I know you didn’t rate McGinn but to say Allan and Henderson were better at Hibs is the type of comment that would get you sectioned in a loonie bin, it’s simply a blatant untruth and you wouldn’t have any Hibs fan agreeing with you. McGinn is the best Scottish midfielder about right now and we let him slip through our fingers because the board why trying to cheapskate around paying what was a very reasonable fee for him. He would walk into our team and we’ll never be able to afford him now. He’ll go to the EPL next season for about £20m.
He was a player the manager really wanted and we lost him because of a huge fuck up by the board.
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest Hibs would have taken over his contract, he has signed a pre contract deal with them, I’m sure he’d rather be paying. Hendry would be earning relatively small wages, De Vries probably not a whole pile Compper is on a big deal but whose fault is that? I don’t think Rodgers had a huge say in transfers, you were on here about 6 months ago voicing your frustration at the board not backing Rodgers now you’re changing your tune because he did the dirt on Celtic.
I’m not going to rewrite history on Rodgers because he turned out to be a snake. I can understand why he left, the board did not share his ambition, they completely fucked up the transfer strategy. I think Rodgers had little say in transfers, he seemed to say as much during his tenure here.
The soundbites coming out from you are completely different that a few months ago. I always had a fair idea of the type of character Rodgers but I did expect him to show a bit more professionalism and loyalty to finish the season out.
Rodgers is a snake who sold the Celtic fans a lie but Lawwell is the real cancer at the club. He’ll have a yes man like Lennon installed now who will do as he is told and the fans will be duped again as investment reduces in the playing side of the club as the stock price rises and the suits make even more out.
Up to and including 1996/97 the Premier League was very similar to the old Division 1 in terms of competitveness. There was always a feeling that on any given day, any team could beat another.
The Manchester United/Arsenal duopoly from 97/98 to 03/04 undoubtedly heightened the bar to win the league and increased stratification and wealth concentration.
Abramovich’s Chelsea raised that again, and then Abu Dhabi with Manchester City six or seven years later.
You could argue that the elite coterie of mega franchises was smaller in the 1997-2004 period, and has gradually been bolstered by a few other clubs, but the gap between the elite teams and the rest is definitely bigger now, and that gap appears more unbridgeable than before.
Out of the current top six, you could probably divide them into three categories: the moneyed oligarchs (Chelsea and Manchester City), the fading 1990s/2000s super powers (Manchester United and Arsenal) and the big clubs who aren’t fighting with the same financial ammunition as the others but have been run very well in recent years (Liverpool and Tottenham).
There was a brief period around 2015/16 where it looked like mid or lower table teams could compete at a decent level by picking off bargains from France or wherever, but I think that has gone and the elite teams have kicked on again.
I think the insurmountable gap between the haves and have nots has been there since 1997/98, but bar the complete aberration of Leicester, it feels like it’s getting ever bigger and will just continue to do so.
FFP is in operation now which means financial backing doesn’t really have much impact.
Obviously the likes of City and PSG have been using a few sponsorship loopholes to allow them spend some more but the ability to spend really comes down to how much revenue you can make. Every EPL club has a huge advantage over their European counterparts in this regard due to the TV money they get, doesn’t stop EPL clubs from some really mediocre European performances though.
9 of the top 20 richest clubs in Europe in terms of revenue are English clubs, it’s a sad fact that relegation battling English clubs have a bigger budget than those outside the whole of the top 3 clubs in Spain, Italy, Germany and France etc.
Sure lookit, there’s a touch of the Paul McGinleys about Rodgers but I personally didn’t mind his guff and tall tales given the immediate improvement he oversaw. He negotiated the CL preliminaries in his first summer, with Celtic having missed out in Deila’s two campaigns, and that season culminated in an undefeated treble. So he was untouchable and rightly so.
As regards transfers, I think it was a complete mishmash and there was a lack of cohesion and ultimately a power struggle. Rodgers was allowed to clear out John Park and David Moss and bring in his own network (Lee Congerton etc) but then you have Lawwell who fancies himself as a Director of Football rather than a CEO, and his son works at Manchester City.
So there was Lawwell playing off the latter and getting Roberts and Arzani on loan and then other deals where the club was seemingly driving them like Shved more recently. But there were other deals where it was Rodgers using his influence such as Sinclair having worked with him at Swansea. Rodgers also appears to have developed the link with PSG to get Edouard and Weah. And the combination of this has resulted in that bloated first team squad.
I think it’s walking out as the season reaches boiling point that’s caused the supporter reaction, as opposed to leaving per se. And trying to strip out the entire back room team 24 hours before an away league game has gone down very poorly.
I can see why that view may be held in some quarters, but Celtic lost at Tynecastle earlier this season and it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that his leaving 24 hours beforehand could have precipitated another defeat. And then it’d be down to 5 points ahead of a tricky cup tie at Hibs and a game against Aberdeen.
Celtic still had to play most of the top six twice when he left. It’s a credit to Lennon, Kennedy and particularly the great Damien Duff that we successfully negotiated those two games in Edinburgh.
I think the fact that Rodgers is bringing so many of the coaches, fitness and analyst staff that he hired with him to Leicester shows how much power he was allowed to wield.
I don’t agree at all that McGinn is the best Scottish midfielder around. He isn’t anywhere close to McGregor. And Christie and Brown are both better too. You overrate him.
And I didn’t blame the Board for not backing Rodgers. I don’t think they’ve been particularly found wanting in backing him. The right back changed his mind and joined Vakencia and that was the big loss last summer. But Rodgers definitely made it clear he wasn’t going to be around long term and that definitely affected what the Board were willing to pay.
Anyway I’m fairly ambivalent on the whole thing now. He was a good enough manager to not bluff about his emotional ties to the club. That all rings hollow now obviously. I’m glad to be rid of him now.
United had something like 20% of all EPL income in the early 2000s. United were a mile ahead of everyone with something like 25k more going to their games weekly than the nearest other club, Champions League football annually and the first fully developed global merchandising programme in the world.
United’s income is something like 12% of the league total now and they still have debt repayments from Glazer takeover (not there in the early 2000s), just taking a quick back of the envelope look at it.
I can see your argument about it being NBA like in terms of having a top table of a few teams but the financial dominance is definitely more evenly spread with United’s vice grip nowhere near the same. The relatively wealth of English clubs vs. Europe allowing them to get a far better quality of player.
He had a ready made excuse in walking out at the end of the year that the fans would have bought into, such is the disdain for Lawwell there now seems to be.
I think you have to look at the culture of English football in terms of “big clubs”. England has more “big clubs” than anywhere else.
Chelsea and Manchester City only joined Manchester United and Arsenal in the top tier due to oligarchs’ money.
Liverpool have been tipping around much the same level since the mid 1990s - a massive club trailing on the coat tails of the mega “franchises” in football terms, occasionally challenging, but also trailing in money terms, but always with the potential to get back to the top because of their support and global cachet.
Tottenham are another very big club but they have only been able to get to where they are through years of painstaking work and a bit of luck in terms of good home grown players coming through. Being a London team helps.
Maybe there is potential for other big clubs like Everton, Newcastle, Leeds and Aston Villa to do what Tottenham have done, but I doubt it.
Smaller teams can sometimes get very good players - like Leicester with Kante and Mahrez and Southampton with van Dijk and Mane, but those players quickly leave.
And squad depth has become so much more important.
It just seems to me that to contend for the league these days you have to be a killing machine getting well up in the 90s pointswise - there’s a big gp between the top 2 and the rest, but also there’s a particularly yawning gap between 6th and 7th this year and that’s probably only going to widen - or maybe two or three of the top 6 could drop back into a sort of second tier a bit like Atletico Madrid occupy in Spain - Chelsea and Arsenal are pretty much already there - Manchester City and Manchester United are the only two who are certain to stay in that very top tier going forward.
A lot depends on managerial appointments but if Manchester United get that right themselves and Manchester City could become a duopoly. United have punched well under their weight in the last six years.