Clubs tried to jack up the price on Celtic in January. One of them is paying for it.

If any of you are interested in reading a truly amazing book, a true story, then I recommend, without equivocation, Robert Harris’ Selling Hitler. It is one of the most incredible accounts of forgery, bad journalism, lack of oversight, institutional corruption and outright criminality that I’ve ever read. Some of it is jaw-dropping.

One of my favourite parts is the story of the auctioning off of the Hitler Diaries—still thought to be authentic at the time. Two major players were in the mix: the Newsweek Group in the United States and Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times. Murdoch’s paper had dispatched its esteemed contributor, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, to inspect them. He came back utterly convinced they were genuine.

Murdoch made the first move: $2.5 million for the US rights and $750,000 for British and Commonwealth rights. That gave Stern, the German magazine which owned the diaries, the leverage to tell Newsweek that $3 million was now the minimum bid. Newsweek sent their own expert, who also concluded the diaries were likely authentic, and they provisionally agreed to pay.

Stern could have taken that and walked off with three million dollars. Job done. But they got greedy. They called both Murdoch’s and Newsweek’s representatives back to the table and raised the price—now demanding $4.25 million.

Both parties were furious. Newsweek walked. Murdoch stormed off too, saying he wouldn’t negotiate at any price. But he wasn’t out. When Stern came crawling back, desperate and without other suitors, Murdoch returned. He got the US rights for $800,000 and the British and Commonwealth rights for another $400,000. Stern managed a few smaller overseas deals, but nowhere near Newsweek’s original offer. It was a total disaster—made worse when the diaries were revealed as fakes.

That’s what you call bad negotiating.

Back in January, when many of us were raising the obvious issue—that the moment you sell Kyogo and make it clear you’re desperate for a replacement, every club with a striker you might want is going to jack the price up—the same kind of problem loomed, but not just for us. Our own issue was obvious; what wasn’t as obvious was the risk that some of these clubs were taking.

It’s a lesson the Ibrox club should have learned by now too. It’s an issue that’s hamstrung plenty of clubs, ours included. When you play that sort of game—the negotiation equivalent of chicken—you need to understand that both sides are taking risks.

The risk for us was plain. Smart clubs don’t sell their star striker without a replacement already lined up—certainly not in January. So it wasn’t surprising that we encountered clubs demanding ridiculous fees. What was less obvious was the risk those clubs took in doing so.

Take Slovan Bratislava and Strelec. The moment Celtic made their interest known, they publicly increased the asking price by at least £2 million. That didn’t just put him beyond what we were willing to pay—it priced him out of the range of every other interested club. They all walked.

This is what happens when you try to start an auction with a crazy price. You hear this in the media constantly: “The Ibrox club want at least £10 million for so-and-so, hoping to start an auction.”

But that’s not how auctions work. In an auction, buyers set the price and you stay quiet while they outbid one another. The moment you set a sky-high floor, you risk scaring everyone off before the bidding even begins.

Strelec plays in a league that’s never going to command the kind of money Slovan wanted. Celtic were the most interested club. We were the club he wanted to join. And in trying to squeeze us, they drove away other suitors, unsettled their own player, and tanked his value. The Slovan chairman has now admitted it—saying the player will probably leave this summer and they’ll have to accept less than we offered initially.

Pay attention to the wording there. Not “less than what we were asking.” Less than we offered. That’s a disaster, the sort Stern would’ve sacked half their board over.

Whether we go back in for Strelec this summer is anyone’s guess. But if we do, it’ll be for a much lower fee than what we offered in January. The manager has already said it’ll be easier to replace Maeda out wide than it will be to find someone as good as Kyogo through the middle—and I think we all agree with that.

So it’s not even clear that we are interested anymore anyway … and since we’re the club the player wants to sign for it’s not impossible that we could go and snap him up in the summer for a song. But that’s the risk you take.

So if there’s still interest, it’ll come at a hefty discount. Because this is what happens when you try to play hardball. When you try to take advantage. When you get greedy and let that override common sense.

I didn’t feel sympathy for our board when they were getting hammered in January. I don’t feel it for Slovan’s board now. They made their bed. I do feel sorry for the player though. He had his heart set on Parkhead, and he might never get there.

We talk all the time about players having power. But a lot of them are still at the mercy of directors and daft strategies. In the summer, we’ll find out one way or another. But I suspect this one’s passed him by.

This is one of these situations where nobody really wins. What a shame.