Celtic has opened the transfer window by delivering another hammer blow to Ibrox.

News today that Celtic is on the brink of selling Alexandro Bernabei and getting around $7 million (about £5 million) for the guy. It’s incredible. That means we’re going to post a modest profit on a player who has barely featured over the last couple of years. And this comes at a time when the Ibrox club is desperately trying to conduct a fire sale to scrape together a modest January transfer budget.

There are so many ways in which we are miles ahead of them, and this is yet another example. The fact that we stand to bring in so much cash for a player who is miles off making our first-team squad must make them absolutely sick. They keep talking about adopting a transfer strategy similar to ours, but they are light-years away from being able to do what we now do regularly.

Almost everything we do these days delivers some sort of seismic shock to them, and this is a particularly fine example. We’re not even thinking about them here—we’re just doing what’s in our own best interests—but it casts a huge shadow over their club all the same. Because we know they measure themselves against our standards, even though they never live up to them.

Bernabei was one of the early Mark Lawwell signings, and we should have known then that things might unravel a bit because he never looked as though he belonged in the Scottish Premiership. I’ve always had an issue with signing players from South and Central America, as very few of those deals have ever worked out for us. Asia, as it turns out, has been a much better hunting ground for players, and North America certainly shows great potential too.

Still, it’s obvious that Bernabei isn’t a bad footballer—he simply wasn’t suited either to Scottish football or Celtic’s style of play. If he was a bad footballer, we wouldn’t be getting anything for him. Let’s be honest about that. Our people know what they’re doing. Even Mark Lawwell is not a complete fool; he has an eye for a player, just not necessarily an eye for a player that our manager can use. And that’s why you don’t let these people build teams—they don’t know how to do it.

It amazes me how frequently we do this. We buy a player for a couple of million pounds, it doesn’t work out, and yet we’re able to move him on for even more money. That takes real skill and talent. Credit has to go to the people behind the scenes at our club who negotiate these deals—they’re exceptionally good at what they do. That’s why we can get value for players when the club across the city cannot.

Don’t underestimate the trust factor either.

Clubs believe in what Celtic does. They’ve seen how well we develop players, our good eye for spotting talent, and how players we’ve sold often move on again for even bigger fees, generating fantastic profits for everyone involved. There’s a general view out there that we know what we’re doing when it comes to this stuff.

Contrast this with Nathan Patterson, who signed for Everton for big money after a lot of hysterical hype from the Scottish media. That hype was never justified in my view, and he has been a huge flop. He’s now likely to be available for next to nothing in this window, which is why there are so many stories that the Ibrox club wants to try to bring him back. Personally, I hope they do—it wouldn’t progress them one millimetre.

We are also in negotiations, of course, to sell Luis Palma, and probably a couple more players. Thiago Holm is set to go out on loan, giving us a real chance to recoup the money we paid for him if he does well in the U.S. And I genuinely hope he does well over there. These moves mark the final stages of rebuilding the squad the manager inherited. So far, the signings we’ve made under him have been excellent, and if we can maintain that standard, we’ll be in great shape next season to compete in the Champions League and defend our trophies.

Across town, they also have a squad to rebuild. But the way we’ve managed to rebuild ours over the last couple of years has been by consistently balancing spending with sales. Ange Postecoglou’s first two windows were funded by the sales of Edouard and Ajer. Brendan Rodgers’ most recent transfer window, similarly, was built on the sale of Matt O’Riley. The books have always balanced—and it’s served us well.

Beyond the Bernabei sale and the possible departures of Luis Palma and others, we may finally see the sell-on clause we’ve been waiting for from Jeremie Frimpong’s move. That would add even more to our cash reserves, leaving us well-positioned to spend big in January if needed.

This is a solid start to the January window because, as we know, bringing players in often requires moving players out. We don’t want to overinflate the squad. UEFA regulations are something we need to monitor carefully, and I’m sure everyone at Celtic is doing exactly that. We can’t afford to test those limits, so it’s crucial to keep the squad size manageable while maintaining quality.

Having players like Palma in the squad without contributing, or guys like Holm and Bernabei hanging around the training ground as drains on resources, simply isn’t sustainable. These players edge us closer to that line, and it’s clear they need to move on.

Whether this will be a revenue-neutral window remains to be seen, but it’s certainly shaping up to be one where we don’t do any significant damage to the bank balance. That’s great news because we have the flexibility to spend a little if needed while still keeping everything in order. If we can balance the books and emerge from January with a stronger squad, that’s the ideal outcome.

On the other side of Glasgow, things look grim.

They have no major saleable assets they can cash in on to fund their rebuild. While we get stronger, they remain static—if they’re lucky. This disparity in positions between the two clubs is stark, and it highlights why this is such a promising start to the January window for us, and such a dire one for them.

Our fifth podcast episode, The Back Of The Net, is out. Please like, share and enjoy.