Scottish Premiership and Premier League comparison: How would Celtic handle the Premier League?

Scottish Premiership and Premier League comparison: How would Celtic handle the Premier League?

Celtic have dominated the Scottish Premiership for the past eight years and remain optimistic of completing the desired ’10 in a row’, but how would they fair in the English Premier League?

The Celts’ and Rangers’ unprecedented superiority in comparison to the rest of the crop over the past few decades have left question marks over the quality of the division. You have to date back to 1985 to find the last team to win the title in the top-tier of Scottish football that wasn’t Celtic or Rangers – Celtic finishing second-fiddle to Aberdeen.

But if you placed Celtic in the Premier League, where would they place?

The money that is filtered into the top-tier of English football constantly challenges other leagues to progress, but with limited funds available, it is incredibly difficult to do so.

Despite Celtic’s dominance in Scotland, the money they have at their disposal is extremely inferior to that of the Premier League. To put it into context, Wolves’ average Championship wages for each player in their title-winning campaign in 2017/18 was £2million, while Celtic’s in 2018 was £865,614 – and that’s just the difference between a second-tier English club.

When you look at their Champions League contribution, Celtic have struggled to make a meaningful impact in the competition, reaching the round of 16 just twice since 1980. That, in many ways, rules them out of a consistent top-four challenge if they were to join the Premier League – something only the most optimistic of Celts fans would believe.

Celtic boss Neil Lennon inherits a solid squad and it would be interesting to see how they perform in England’s top-tier of football. We currently live in an era where the top six in the Premier League are pretty much cemented before the season starts and only on rare occasions has that been broken in the past decade.

However, the likes of Wolves, Everton, West Ham and Leicester City are all poised to mount a top-six challenge within the next few years – and the increased financial availability is certainly helping with that.

Scottish football will never reach the heights of Premier League football – both in terms of quality and financial support. Whether it be TV rights, placement money or sponsorships, there is a greater attraction for English football and the viewership levels are leaps above Scottish football.

It would certainly be intriguing to see Celtic among the Premier League. It is impossible to tell how they would fair in English football, but due to their lack of financial support compared to Premier League clubs, they would struggle to break into the top 10.