Ibrox continues to fabricate interest in its players. It’s a dangerous game.

Whatever happens with Celtic’s transfer window—and we’ll find that out in the next few days—it is fair to say that the one at Ibrox has been a disaster. Not only have they failed to bring in any players of note to satisfy fans who see their club being increasingly left behind, but they haven’t been able to get rid of a whole lot of their dross either, and that was important in terms of the summer.

Whenever the Ibrox club finds itself in a difficult position like this—whenever they desperately need money through the door more than they need footballers—the media always goes out of its way to assist them. And as I said to the boys on the podcast on Monday night, one of the more hilarious examples of this is the stories linking two of their new players to moves to the Premier League.

Igamane has been linked to two different clubs, Everton and Spurs, neither of whom has any real interest in signing him. Why would they? He’s been in the door at Ibrox five minutes. He’s not done anything of note in a Sevco strip. He’s scored a couple of goals in a couple of games, but to make out that he’s some kind of wonderkid attracting attention from all around Europe is simply not true. The idea that he’s already got Premier League clubs sniffing around him is fanciful at best.

One Ibrox fan site is already out in front of the rest by suggesting what his future transfer fee should be. The club, they say, should not accept less than £25 million. And where do they get that number from, do you think? Could it possibly be that that’s a number Celtic have achieved when selling players out of Scotland?

That’s a subject we’ve been over a few times on here, this incredible belief that they have over there that because we managed to do something, they should be able to do the same, and that since we got premium prices for our players, they should hold out to make sure they get them too.

The actual reality of selling players makes no difference at all to these people. They are truly deluded and genuinely believe this is what they should be aiming for.

The stories about Igamane are only the tip of the iceberg. The stories about Jefte attracting attention from Chelsea are even more ridiculous. Strikers who are on form? You can sort of believe they’re garnering attention, even if their form is as patchy as this guy’s has been so far. But Jefte has shown nothing to indicate that he belongs anywhere near Premier League level. And who said this? None other than the manager himself, who admitted that he has miles to go before reaching that height.

Do I believe that Chelsea are looking at the Ibrox left-back? No, absolutely not. Of course I don’t. And the story that broke today that they’ve “shifted their focus” to another player is simply confirmation that they never really had any interest in the Brazilian in the first place.

They have looked at other players. They are looking at other players actively. All of those other players will be a better prospect for a club of Chelsea’s size than a Brazilian signed from the Cypriot League just months ago.

Honestly, this is all too stupid to be true. If you hadn’t seen it before—over and over again with the Ibrox club—you wouldn’t believe it was happening. Top Premier League clubs are not going to be sniffing around their bargain-basement signings, no matter how much they try to boost this in the media. And the idea that the club would resist for even two seconds if such a bid came in for one of these guys? That’s not even worth discussing seriously.

What we’re actually seeing here is how desperate Ibrox is to get players out the door, and they will do and say anything to make that happen. This is a pathetic attempt to use the media to pretend there’s interest in these players in the hope of generating actual interest. This is not a new trick.

They did this all the way through the early years of Tavernier, Goldson, Morelos, Kent, and all these other players they thought were going to be superstars and net them a small fortune in transfer fees.

Every now and again, for good measure, they would drum up some fake transfer story involving these guys and try to convince people in the media that it was actually happening. All they did, of course, was unsettle their own players. All they did was convince those players’ agents that there was all this talk about their footballers going on in the media and out in the wider world, which made them approach the club and demand earnings and bonuses in line with those stories.

I have never understood why this club has such a fascination with unsettling its own footballers. Think of the players over there who’ve been able to leverage transfer stories like this into massive increases in their deals, which are not justified at all when you see the way these guys play. It’s extraordinary to me that this happens so frequently, especially at a club that knows the dangers of doing it.

They have guys on the books right now that they can’t get rid of because they played this trick in the past. They have guys right now at the club sitting on massive salaries because the club convinced itself, those players, and their agents that they were hot properties and that it wouldn’t be long before big-money bids came in.

And when those bids never did come in and those players’ limitations were exposed for all to see, the club had no way of offloading them. Because who is going to pay these guys those massive salaries?

At the time of writing, James Tavernier is still Scottish football’s highest-paid player. And that will be the case until the end of his contract at the end of the next campaign. So they have a fading star on their hands, on a massive wage, who they cannot get rid of. And he is not the only one.

So Jefte and Igamane will probably be next. They’ll be the next two players to walk into their agents’ offices and say, “We want wages in line with our talent and the interest in us.” It won’t matter at all if that interest was completely fabricated by the club and the media. What matters is that those players and their agents either believe the interest is real or are willing to leverage the club’s own fiction against them.

They deserve everything they get over there. And they keep on coming back for more.

Photo by Ross Parker/SNS Group via Getty Images

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