Things didn\u2019t quieten down during the September international break<\/a> because Celtic released a statement<\/a> trying to explain themselves, but it just made matters worse. <\/p>\n Martin Keown was reacting to what was unfolding at Parkhead, including how Celtic being champions of Scotland<\/a> should mean something. <\/p>\n It feels like, for the first time in a long while, this anger and frustration towards the board<\/a> is as strong and as powerful as it has ever been. <\/p>\n But the crazy thing about it all is that it probably wouldn\u2019t have had this volume of fire had the Hoops been able to qualify for Europe\u2019s elite competition automatically. <\/p>\n Keown was trying to point out how this UEFA-coefficient ruling<\/a> has \u2018gone against\u2019 the club, and Celtic<\/a> should be \u2018advocating\u2019 that they shouldn\u2019t need to go through qualifiers. <\/p>\n \u201cI do have a sympathy,\u201d admitted Keown. \u201cCeltic, the year before, they qualified by right. It seems to be a problem for Celtic and the Scottish teams to qualify. <\/p>\n \u201cThis coefficient is something that\u2019s really gone against Celtic and this huge gap.\u00a0I mean, it\u2019s like a life jacket for them when they manage to be in the Champions League, because of the wealth that they get from it.<\/p>\n \u201cThey should be advocating for the fact that, if you win the Scottish title, you automatically go into the Champions League. Let\u2019s do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Keown states what\u2019s \u2018killing\u2019 Celtic players<\/p>\n It needs to be remembered, this isn\u2019t the Celtic fans having an issue with big money not being thrown at the situation, but the method behind it all.<\/p>\n Keown explained how players needed to be brought in \u2018earlier\u2019 this summer, and it would have \u2018freshened things up\u2019 for the side. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat Simon (Jordan\u2019s) talking about, they were inside the financial constraints,\u201d said Keown. \u201cThey didn\u2019t have a problem. They could have bought their players earlier, and it does freshen things up.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cIf you\u2019re going to sign for Celtic, a large part of this is, are they in the Champions League or not?\u00a0These great nights.<\/p>\n \u201cBut as a player, it\u2019s like, well, I\u2019ll wait. Do you know what? I\u2019ll just wait to see if you qualify. And that\u2019s killing Celtic because they don\u2019t get the players that they want. Their budgets are so far behind.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UEFA\u2019s European competitions kick off this month, but Celtic will have to wait until the end of September…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1669,218,62113,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-131948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-champions-league","tag-football","tag-martin-keown","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-837814088-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Harold Cunningham \u2013 UEFA\/UEFA via Getty ImagesMartin Keown on Celtic\u2019s Champions League \u2018sympathy\u2019 after club statement<\/p>\n