Exclusive: Finance Guru drops Celtic transfer forecast amid £54m reveal
Offloading senior stars “will be tough” for Celtic due to their £54 wage bill – 10 times the average in Scotland.
That is according to football finance expert and new Football Insider columnist Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively after Jeremie Frimpong became Celtic’s first big-money departure of 2020-21, joining Bayer Leverkusen in an £11.5million deal.
Celtic’s model in recent years has been to offload one or two players per season in order to balance the books, with Kieran Tierney last year’s departure, and Moussa Dembele the season’s before that.
But the economic impact of the pandemic has changed the state of play in terms of the transfer market.
The Hoops may struggle to shed players when they earn so much at Parkhead, says Maguire, especially given that few are putting themselves in the shop window with their performances.
Asked whether Celtic will look to offload players or go on a recruitment drive as a result of their dismal 2020-21 campaign, Maguire told Football Insider: “I think they will look to get rid of players but the problem is, given the season that they’ve had and the financial state of the game, who’s gonna buy them?
“If you take a look at the wages in Scotland, Celtic’s wage budget is £54m. The average in the division, if you exclude Rangers and Celtic, is about £5m. So they’ve got ten times the wages of other clubs.
“It will be tough getting players off the books that are on really good deals.”
Celtic are an astonishing 23 points behind runaway league leaders Rangers in the Scottish Premiership.
They were also dumped out of the Europa League before the lucrative knockout rounds, finishing bottom of their group after winning just one of six matches.
In other news, a former Scotland manager has said Kristoffer Ajer will hate his current makeshift right-back role.