sufficient to manoeuvre the club into a position of dominance. It is one wherein their debt is now only £3.5m and they are enjoying their longest run of title success in three decades; an impressive haul of six championship wins in eight years.
The contrast with Rangers' current predicament is remarkable. It damns Murray's fiscal acumen that Celtic, who admittedly have an advantage with a stadium capacity 10,000 greater than Ibrox, have developed a sustainable business model that allows them to post profits with a £40m wage bill. For this week Murray admitted that Rangers would have to cut their salary costs to around the £25m mark to drive down debt heading towards £30m. For the third time since 1999.
In recent years, the Ibrox club's owner attracted unfair criticism for expressing a conversion to prudence and imposing swingeing cutbacks. The downsizing was best illustrated by the fact Alex McLeish could boast an £11m surplus in transfer dealings across his four-and-a-half years in charge that ended in the summer 2006.
If only Murray had held true to this course in the absence of any suitable buyer for a concern he would be happy to see going. Following the failed Paul Le Guen experiment, however, he wasn't able to resist indulging Walter Smith during the past two close seasons. The dire consequences are that once more Rangers require to become financial bulimics. Having gorged themselves on £18m-worth of signings in the summer, they must now spew out a player to raise £3m in this window.
Most unforgivable of all is that this should have been entirely unnecessary. After a gaping hole in their funding was created when they lost out on the £10m pot of Champions League lolly through their Kaunas folly, it ought to have been filled with the £7.8m sale of Carlos Cuellar to Aston Villa. Instead, this cash was immediately lavished on, essentially, unaffordable moves for Pedro Mendes, Maurice Edu and Steven Davis.
Six years ago, Murray's arch-critic and former Ibrox club director Hugh Adam ventured that the club's "impresario" owner might in future be remembered "as actually having held Rangers back". The prediction nows seems prophetic. In the 1990s, the Ibrox club enjoyed the best trophy-snaring decade of their history. Should Celtic claim even just one of the three pieces of silverware to be decided in the next six months, this decade will represent the same to them. If that happens, Murray's role in both will be deemed pivotal.
Rangers' most expensive signings took place during the Dick Advocaat era, notably when the club smashed the Scottish record to sign Tore Andre Flo, above, for £12m. The club's biggest signings are:
SPEND, SPEND, SPEND
Nov 2000: Tore Andre Flo (from Chelsea) £12m
Aug 2001: Michael Ball (from Everton) £6.5m
July 2002: Mikel Arteta (from Barcelona) £5.8m
July 1998: Andrei Kanchelskis (from Fiorentina) £5.5m
July 1998: Arthur Numan (from PSV Eindhoven) £5m
July 1998: Gio van Bronckhorst (from Feyenoord) £5m
August 2000: Ronald de Boer (from Barcelona) £4.5m
Jan 2005: Barry Ferguson (from Blackburn) £4.5m
July 1995: Paul Gascoigne (from Lazio) £4.3m
July 1998: Gabriel Amato (from Real Mallorca) £4.2m
(The Scotsman)
001
Deep pockets' policy delivers just debt and disappointment for spendthrift Ibrox club
THE PARLOUS position in which Rangers now find themselves completely flies in the face of conventional football wisdom. And the warning issued to Celtic by owner David Murray, on his 10th anniversary in charge a decade ago, that his rivals had better have "deep pockets" to face down the challenge he was setting by allowing manager Dick Advocaat to splurge ridiculous sums on players, now rings hollowly.
Ultimately, Celtic's pockets have required only to be half as deep because they have tended to spend twice as wisely. Their capacity for deriving mighty more bang for their buck is what underpins the Ibrox club's current whimpering.
Since 1997 alone, David Murray has overseen £120m-worth of additional investment into the Ibrox club. Subsequent to Fergus McCann's 1994 Celtic takeover, the comparative figure across the city is £59.5m. Moreover, in 2000 Rangers pocketed £25m from a partnership with NTL that Celtic unwisely rejected in believing it did not represent good value... only for the company to later merge with rival Telewest. The Ibrox club have given the lie to the theory that the team writing the most eye-watering cheques in any environment will enjoy the most eye-popping success.
In reality, Rangers should have made themselves untouchable when ENIC bought a 25% stake in their club for £40m in 1997, as they homed in on a ninth straight championship success. That humungous advantage was essentially squandered when, in his treble-bagging first season of 1998-99, Advoccat was responsible for a £32m gross outlay on transfers – then a record for a British club across a single season.
By late 2000 – helped by the potty purchase of Tore Andre Flo for £12m – the Dutchman had been responsible for incoming transfers totalling almost £60m. Rangers' finances have never properly recovered. In order to address liabilities that rose to £51m from £9.5m across 1999-2000 alone, Murray launched a rights issue. Almost £10m of his cash and £20m from South African businessman Dave King only temporarily attacked the debt mountain. By 2004 this was K2-sized at £74m, necessitating a further share issue that raised £51.5m, of which £50m came from Murray's own businesses.
"It now means that we are in a position where we do not need to sell players. Rangers can now look forward to a bright future," Murray said at the time. It hasn't arrived, with Celtic making many more of their pennies count. McCann rebuilt the club's ground and the team's fortunes with an initial £12m investment, supplemented by a £10m share issue. Since then, a 2001 rights issue to the tune of £22.5m – when Celtic's debt had risen to £30m – and another worth £15m in 2005, both underwritten by major shareholder Dermot Desmond, have been sufficient to manoeuvre the club into a position of dominance. It is one wherein their debt is now only £3.5m and they are enjoying their longest run of title success in three decades; an impressive haul of six championship wins in eight years.
The contrast with Rangers' current predicament is remarkable. It damns Murray's fiscal acumen that Celtic, who admittedly have an advantage with a stadium capacity 10,000 greater than Ibrox, have developed a sustainable business model that allows them to post profits with a £40m wage bill. For this week Murray admitted that Rangers would have to cut their salary costs to around the £25m mark to drive down debt heading towards £30m. For the third time since 1999.
In recent years, the Ibrox club's owner attracted unfair criticism for expressing a conversion to prudence and imposing swingeing cutbacks. The downsizing was best illustrated by the fact Alex McLeish could boast an £11m surplus in transfer dealings across his four-and-a-half years in charge that ended in the summer 2006.
If only Murray had held true to this course in the absence of any suitable buyer for a concern he would be happy to see going. Following the failed Paul Le Guen experiment, however, he wasn't able to resist indulging Walter Smith during the past two close seasons. The dire consequences are that once more Rangers require to become financial bulimics. Having gorged themselves on £18m-worth of signings in the summer, they must now spew out a player to raise £3m in this window.
Most unforgivable of all is that this should have been entirely unnecessary. After a gaping hole in their funding was created when they lost out on the £10m pot of Champions League lolly through their Kaunas folly, it ought to have been filled with the £7.8m sale of Carlos Cuellar to Aston Villa. Instead, this cash was immediately lavished on, essentially, unaffordable moves for Pedro Mendes, Maurice Edu and Steven Davis.
Six years ago, Murray's arch-critic and former Ibrox club director Hugh Adam ventured that the club's "impresario" owner might in future be remembered "as actually having held Rangers back". The prediction nows seems prophetic. In the 1990s, the Ibrox club enjoyed the best trophy-snaring decade of their history. Should Celtic claim even just one of the three pieces of silverware to be decided in the next six months, this decade will represent the same to them. If that happens, Murray's role in both will be deemed pivotal.
Rangers' most expensive signings took place during the Dick Advocaat era, notably when the club smashed the Scottish record to sign Tore Andre Flo, above, for £12m. The club's biggest signings are:
SPEND, SPEND, SPEND
Nov 2000: Tore Andre Flo (from Chelsea) £12m
Aug 2001: Michael Ball (from Everton) £6.5m
July 2002: Mikel Arteta (from Barcelona) £5.8m
July 1998: Andrei Kanchelskis (from Fiorentina) £5.5m
July 1998: Arthur Numan (from PSV Eindhoven) £5m
July 1998: Gio van Bronckhorst (from Feyenoord) £5m
August 2000: Ronald de Boer (from Barcelona) £4.5m
Jan 2005: Barry Ferguson (from Blackburn) £4.5m
July 1995: Paul Gascoigne (from Lazio) £4.3m
July 1998: Gabriel Amato (from Real Mallorca) £4.2m
(The Scotsman)
001
Saturday, 10 January 2009
Friday, 9 January 2009
Ebay bargain
Item Specifics - Fan Apparel & Souvenirs
Sport: Soccer-British Size: --
Team: -- Gender: Men's
Product: The whole lot Condition: Used
Item Specifics - Item Condition
Condition: Used
Product Type : Debt Ridden Brand : Protestant
Size : Medium Fish, SmallPond Gender : Hairy
Glasgow Rangers Football Club, a once quintessentially Protestant British club, no longer with integrity. Comes loaded with Catholic players(Discounts available).
The item includes: Stadium valued around £3bn by Sir David Murray/HBOS (£1m in the GSPC), 28 players worth around £0, and debt that neither we, nor the bank, can quite work out.
Most saleable assets include: Scotland Sickies Captain barry Ferguson, Age Concern internationalist david Weir, Spanish "regional" International Nacho Novo (and a map to his house), Alan McGregors 15 girlfriends (and a couple of trashed bentleys, each with a disabled parking badge), Kris Boyd (a must have for the keen dealer), Kirk BroadfootWideArse, Carlos Cuellars braces, and next years "Giant" in the Larkhall Loyal Art Centre Presents: Jack and the Beanstalk: Kyle Lafferty.
The contents of the lost property are also available, if unclaimed by the end of the season (27th of December 08). Current items include 10 big drums, a red hand, a sack of potatoes, Lorenzo Amorusos socks with the red stripes, half of the contents of the Trafford Centre, Manchester, and a few giro books, although these are usually snapped up fairly quickly.
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