[FM10] Making Celtic the most successful team in Scotland

[safcrhys]

History

The Celtic football club was founded in Glasgow, Scotland by a Roman Catholic priest who went by the name of Brother Walfrid. His motivation for founding the club was to make money for his charity (The poor children's dinner table) and to help the immigrant Irish population in Glasgow who were largely discriminated against at the time. Walfrid's suggestion of the name Celtic was to relect the clubs Irish and Scottish roots. On the 28th May 1888 Celtic played their first ever game against Rangers, which they won 5-2 in what was described as a "friendly encounter". 1967 was Celtic's most successful year to date, the club won every competition they entered: The Scottish Cup, the Scottish League Cup, the Scottish League, the Glasgow Cup and the European Cup, their manager at the time was the legendary Jock Stein. Stein managed Celtic to a world record 9 league titles in a row between 1966 and 1974, it was a record that stood until 1997. In 2003 Celtic reached their first ever UEFA Cup final, around 80,000 Hoops fans descended on the city of Seville in Spain to watch the final against FC Porto, unfortunately for Celtic they were unable to prevent José Mourinho's men from winning 3-2. The club play at the impressive Celtic Park which has a capacity of over 60,000 seats.

Modern Era

The seemingly never ending tug of war between Celtic and Rangers for the SPL title has proved very entertaining in recent years, in 2007/08 Celtic bolstered their squad considerably and Rangers financial troubles meant the Bhoys were favourites for the title. In the Champions League Celtic managed to qualify out of a group which contained AC Milan, Benfica and Shaktar Donetsk who they beat 2-1, 1-0 and 2-1 at home respectively, but they lost all of their away matches. Nevertheless they still finished 2nd to AC Milan. In the last 16 Celtic were drawn against FC Barcelona, a spirited display at home against the Catalans wasn't enough to earn a victory however and they lost in Spain to go out 4-2 on aggregate. Domestically, Celtic started the season well but fell away badly. They found themselves 8 points behind rivals Rangers with 7 weeks of the season left. However, a fantastic turnaround saw then win all 7 of their final games including 2 wins over Rangers to win their 42nd title.

In 2008/09 Celtic had qualified automatically for the Champions League but after being drawn against Manchester United, Villareal and Aalborg in the group stages they finished 4th and were out of Europe for another year. Domestically things were progressing well up to Xmas, in January they were 7 points ahead of Rangers after beating them 1-0 at Ibrox through a Scott McDonald goal in the 2nd half. The good form soon deserted them however, they won just 2 more away matches all season. The 7 point lead was slashed to just 1 at the start of May, this was then wiped out completely when they suffered a 1-0 defeat at Ibrox. On the final day of the season Celtic still had hope of landing a 4th successive league title but a 0-0 draw wasn't enough as Rangers hammered Dundee Utd 3-0 to take the championship back over to the blue side of Glasgow. The day after the season finished, it was announced that Gordon Strachan had left the club.

The challenge

The challenge is to surpass the legendary Jock Stein who won 9 league titles in a row with Celtic and also the European Cup, in doing so I also hope to overtake Rangers' record of 52 league titles.

[safcrhys]

Celtic FC - SPL - 2009/10

Signings and Departures

I really went for quality over quantity, we were short at CB so I brought in Nicolas Otamendi from Velez for £3m, Sergey Krivets came in as did young central midfielder Tinga from Ponté Preta. We needed that bit more quality upfront so I broke the clubs transfer record for Artem Milevskyi. In January I bought Iker Munian from Athletic Bilbao for £925k and also the young left back Dodo will join us on July 1st 2010. There were no high profile departures really, just a few fringe players.

SPL

We started the season very well and never looked back, we were undefeated until December before losing to Hearts at Tynecastle. We also managed to remain undefeated in the 4 tussles we had against Rangers this season, winning 4-0 and 4-1 respectively at Ibrox, and drawing 0-0 and 1-1 at Parkhead. The league was wrapped up with 3 games to spare as we finished 5 points above our nearest and dearest rivals.

SPL Table

Scottish League Cup

We had a fairly easy progression up until the semi-final where we came up against an in form Aberdeen team, we took a 2-0 lead before they pulled one back. We then made it 3-1 to seemingly put the game beyond doubt but Aberdeen scored 2 late goals to force the game through to extra time and penalties. In the end we made it through to the final on spot kicks.

The final against St Mirren wasn't the finest of performance's but managed to come out on top 2-1 thanks to a late brace from Scott McDonald.

Scottish Cup

What seemed like an easy progression through to the final proved tough, it ended with us being knocked out in the semi-finals against Dundee United on penalties.

Europa League

Our bid to make the Champions League was ended by Olympique Lyon so we took our place in the inaugural Europa League, we finished first in our group which contained Fulham, Panathinaikos and Vorskla to progress through to the first knock-out round. We were drawn against Dinamo Kiev, a 4-0 win in the Ukraine basically saw us through to the next round, as we drew the 2nd leg 1-1 in Glasgow.

The second knock-out round saw us come up against HSV, I wasn't feeling particularly confident about beating the Germans but another fantastic performance away from home saw us win 4-1, we then won 2-0 at Parkhead to seal a brilliant 6-1 aggregate win over them.

The quarter-final was draw was kind to me, we got Standard Liege, another great away performance saw a 3-0 win in Belgium and then a 1-1 draw at home put us into the semi-finals against Genoa. We triumphed 4-2 on agg against the Italians to set up a final with Arsenal in Hamburg.

The final was great to watch for the neutral, but it left us heart broken:

Europa League final

Club Finances

They haven't really changed much, even when the board announced its intentions to add an extra 15,000 seats to Parkhead at a cost of around £13m, season ticket sales have recovered most of the money lost however.

Finances

Next Season

The aim is to improve the squad even further, taking advantage of the financial troubles Rangers find themselves in. A second successive league title should be achieved and hopefully a good run in the Champions League too.

[higgins]

In my Hearts game Celtic just won two SPL in a row (2010 & 2011), a great team with some money....

[safcrhys]

Rangers aren't making it any easier for themselves to compete with me, they just sold their star centre-back in Bougherra and replaced him with Russel Anderson.

David Weir and Russel Anderson at CB haha.

[safcrhys]

Celtic FC - SPL - 2010/11

Signings and Departures

I wanted to continue to strengthen the squad and get rid of the players I didn't think had the quality to help me reach my long term goals. In came Rafael van der Vaart, Ibrahim Afellay (January) and Simon Kjaer. All of their transfer fee's together set me back about £20m. Going out were Danny Fox, Glen Loovens, Aiden McGeady and Giorgos Samaras. McGeady alone brought in about £8m as I recouped all of the outlay that went on the 3 players I brought in. The squad:

SPL

Much the same story as last season in that we started very very well (an 8 game winning run from the start) and Rangers started poorly allowing us to build up a massive lead at the top of the table. It was pretty clear by Christmas that we would go on to win the league, I am yet to lose to Rangers as again we beat them twice and got 2 draws in the 4 league encounters between us.

Domestic Cup Competitions

The League Cup final itself was probably the most one sided game the competition has ever seen, we routed St Johnston 4-0 but it could easily have been 10 or more. Not the most prestigious competition ever but the club has now won it 3 times in a row. In the Scottish Cup our route to the final was slightly more hazardous. Motherwell provided a stern test in the 3rd round when they held us to a draw at Parkhead, thankfully we won the replay at their place 5-2. We came up against an inform Rangers team in the semi's and they took the lead against us thanks to an own goal from my left back Dodo a couple of minutes after half-time. They held that lead until the 93rd minute when Nicolas Otamendi powered in a header from a corner. In extra time we ran riot with goals from Scott McDonald and Artem Milevskyi to win 3-1 against our big rivals. The final itself was great for the neutral, we came through it with a 3-2 win over Falkirk but they were by far the better team. So we managed to win both domestic cup competitions this year!

Champions Cup

We progressed out of a difficult group which contained Sevilla, Bayer Leverkusen, us and Feyenoord. I would have taken a runners up spot in the group but we managed to top it by winning 5 and drawing 1 of our 6 games. In the first knock-out round against Juventus we lost the first leg in Turin by 2 goals to 1 but managed to turn the tie on its head in Glasgow with a great 2-0 win. We came up against Inter Milan in the quarter-finals though and even though we won the first leg of the tie 2-1 they proved to be just to strong for us at the San Siro:

Club Finances

The expansion of the stadium to 75,000 seats has improved matchday revenue greatly and as a result we are turning over a tidy profit every month, there is about £40m in the bank and after I had beaten Falkirk in the Scottish Cup final the announcement came through that I was debt free:

Next Season

The aim is to go even further in the Champions Cup, win my 3rd league title in a row and of course improve the playing staff at the club. Whilst also turning over tidy profits ofcourse.

[RichG]

I find the key to making Celtic dominate is Stadium and Feeder Clubs.

I normally have Celtic Park up to 92,000 after about 5 seasons and US, Japan and China financial clubs. I am normally turning over around £200m a year by this point and can have the pick of the youth talent from around the world. I very rarely by Big name players when Celtic. I have 1 or two then just have brilliant youth prospects around them.

I do enjoy playing the Scottish Leagues.

[safcrhys]

Just out of curiosity which teams do you select as feeder clubs?

[RichG]

You never can tell who you your board will approach. I tend to go for the more expensive as they seem to give better rewards. Off the top of my head I do not know. I ma not sure if they are the same every time but I do have a good look at all the options before going ahead. With 3 good feeder clubs you should be able to get up beyond £8m a month in merchandising if you can bring in the trophies.

I just know that US, Japan and China offer the best unless anyone else has expierenced otherwise. Not sure how good other far east countries are. I tend to have most of Europe and South America covered as well after 5 years with EU passport club as well like Belgium and Poland for my South American stars.

I find Celtic is about building a club. I have had them over 300M before and top 5 in the world for richness.

I ask straight away as soon as the option comes up for a feeder club. Start with actual feeder clubs then financial at the end of year 3. You should get to 10-15 feeder clubs in no time. Then let the money roll in lol

[safcrhys]

Thanks for the advice mate, I have just brought up the subject of a feeder club to the board and they will bring it up at the next meeting apparently.