As Celtic negotiates the enormous fee which is coming our way for Jota, the Scottish press is throwing Ibrox some good cheer and hope. False hope, of course, but when you’re dealing with our media is there any other kind?
It is inconceivable that Celtic would be on the brink of bringing in a twice for one player what Ibrox will spend this summer, allowing us to move to the next level signings which will turn their lights out, without the media attempting to offer some crumbs of comfort to Ibrox, and so The Daily Record duly obliged us with their latest nutty story on Tillman.
“Malik Tillman Rangers transfer windfall is ON as 2 Premier League clubs enter Bayern Munich bidding war” is the screaming headline over Scott Burns’ piece. The story, of course, is that Tillman is “closing in” on a move to the EPL as those galactic warriors of football Brighton and Brentford are set to “slug it out” for him.
There’s no mention of a fee, of course, or any explanation of how this all works, and it’s obvious that they’ve dropped the nonsense about Tillman actually wanting the move back to Ibrox, as well as the crazier story about how their club “triggered the release clause” and Bayern bought back their own player for double the fee … the original story is bad enough without these embellishments.
According to Burns, if the player moves to England it will grant them their “£1 million sell-on.”
It’s a sad day when they have to get excited over a sum that is one thirtieth what we’re about to net … but they are an organisation which no self-respecting comedy writer would have invented.
Because what’s worth remembering here, of course, is that this story is fantasy to begin with; a club which doesn’t own a player and which never has owned him is going to get a sell-on clause for him?
The only kind of people who would believe that – other than the Scottish media – are the braindead sort who have ownership certificates for the Kingston Bridge hanging on their living room walls.
It’s bad enough that this story ever gained an audience in the first place, but to trot it out now as some kind of sop to fans who are shell-shocked at seeing Celtic securing an eight figure sum to add to Rodgers transfer war chest … well this is absolutely abysmal from Burns and that rag he writes for, but no more or less than we might have predicted.
The story itself runs to a couple of hundred words, and then moves on to how they hope to move a couple of their players out the door. I’ll be writing about that later on, if I can stop laughing long enough to focus on the words in front of me.
But honestly, it does not matter how much these people run from reality; in a few weeks time this Celtic side will have really started taking shape. We’ve got plenty to spend on it, and anyone coming in will augment a pretty fearsome squad … with a manager who has won seven out of seven trophies in Scotland.
They are scared, and they are right to be.