15 Jan 2024 12:08:41
Buying players on a budget
I see Kuhn not even in the door yet and the moaners on here are already at it.
First we are a club who play in Scotland and we do NOT have massive riches, yes we have a healthy bank balance because of our club being well run, but we still need to be cautious how and where we spend our cash. £3m for Kuhn sounds like good business if he plays to his promise in the hoops. We are apparently looking at one or two other players in this price range, let's hope they are good value also.
Here is something for the moaners to consider when complaining about "only" spending £3m.
How much did Henrik cost us or Lubo
the two of their fees combined were HALF the £3m, where THESE players value for money.
The transfer fee up to a certain point is irrelevant, it is the ABILITY of the player we sign.
I understand some saying we signed projects in the summer, but most of these are starting to show promise, not them all, but we are building a squad of young talented players, so this Tim is happy to trust the judgement of our Manager.
Yes the saying "you get what you pay for" is true but can Celtic really afford to spend say £30m on two players, our strategy must always be try and find the uncut diamond of a player and buy them in cheap and bring out their talent.
Where we CAN improve our signing strategy is what ED007 and others on here say and raise our maximum wage structure to over the £30k ceiling it is just now.
15 Jan 2024 12:52:12
I Agree Timalloy, rather than help to fill the coffers of clubs many we don’t like we should be developing a plan as how we can fast programme a new player from a basic salary at the start of Celtic career to a higher level than we think is our maximum salary . We need to try and create a scenario where we can entice quality young players who want to come to us for financial benefits far exceeding all but top 5 leagues.
15 Jan 2024 13:30:00
I don’t think the Celtic fans are expecting to spend £30 Million on only 2 players.
The problem Celtic have is we are unwilling to spend more than £5 Million on a player because those players would command more than £30K per week.
Celtic would need to raise the Cap we have on our wages, before we can even talk about spending more on transfers.
15 Jan 2024 13:36:18
Uncut diamonds should be seen a bonus, and not
the mainstay of your business strategy.
15 Jan 2024 13:45:01
I also understand your point Timalloy but comparing transfer fees these days to Lubo isn't really comparable. Lubo signed 26 years ago. That's over a quarter of a century ago. It's not too much to believe our board should be spending in the 6-8m bracket more often than the 2-3m range. It DOES give a better chance of success as some of our recent 4-6m players have proved.
15 Jan 2024 13:50:51
Great Post Tim. Totally agree, some not happy no matter how much and on whom we spend.
We have a business model that fits our domestic environment like every other club.
Yes we would like to spend much more but it makes no sense but I think we could look at experienced players coming to the end of their contracts elsewhere and pay more/ higher wages as there would be no transfer fee.
People go about CL and our record, they reference Copenhagen this your and how they have performed. They don't spend all their money buying top players, they buy them cheap and develop them.
They occasionally spend decent money on a player but that isn't the norm.
It is about how you spend, we don't have the luxury of PL money, so we need to be realistic, prudent and clever in our business.
Spending more than you take in ends p with you playing in League 3.
15 Jan 2024 14:15:12
Copenhagen/ Kobenhavn seem to do well with their set up. They sell a player every season for around 12 to 15 million. They pay around 6 million tops for a transfer target. Their budget is a bit lower than ours but they do well in Europe compared to our annual Groundhog day!
15 Jan 2024 15:03:02
I agree Steff. It may be their recruitment team are better than our at identifying players or their setup for these players is better.
We need to do better defensively in Europe, that's what these teams seem to do better than us and they take their chances.
Is the way they play week in week out closer to CL style football as ours isn't. We come up against the 10 man block every week, you don't see that in Europe.
As for the 5 million limit, we paid 9 million for Eddie and I don't think he was paid 30k. Jota was also more than 5, so I have no doubt, if its the right player, we would pay good money for them.
15 Jan 2024 15:47:53
Maeda,
A lot has changed in only 6 years since Celtic bought Edouard permanently.
In todays market,
How much wages per week would be needed now for a £9M player?
Celtic probably hit the wages ceiling when we recently bought CCV and Jota.
Maybe that’s the road Celtic should be going down. ?.
15 Jan 2024 17:00:05
The fee is irrelevant in my opinion. The things we should be caring about, is will they be a valuable addition to our squad and can we afford them. If the answer to both is yes, then sign them.
15 Jan 2024 17:00:20
I'm no business expert but something like a 3 for 1 model should be what we are looking for. We should be buying 3 6-8m players per year. Maybe 2 in summer an 1 in Jan. Then sell a player every summer for 15-20m. This should sustain a break even accout balance. If we sold MOR for 20m then we should be able to do this, and then following year sell Hatate for example for 15m. That allows 3 more to come in. And the trend continues. May be a hiccup or 2 along the way but maybe one year we sell for 25m and still being in 3 6-8m.
15 Jan 2024 17:47:56
SmkmeAkipper,
Your business model sounds better than the one we currently have but Celtic would need to raise the Cap we have on our players Salaries, to make the process a continuous success.
15 Jan 2024 17:51:45
Buzz back then no one thought we would pay that for a player and we did. The club have shown that if its for the right player, they will pay it but some on herethrow big money on many players, so when we don't it gives people are never happy. We cannot afford to ammunition to attack the board.
What we are arguing is that you don't have to spend huge sums to fund quality.
Them across the city spend high on wages as they cannot afford to buy. I never want us to be un that postion because they have ammase huge debt and won nothing.
11 titles in 12 years and people aren't happy.
We are sounding entitled like them.
15 Jan 2024 18:51:26
Edouard, CCV and Jota all cost Celtic £6 Million and above in recent seasons.
Maybe the modern Celtic, are not willing to spend more than £5 Million on a player, until we have tried and tested them with loan deals first.
I wouldn’t mind getting another couple of experienced loan deals with the option to buy because it worked with the players mentioned above.
I still think our options of getting experienced players, who will go straight into our starting 11 will be limited, due to the Cap on our wages.
The players mentioned above shows it’s not impossible though.
We just need to find Agents that are willing to sell their players short because there’s not many of them.
15 Jan 2024 21:00:39
Buzz, i can't argue, if we can only get experienced players in on loan or loan with option to buy, why can the club not raise the wage cap for these players, as experience does cost.
My ideal world, which we will never get to is the club get to a position where we have MOR level players in each position and we keep them for 4 to 5 years until they reach their potential, to see how good they could be.
As a realist I know we will keep them a couple of years, sell them in and another club will get them at their peak. We are 1 or2 places down he pecking order sadly.
15 Jan 2024 22:36:57
Spot on Tim. It's all about the quality of the player. If we can get a quality addition for cheap then that's a bonus. The issue is, and has been for some time, the unwillingness to push the boat out for the right signings in a higher bracket.