Neil Lennon has dropped a bombshell regarding Celtic’s future if the football season remains suspended for an extended period of time due to the coronavirus.
The football season is suspended at the moment due to the global outbreak of the coronavirus which has affected nearly a million people worldwide and is growing at an alarming rate. As a result, it does not appear that things will be back to normal any time soon. That has left a lot of clubs staring at a bleak future. And while Celtic are in better financial shape than most, they are not immune to these problems.
Celtic are without doubt the top club in all of Scotland, as a result their wage bill is higher as well. So while they might have a lot more money in the bank, their expenditure is higher than them also. Thus any extended amount of break will leave the club in a bad situation where they will have to continue paying these high wage bills without any money coming into the club.
And while speaking with Chris Sutton on BBC Five Live, Neil Lennon admitted that a lot of people at the club might be forced to take pay cuts if things don’t return to normal by the end of April. At this point of time that does not appear to be the case though as the chief medical officer has informed them that realistically it might take 12 to 13 weeks.
As reported by the Daily Record, the Celtic manager said:
"“We’ll probably have a look at things at the end of April in terms of the club as a whole.“Peter [Lawwell] and the board will review it then. At the minute, we are okay.“For Scottish clubs, this is the time of the year when they are putting out season tickets, but, obviously, the general public are very wary and reluctant to part with their money as they don’t know what they are paying for yet and we still haven’t finished this season yet.“We don’t know whether that’s going to happen or not. We need to get a decision sooner rather than later on that.“There has to be a backstop date at some stage so we can start to plan ahead.“We’re financially robust, but are still feeling the hit. We’ve been told by the chief medical officer here it’s going to be 12 to 13 weeks in this situation, so it’s really difficult to plan for the future and you have to prepare yourself as best you can for whatever the outcome is going to be.”"
This is in direct contrast to earlier reports which had suggested that everyone’s position at the club was secure despite the crisis. But proper measures definitely need to be taken in order to keep Celtic’s future. We can only hope that if the need for wage cuts arises, Peter Lawwell is the first one to volunteer to take a hit to his staggering £3.5 million salary.