If Celtic Has A New Magnificent Seven The Pain For Ibrox Will Be Acute And Hilarious.

First up, a warm welcome to Celtic for Nat Phillips. The decision to bring him here until January is smart, and the decision to re-evaluate at that point is smarter although if he turns it out and is outstanding in Europe we don’t stand a chance of keeping him.

Nevertheless, I do think it’s good business. He will do us a turn for a while whilst we get over the injury issues we are plagued with. It might be that something can be done when his contract runs out but I won’t hold my breath. This solution works for everyone.

There is no other transfer business to report tonight, except the news about Haksabanovic. I won’t be surprised if we sign another striker now. And nor will I be terribly shocked if there’s a new left back at Celtic Park before tomorrow night because if this guy is being shipped out for his attitude then it’s only a matter of time before Bernabei joins him.

I did say this manager needed a blood sacrifice. This will do to be starting with. I do get the feeling that it is only the beginning of the changes.

But of course, we did unveil a new signing today and it was the winger Luis Palma, who will wear the shirt number which once belonged to the great Henrik Larsson. Palma is a tricky entertainer with a good scoring record. He sounds like he could prove himself eventually worthy of the number. Oh how I hope that this is so, because so much of this is amusing already.

Today he was asked about interest from Ibrox. He shot holes all through the stories from Ibrox social media and their glove puppets in the mainstream press about how there had been no interest in him from that quarter. Of course there was. One Celtic social media site even found the Ibrox fan media podcast where they brought in a journalist to rave about the guy.

Now the player has admitted it. His agent informed him about the interest from Ibrox. And his answer was priceless. He wasn’t interested. There was only one place he wanted to be and that was at Celtic. He didn’t wait to see what might happen, he didn’t care about whether Ibrox had an offer accepted or not, he was set on coming to Parkhead.

The truth is, their club seriously dropped the ball here. I suspect he’d have moved there back when they were the club which was most interested, but the fact is they didn’t get a deal done. They dragged their feet. They made insulting offers. His club were never going to accept their terms; “ten ginger bottles and an illegible giro up front.”

But there’s little doubt that they had a shot, back when we weren’t on the scene, back we still expected Jota to be hanging around. That foot-dragging, that fumbling about, has seen him end up at Celtic instead and their board had better pray he’s not a superstar … and I think, you know, that he might just be. Oh what fun we’d have.