New York City, November 8, 2017
When Celtic fans and supporters of other football clubs rebuke the Scottish mainstream media for continuing to refer to the Celtic and Rangers coupling as the ‘Old Firm’ it is invariably to do with the fact that the Rangers club currently competing in the SPFL is only five years old and that the Old Firm moniker died when the old Rangers club entered liquidation in 2012. The purpose of this epistle is not to gloat over the demise of one half of what was the Old Firm but rather to focus on why the moniker was used and why it really is no longer appropriate.
The term Old Firm arose because of the economic benefit and superior financial status derived from the religious dimension associated with their respective supporter bases; Ibrox Park’s proximity to Harland and Wolff fuelled religious bigotry in the Govan shipyards inspired similar at Ibrox Park whilst Celtic’s genesis lay with poor Irish immigrants, the majority being of the Catholic faith. Essentially, this meant both clubs were able to attract supporters from out with their respective immediate environs and gave them an economic advantage over all of the other clubs in the then SFL. This manifested in better players and, de facto, more trophies than any of the other clubs.
In these bygone days of old Rangers was the Protestant establishment club, always financially bigger than Celtic, and won more trophies whereas Celtic was very much the outsider and often the victim of anti Irish and anti Catholic racism. This was most evident in season 1951/52 over the flying of the Irish flag at Celtic Park; the SFA had determined that the flag had to be removed but, interestingly, it was Rangers’ casting vote that helped ensure the flag remained. Rangers rationale was clear; there was money to be made out of the relationship and had the SFA carried out their threat to expel Celtic from the SFA, then Rangers would have been financially worse off for it. In short, the Rangers Celtic dynamic was good for business and the Old Firm an appropriate description for their relationship.
However, the Rangers’ alpha male status in the relationship started to fragment in the 1960s as Celtic’s everyman appeal grew accompanied by greater success on the field of play. Indeed, since the appointment of Jock Stein in 1965 Celtic has been the more successful club. Rangers’ final demise and, for most, the end of the Old Firm came in 2012 with the club’s liquidation following decades of financial losses and unsustainable levels of debt.
The successor Rangers and their various boards of directors since 2012 appear to have learned few lessons from the previous club’s demise; three directors of the old club are now directors of the new club and are pursuing the same business model that bankrupted the old club. That business model involves a superior and ‘no one likes us we don’t care’ attitude to all and sundry when, of course, one should care coupled with continuously spending more than one earns financed by unsustainable amounts of debt. I’m afraid to say this adventure only has one likely ending and it’s not a happy one if you’re of a blue hue.
The new Rangers may wear the clothes of the old club but it is not on an economic par. It cannot legitimately be part of any ‘Old Firm’ as it is neither old nor on a financial par with either its predecessor or Celtic. The old Rangers had revenues of £56.3 million whereas the new club has revenues of £29.2 million. This compares with Celtic’s revenues of £90.6 million. So, Celtic’s revenues are 3x those of new Rangers. Celtic also has a stock market value of £175 million which is more than 10x that of the current Rangers’ value. Even when Celtic was at it’s lowest ebb in the immediate pre Fergus McCann days the divide between the Old Firm clubs was not as big as the current one between Celtic and Rangers. In the absence of a trophy investor with only a passing interest in financial solvency it is difficult to see how the latter can financially compete with Celtic. Indeed, the more realistic challenge for Rangers is to do better than Aberdeen, Hibernian and Hearts where the financial gap between the four is less than the one with Celtic.
In all of this there is a temptation for Celtic supporters to crow over the Rangers predicament. That would be a mistake. Celtic is demonstrably in a financial league of its own and the Old Firm axis is clearly no longer extant. That is a problem for Celtic; if Celtic’s domestic competition is poor, over time Celtic will regress to the mean and the step up into Europe will become greater. Also, Rangers now has more in common with the other clubs than it has with Celtic and if these clubs determine they cannot move towards Celtic the alternative is to pull Celtic towards the rest. With that in mind, beware of any efforts to tinker with the SPFL’s revenue distribution models!
Pax Vobiscum et Serva Fidem.
@heavidor 