The most ridiculous, and yet least surprising, story of the day is across the city.
Yesterday I wrote of how their fans were needled by the idea that all the sexy transfer business is happening at Celtic. It’s as if you only have to poke them with a stick like this to get a response.
Now Gerrard is telling the press that he will have a new midfielder within days.
Gerrard has already got enough of them to fill an away day minibus, but if the board over there cares to take a look at their expanding wage bill – almost certainly higher than that mandated by UEFA – and wonder how it got so large and dangerous, they need only look at the guy in the dugout, a guy who has a bigger name than the club itself and has acted, since he got there, as if the laws of economics and financial reality don’t apply to them at all.
For him to expect – and probably get – more players when the need is for dramatic cuts shows how little he cares about the struggles facing those in the boardroom.
Where does he think the cash for that is coming from?
The dwindling cash pile?
It’s coming from the pockets of the directors themselves who are already weary of funding his fantasies.
The Champions League exit should have brought a sense of realism to the proceedings across the city, but Gerrard will never let that happen.
A section of their support will never let that happen. Celtic is spending, so Ibrox must find a way to keep up … as crazy as it is, as self-harming as it is, as absolutely bat-shit as we all know it to be.
The player they are after, a “utility player” from Huddersfield, will probably not cost them a large sum of money.
Frankly, they don’t have anything in the bank from which to extract a large sum, but that’s hardly the point.
Their need to show the fans that they are responding to Celtic’s threat is such that they are adding to a squad already bursting at the seams, instead of telling Gerrard that he should, by now, have the tools to do his job.
You have to wonder if there’s a deal already done for one of their top earners, a deal that will cover some of the predicted losses for this season and which they can sell to their fans on the back of this story.
But looking at their squad, it’s hard to know who would command a decent fee, or at least the sort of fee that would make a major difference to their finances.
That any club in their predicament would be adding to the wage bill without knowing if they can offload somebody seems insane, but insanity is their default position and especially when they are watching what we do.
Gerrard is not a good manager.
He is a typical chequebook boss.
How many players is that he’s signed at Ibrox now?
Over two dozen certainly, and at enormous cost to the club.
Just a few weeks ago he was professing himself satisfied with the players he had and telling all and sundry that if he added to the team it would be quality, and not just for the sake of it.
I smiled listening to that.
I knew a couple of bad results and the sight of Celtic spending would have him running to the boardroom for more.
At least now we know who was behind the attack on the club earlier in the week; Jackson framed his entire story around “who can Gerrard trust?” and it’s apparent now what the objective of it was.
So this is a peace offering to the manager by the directors.
That club is going to hit the wall. There can be no other outcome.
When you behave this recklessly you’re simply begging for disaster to strike, and it will.