I don’t think Peter ought to be sacked necessarily. What he’s done, he’s done very well. He is a good steward for the club and represents us very well on the European Club Association as well as on the SFA/SPFL boards/committees.
The board on the other hand, particularly our chairman, need to grow a set and be a lot more ambitious. Celtic is a global brand, yet they run the club like there’s minimal commercial opportunities outside of Scotland and the rest of the U.K./Ireland. Supposedly we have a global fan base in excess of 9m people, with over 1m of that in America. Yet the club has attracted zero sponsors who generate any meaningful revenue from America, the club hardly ever travels there anymore, and their matches are never shown on TV - even in Irish Pubs! - outside of the ocassional Champions League match. These 1m fans in America are willing to spend some money supporting the club, and the board is making zero effort to sell them anything. All of our peers in Europe (Benfica, Ajax, RB Salzburg, etc) as well as even middling clubs in England (West Ham, Everton, Southampton, Newcastle, etc) have global sponsors that sell across North America & Asia. Or they have regional sponsors for parts of the world that their global sponsors don’t cover.
The American sports fan is used to paying $100+ just to walk into a stadium and pay $20+ for a burger and a beer. Season tickets regularly run $2,000+ per seat (no concessions either), and the American fans pay that without a second thought. There’s money to be made from the American fan base, and I suspect the same is true in Canada, Australia, South America, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere. But the club isn’t even trying. That’s why it’s infuriating to me when people at the club moan about not being in the same position financially as other clubs in Europe and how difficult it is financially for us to compete. And it likewise very frustrating when fellow fans accept this without question.
And to your point, yes, the club does have a wage bill of £59m and growing. But they also just recorded income, not including transfer profit, of over £50M for a 6 month period which also does not include Champions League money. The club turned a profit for the last 6 months, again excluding transfer activity, and had to pay the tax man several million pounds because the club is bringing in way more money - even without Champions League - than it spends. The board has zero excuses IMO for this situation, and there ought to be hell to pay if we don’t win the Treble this year.
It takes a lot of Chutzpah to claim poverty in transfer dealings with the amount of money we have in the bank and with the amount of money we’re paying the tax man on account of record profits.