Celtic coffers boosted by Rangers’ European shortcomings

CELTIC were able to make a healthy profit from this season’s Champions League - because Rangers were not in it and they only won one game.

The club has released interim results for the six months up to December 31, 2004, and were influenced by their participation in the Champions League, where they took on Barcelona, AC Milan and Shakhtar Donetsk in the group stage.

An £8.15m (€11.8m) operating profit was recorded, while an overall profit before taxation of £2m (€2.9m) compared favourably with a £2.86m (€4.1m) loss in the same period in 2003. The club were also able to reduce their debt from £18.17m (€26.4m) to £17.38m (€25.3m).