Celtic are a global band sid as much as any big club , but they play in a league in a country of 6 million approx.
People talk about ‘sectarianism “ being a huge problem in Scottish football but I always thought the problem is that most of both clubs fans are in the main gloryhunters . A huge proportion of their fans do not support their local club . Frankly for that alone I enjoy seeing both sets of fans eating humble pie .
Top level sport depends on the perception, real or otherwise, of uncertainty.
Celtic’s problem is twofold - a vast majority of their games carry no perception of uncertainty, and they’re locked into a system which condemns them to being also-rans at European level.
They do carry a certain cache due to their history and support, but are only used as a stepping stone by players.
Only the derby games and the European qualifiying games in August carry any significant degree of uncertainty.
The increasing NBA-isation of association football is a huge problem.
European club football has decimated club football elsewhere in the world. The Brazilian and Argentine leagues, for instance, are second rate now because none of their best players remain at home. The World Club Championship used to be a genuine 50-50 contest, now it’s a procession.
The top five European leagues (and it’s really the top two, because three of them are barely hanging on) have decimated all leagues outside of these.
Within almost every league, there’s a vast wealth inequality.
Celtic and to a lesser extent Rangers in Scotland.
Bayern Munich in Germany.
PSG in France.
Juventus in Italy.
Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain.
Ajax, PSV and to a lesser extent Feyenoord in Holland.
Porto and Benfica in Portugal.
England is a sort of outlier because of its dominant economic position, and yet it isn’t, because inequality within English football has never been greater.
The thing that has always driven capitalism is growth and potential growth. I think late stage capitalism is where it has always run into problems because wealth inequality becomes entrenched to an irreversible degree and monopolies, oligopolies and cartels rule. Association football is very much at the stage now where monopolies, oligopolies and cartels rule, with little hope for anybody outside of these.
Most domestic soccer leagues in Europe now have evolved to a monopoly or at a push two team leagues. Just judging by the comments you read from the soccer types here, they seem happy enough with that lack of competition. It’s seemingly hugely important to stop Steven Gerard’s Glasgow Rangers from winning the league this season as if that happens, they apparently won’t be able to launch a title challenge again for a decade and Glasgow Celtic will win 17 or 18 in a row.
The EPL still has a degree of competition in that there is a ‘Top 6’ even if the gap to the rest grows year on year. Within that, you see a curious fixation here from the Spurs haters on the issue of Spurs not been a ‘top club’, notwithstanding probably historically having the 4th biggest supporter base in England and their current status as a distant 6th wealthiest club. There seems to be a real yearning for the likes of Spurs to disappear and the EPL to contract to the kind of one team domination you see from Juventus in Italy, Bayern Munich in Germany, PSG in France or Glasgow Celtic in Scotland.
The English championship is a great league in the competitive stakes . There are three stars 
there and a club who lost a final . Also Middlesbrough were in a Europa final a little more than a decade ago .
Exactly. The Celtic fans must be very naïve not to realise that the job was only a stepping stone for him back to a decent EPL club. He rebuilt his career there. Having said that, it was unprofessional not to wait until the end of the season.
The premiership is the most competitive its been in 20 years this decade. United and to a lesser extent Arsenal dominated the previous two decades
You had a decade of liverpool dominance before that.
City, Chelsea, Leicester have all won titles in this decade.
Taken on its own merits, it’s a fantastic league, the most exciting in Europe.
But the problem for those who get out of it is that they then hit the glass ceiling in the Premier League.
Leicester obviously being the never to be repeated exception.
To be honest at this stage a sort of law of diminishing returns was applying to the trophies BR was winning at Celtic . People were saying scotch soccer must be crap and further questioning BR credentials .
In wider English football or the EPL?
Because the Premier League is probably more equitable than ever. Yes there are the Man City’s who are off the wall but that isn’t what it was like say in the early 2000s. Then Man United having a huge and modern stadium that no other team could get near, a merchandising arm that the rest of world football envied and getting Champions League football annually made them difficult to top. It was only Arsenal (a big club in themselves) through excellent management that would compete with them- until of course Ambramovich arrived and distorted everything.
Yeah one the major reasons that the wage bill would have rose would have been due to the fact that Celtic qualified for the CL and didn’t the year before. So a large party of the incremental income of that is simply passed onto the existing players.
You are mistaking competition within the group of elite teams with genuine league-wide competition.
There has never been a bigger gap between the haves and have nots, and have nots is any team outside the top six.
The points total needed to win the league has been trending higher and higher over the last 20 years.
Again, with the aberration of Leicester in 2016, 75 points will not guarantee a team a place in the top four now. It used to give you a good chance of winning the league.
You are mistaking competition within the group of elite teams with genuine league-wide competition.
Relatively speaking, it is one of the most competitive as I’ve said because you still have a ‘Top 6’ and the outlier of Leicester City just three seasons ago. Within that though, you see the points tally to win it in the 90’s now practically every season and the magical 40 points to stay up will soon be 30 the way things are going. Sir Alex was winning it back in the 90’s with points tally in the mid 70’s. That would barely get you Top 6 now.
I seriously doubt that.
In the Sky Sports “Grand Slam” BS era of Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool it was absolutely worse.
Champions League money made an enormous difference then. As did having a huge merchandising arm and having better stadiums.
You saw the likes of Tottenham emerging in the late 2000s when the PL tv money (from 1bn to 3bn) essentially tripled in 2006 and they could buy a better standard of player.
It’s a pretty torturous process moving up the financial hierarchy in the EPL. Spurs went 15 seasons prior to 2005/06 without finishing in Top 6 after financial meltdown of early 90’s. Then spent a decade more or less between 4th and 6th after getting house in order. The top three finishes in each of the last three seasons are to some extent attributable to the coaching of Pochettino but Man U still in a state of flux post Sir Alex, the staleness in the dying years of the Wenger regime and Abramovich losing interest at Chelsea all big factors in Spurs moving up the table.
Manchester United only twice reached 90 points (2000 and 2009) in the Ferguson era.
This season you’re looking at a situation where 97 or 98 points could conceivably not win the league.
In a less stratified-era, Tottenham would be bang in contention for the title this season, yet they’re well out of the race now.
The McGinn stuff is ridiculous at this stage. He’s a mid table championship player. I’m sure he’s a reasonable talent but wouldn’t be in our first choice midfield. Allan and Henderson both looked better at Hibs.
Rodgers does need to take his fair share of blame for the wage bill and the size of the squad. De Vries, Compper, Hendry etc were all poor signings who we can’t get rid of despite trying. There’s no evidence to suggest Hibs were prepared to even take over Allan’s contract.
The Board haven’t always shown ambition but Rodgers fucked up the transfer window as much as anyone with exploring the move to China. He mismanaged both Dembele and Boyata in the summer. And his January signings were very much made with the idea he’d be fucking off soon. Even Shved was someone he confessed to having no interest in because he was happy to fuck off.
my reading of it is that the board didn’t want to commit to anything as they knew he was off , hence the loan signings. The board however have no plan whatsoever and we need a director of football in so we have the same plan whoever the manager is. Rodgers got rid of parks who got us Wanyama and VVD. Why did the board let that happen
The Jack Walker era at Blackburn seems almost quaint and romantic now. A small town boy who made good founding and building up a business which was a major employer in the local area, ploughing some of his personal fortune into the team he had followed all his life, his home town team.
At the time they were derided as moneybags.
Maybe Sheikh Mansour grew up in the marble halls of an Abu Dhabi palace dreaming of being the figurehead owner of Manchester City, but I doubt it, somehow.
Is that also down to more competition though? So City et al know not to fuck about game to game.
United really did not have to overly exert themselves for many years and could play for draws when trying themselves out in the CL.
The PL for the 90s felt far less competitive than the 2000s (at the top) and would seem similar now. At no point there did you ever see the likelihood of more than 1, 2 or 3 teams winning it.
For all the Leicester miracle (I know there was a confluence of factors there), is it really just a one off or a more statistical possibility now that they get 100m a year in tv money?
For example, I remember reading that Cardiff were getting twice the TV money that Bayern Munich were a few seasons ago when Cardiff were bottom of the league. Of course Munich make money elsewhere but that has got to play a role in where the lower rung teams can recruit from in an International context. So 20 years ago Leicester City likely had little chance versus top 10 Italian, German or Spanish clubs to recruit players that those teams could but all of a sudden they could because of money.
Yes the top sides still have the CL money, bigger stadiums and sponsorship, but there is still the ability there to attract some quaility players and build a team around them with good management that might compete for a time. No you won’t be there year in year out and ultimately the bigger sides are more consistent, but is it really worse than 20 years ago?