Ferguson’s “they did it at Celtic” line shows he lives in a fantasy world.

I know I promised a couple of pieces on King today, but I simply haven’t gotten around to them because so much else is making the news. There’s so much news today that I didn’t even manage to cover it all.

So that spills over into early tomorrow. But just as I thought I was finished for the day… this came along. This crazy Barry Ferguson press conference, where he has once again shown his utter unsuitability for the job across town and his complete disconnect from the reality of the situation facing that club.

He’s talking about a complete squad overhaul being necessary. A full rebuild. That involves not only a dozen players coming in, but players going out—presumably to clear the way for the incomings and to raise a little bit of money to help fund them. And this comes just days after we explored the idea that Luis Palma returning to Celtic shows you how difficult this stuff is.

This is another reason why the board over there aren’t going to entertain this guy as the boss in the long term. He lives in the same fantasy land a lot of people over there do. And these people are very, very good at spending other people’s money. They talk all the time as if there’s a bottomless well of cash just waiting to be tapped. But there are actual decision-makers responsible for that money, and they’re the ones who need convincing to part with any of it.

I’ve been very clear on what I believe will happen over there: the season will start and their squad will bear a strong resemblance to the one they’ve got now. There are two reasons for that. First, because a new manager will be sent in with a mandate to improve what’s already there—to work with the players they’ve already got and prove he can do it. And second, because a lot of these guys are going to be stuck at the club, and there’s no point in them rotting in the reserves if they’re still sucking money out. They’ll be in the team.

On top of that, it’s not the first time I’ve heard an Ibrox manager talk about how things that happened at Celtic can be replicated there.

He’s talking about Ange and the Ange rebuild. He’s talking about how that rebuild was done and how we signed a dozen players and turned that into a squad that won the league. And all of that is true. That’s exactly how it happened. But he doesn’t take into account how it was funded.

The Ange rebuild was funded by the sales of three players: Ryan Christie, Kris Ajer, and Odsonne Edouard. We brought in near enough £30 million for those three guys. And that gave our manager the latitude to go out and spend that same kind of money. When we spent a large sum on the team this summer, it was funded by the sale of Matt O’Riley. This is very simple maths: you spend what you can afford, and usually that means your incomings are paid for by your outgoings.

Why is that so hard to understand? Celtic’s rebuild wasn’t done with money stuffed in the mattress. We brought it into the club.

Would that rebuild have been possible without the transfer fees for those three players? I doubt it would have been possible on the scale that it was. Some version of it would’ve had to take place, but it wouldn’t have been that version—the one where we paid significant money for a lot of those players.

So it’s ridiculous to try to compare where they are now to where we were then. We went into that summer knowing those guys would leave, and that there was sufficient Premier League interest in them that we’d get sales.

That’s why, right from the start, the one thing we were all certain of was that there would be money for the manager to spend—whoever that manager turned out to be. And for a while, it looked like it would be Eddie Howe until he said no, and we had to go with Ange. But the money itself was never in question. Those players wanted to go. They were going to go. And we were going to bring in big transfer fees for them. That was a known fact. So whatever concerns we had, that wasn’t one of them.

They live on another planet over there. The rebuild that we did is not possible there unless they can bring in a substantial sum through player sales. It really is that simple. Even if the 49ers take over in time and were willing to spend that kind of money, financial sustainability regulations won’t permit it.

The only way it would be allowed is if they made some big sales—and there is no saleable asset in that squad worth that kind of money.

All this sort of rubbish does is get the fans hyped up for a summer that most likely won’t produce many changes. Ferguson talks like a guy who simply isn’t getting it. He’s confirmed that nobody at the club has discussed transfer plans for the summer with him—this will be why. He appears to have no idea what’s coming.