Falling behind in Europe – Why the Scottish Premiership is failing in the transfer market

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23rd among UEFA leagues 

©IMAGO

Only five players left the Scottish Premiership in exchange for paid transfer fees in the January transfer window. In total, the Scottish top-flight earned a collective €18.7 million between them, but the vast majority of that money landed in Celtic’s bank account. Thanks to the sale of Kyogo Furuhashi to Stade Rennais for €12m and Alejandro Bernabei to Internacional for €5.5m, the Scottish champions made up 94% of the income from player sales in Scotland. The only other deals came from Hearts selling Kye Rowles for €715k  to DC United and Daniel Oyegoke for €400k to Hellas Verona, alongside Kieran Offord’s €119k move from St Mirren to Linfield in Northern Ireland. 

If that seems like only one club in Scotland are doing the vast majority of the business in the transfer window then it’s largely because they are. So far this season Celtic have earned €56.2m from player sales, which wouldn’t exactly raise the eyebrows of too many European football fans in surprise until they consider the fact that the Parkhead club’s income makes up no less than 78% of the league’s total income from player sales this season. Such is Celtic’s dominance of Scottish football and their advantage over all other domestic rivals in the transfer market that the club’s reserve team actually made more money from player sales this season (€3.09m) than their cross-city rivals Rangers (€2.95m). However, rather than such figures pointing to Celtic’s success in the transfer market, it instead underlines a worrying fact that has become all too obvious in recent years: the Scottish Premiership is one of the worst leagues in Europe when it comes to making money from player sales. 

Indeed, when we take a step back and look at the business conducted by the Scottish top-flight in the transfer market over the course of the last 10 seasons and compare it to other European leagues, we get a clear idea of just how much the Premiership lags behind its continental counterparts. In total, Scottish top-flight clubs have earned €407m from player sales over the course of the last 10 seasons, which places the league rather worryingly in 23rd place among all European divisions. Not only does this mean that Scottish football now lags behind similar sized leagues like the Greek Super League (21st, €450m income), Croatian Super Sport HNL (19th, €606m), or the Danish SuperLiga (16th, €814m), but are in a completely different world to national leagues that pride themselves on developing young players and selling them for top transfer fees, such as the Belgian Jupiler Pro League (9th, €2.2b), Dutch Eredivisie (8th, €2.7b) or Portuguese Liga Portugal (6th, €4.1b). And when we consider that the Scottish Premiership is currently 14th in UEFA’s league coefficient rankings, it certainly suggests that the division’s inability to make money in the transfer market is well below its natural standing in European football. 

When we break Scottish football’s overall income down by which clubs have earned the most money from player sales in that period we can once again see how much of a one-horse race the Premiership truly is. In total, Celtic have earned €257m from player sales, which accounts for 68% of every Euro spent on signing players from the Scottish Premiership in the last 10 years. As we can see, Rangers lag behind their Glasgow rivals to a worrying degree, earning just €72.4m in that same time period. Such has been the Ibrox club’s struggles to demand high transfer fees for their players that on just two occasions have they managed to sell players for more than the €13.5m they received for Giovanni van Bronckhorst when he departed the club for Barcelona in 2001. Which undoubtedly explains why Celtic account for eight of the top 10 biggest sales in Scottish Premiership history. 

However, Rangers are by no means the only Scottish club underperforming in the transfer market. Over the course of the last 10 seasons Aberdeen have averaged just €2.5m per season in player sales, while Edinburgh duo Hibernian and Hearts have averaged a paltry sum of €1.7m and €1.1m respectively. Which is a truly worrying state of affairs when we consider that both clubs’ recent financial results revealed a combined net loss of €10m between them. And when we consider that both clubs’ record sales came in the summer of 2007, when Hibs sold Scott Brown to Celtic for €6.6m and Hearts sold Craig Gordon to Sunderland for €10.8m, it undoubtedly underlines the lack of any real progress made by both clubs since then.

Whether Scottish football can turn things around and get back on a level playing field with other European football remains to be seen. Big transfers in recent years, such As Calvin Ramsay departing Aberdeen for Liverpool for €4.9m or the Dons selling Bojan Miovski to Girona for €6.5m are certainly good examples of Scottish clubs earning big fees for their players. But to fix this grave problem, the Scottish Premiership will need to make some serious changes at its core to ensure that clubs pay just as much attention to getting maximum value for their players in the transfer window as they do getting as many points as possible on the pitch.