A superb Champions League draw has shredded this board’s last remaining alibi for failure.

Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it?

The Champions League draw is complete. We now know who our eight opponents are going to be, and although I said I was not going to write another word about this transfer window until it closed, circumstances—as usual—have intervened and made that impossible.

Because there is one thing that is readily apparent from that Champions League draw, and it’s this: we have an outstanding opportunity here.

This is the Champions League draw that I didn’t even dare to dream about, because we’ve been so haunted in previous years I never thought we would get it. Four winnable home games. Four away ties, which are tricky but navigable. There are at least five out of those eight matches that you can point to and say, “We should be winning those.”

And yes, we should be winning them.

And the only thing, in my opinion, that puts that in any doubt whatsoever is the simple fact that we are weaker right now than we were at the end of last season.

Weaker, with a day left to go. Go on and defend it, I dare you. There shouldn’t be the slightest shred of doubt left that this window has been a disgrace.

The signing of Engels will not make us stronger than we were at the end of last season. He will only replace yet another member of the Ange Postecoglou side.

What this draw has done—and done splendidly well—is rip aside the final curtain behind which people at our club could conceivably have hidden if the draw had gone another way.

Because had we drawn four of the big guns in those first two pots, and wound up with a Group Of Death, people would have been lining up the excuses in the event that this Champions League campaign was a disaster. “How were we ever expected to beat this calibre of team? Nothing we could have done would have got us past these guys. We could spend all the money in the world and that still wouldn’t guarantee it, blah blah blah…”

But that alibi is gone. There are no glamour home games.

There is nothing to justify a £200 price tag on those tickets.

And because all four are winnable, if the board has not strengthened this squad by the close of tomorrow night’s window, they will rightly be blamed if this group ends in disaster, and we can’t at least make the qualifying round. Because right now, looking at that group, we should be eyeing that possible top-eight finish and wondering why we can’t make it there. It’s a stretch, sure, but all the big guns will be busily beating each other … it’s doeable.

There are reports tonight that we’ve done the Engels deal and are now trying desperately to tie up a deal for Sheffield United’s centre-back.

But those reports also suggest that having secured Engels, we are now willing to focus all our attention on the bid for Sheffield United and forego Brendan’s second midfield player. I cannot be more emphatic than to say this; that would be disgusting.

It would be yet another piece of blatant piss-taking from people who just don’t want to push out the boat. Rodgers expressed his clear wish for another midfielder, just as he had already expressed his desire to sign a third striker. He’s already been told that won’t happen, and if he’s now been told that he’s not going to get his midfielder either, then something is far wrong at our club, something stinks to high heaven, and in light of that draw Rodgers should be reading the riot act behind the scenes.

This board has not remotely prepared us properly for these eight games. They look like they want to get by having done the bare minimum. I’ve said it already, I don’t think there’s any prospect of us coming out of tomorrow night significantly stronger than we were, and the people who line up to defend it—and they will—can talk about breaking the transfer record twice in one window until smoke comes out of their ears as far as I’m concerned.

Those two signings combined don’t even come spend what we’ve already taken in from the Matt O’Riley deal and he was not the only player we’ve sold. Add season tickets, all those first, second and third strips, £20 a ticket for a League Cup game and all the rest of it, and this Champions League ticket income still to hit the bank balance and we haven’t done shit.

If these people wants to nickel-and-dime its way through the next day and a half, it can go for it. It can take that chance and then try and convince first the manager – who won’t be having any of it – and a big chunk of the support that it’s done its best.

But we’ve got eight games in the biggest competition in the world on top of a seriously difficult domestic campaign and you can see that our squad is short of cover right across the board, from that third striker we’re not getting to the wide positions, and the only hiding place these guys were going to have was if we drew a Champions League Group of Death because nobody would be able to point the finger at them and say, “This is your fault,” if we didn’t qualify from it.

Let me tell you something right now: looking at that group, looking at those teams, and in particular looking at those four games at home—if we don’t do it, 60,000 fans will most definitely be able to point their fingers in the direction of the board and say, “This is your fault.”

If they don’t do the job for the manager in the next 24 hours, any failure in that competition can be laid squarely at their door and some of us will make damn sure it is.

What a superb opportunity we have here to win some points, score some goals, and bank some cash for winning those games. And maybe, just maybe, drag the coefficient out of the toilet. And the only thing that concerns me about that scenario is them—and that even now, they are too intent on saving a few quid to seize the chance that has fallen our way.

The club has about 30 hours left in this window.

We’re either going to get what we need, or we’ll get what we deserve.

The cost of that just rose significantly.