Graeme Souness admits Celtic and Rangers’ midweek woes in Europe comes down to the simple question of economics and where the money is in football – in a cruel reminder of how the game has evolved.
It was a midweek to forget for Glasgow’s big two with the Hoops suffering a hammering by Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League and the Light Blues suffering a similar fate a couple of days later at Ibrox against Lyon in the Europa League. Brendan Rodgers watched on as his men went down 7-1 in the Bundesliga giants’ backyard while Philippe Clement and his troops lost out 4-1 to the Ligue 1 outfit.
Rangers legend Souness reckons the sobering week for Scottish football is a stark reminder how the modern day game has evolved in for clubs north of the border. He used the numbers behind Rangers’ earnings last year between domestic and TV money in comparison to the figure his local team Bournemouth – who have 11,000 home fans – pocketed to show the drastic gulf in the financials.
Writing in his Daily Mail column, he said: “This last week has been a sobering one for Scottish football and a reminder of how the game has evolved in a cruel way for our clubs. Both of the giants in Glasgow have suffered depressing defeats.
“Celtic faced a Dortmund team who lost 5-1 at Stuttgart two weeks ago and had to come from 2-0 down to beat Bochum last week, so Brendan Rodgers’ thinking would have been: ‘We’re firing on all cylinders and they’re not, so we can go there and take them on and outscore them’. I can understand that thinking, but it didn’t happen and Celtic came unstuck on a grand scale, losing 7-1.
“In my old team Rangers’ case, they were playing at home in a European competition where they had previously gone to Malmo and won, and thought they could take on the opposition this time — Lyon. They also got beat up badly, which again showed up the huge gulf.
“It’s a simple question of economics and where the money is in football, now. Rangers earned £8.28million in domestic and European TV money last season. My local team Bournemouth — which is not a football town and where 11,000 will attend home games — got in excess of £100m. That’s the gulf in money we are looking at. It came to the surface all too quickly in Dortmund and Glasgow.”