David Low has chimed in on what Ibrox needs to catch Celtic. And it’s a lot.

Yesterday, I sat and watched David Low’s latest interview with The Celtic Exchange. Now, everyone knows how much respect I have for David. He is one of the real intellects in Celtic social media. He has a background that is impressive, and a résumé to match. His time working alongside Fergus McCann makes him instantly the kind of person you should listen to when he talks.

Which is why it was such a pleasure to hear from him again yesterday, following on from his outstanding interview earlier in the year, which I highlighted on this site.

In this one, he was asked about the Ibrox takeover, and he echoed much of what we’ve been saying here — in particular, the secrecy, the lack of a coherent strategy presented to the fans, the unknown names involved, and why all of that should worry their supporters. But beyond that, he talked about the money — the money that’s been promised, and the money that’s required.

I don’t care what people in the mainstream media think of myself or some of the more controversial Celtic bloggers. But they should take it seriously when someone like David Low starts pointing out some of the gaping holes in this whole story. And he was quick to dismiss two of them yesterday.

First, the idea that this is a 49ers takeover — completely false, as this site has already pointed out. Second, the notion that the £20 million supposedly being invested is all, or even mostly, available for transfers. As he’s said, as we’ve said, and as the media is happy to ignore, the club’s statement doesn’t say that. In fact, it allocates that money to a wide range of activities and needs.

Even more crucially, he got into the nitty-gritty of that £20 million figure, and how it won’t even scratch the surface of what that club needs.

Even if it were all available to spend on players, it wouldn’t get them close to Celtic. Celtic should still be able to outspend them in this window regardless of the so-called investment. Low’s estimate for what the club actually needs to spend in order to get anywhere near Celtic is staggering. He reckons they’ll need four times that amount — and says the rest will be raised through further share issues.

What he’s essentially saying is that these people aren’t just going to start throwing money around. Whatever they spend is going to have to be raised. It’s going to need to come either through commercial or football operations, or via share issues.

These people won’t spend their own money unless they absolutely have to — and in any area where they don’t have to, they won’t.

So all the talk about mega-deals, massive investment, huge sums on the stadium or the first-team squad? It’s all fantasy. That club is going to get by on what it earns. For the first time, it has to.

On the back of Low’s interview came a pro-Ibrox puff piece from the Rangers Review, written by Chris Jack. I think it was intended as a sort of canonisation job on the new owners, but there were interesting nuggets in there for anyone who wanted to look. The part that grabbed me — the part that intrigued me the most — was where he essentially admitted something this blog said months ago.

You’ll remember, of course, when Cavanagh and his people were given the tour of the Ibrox Training Academy.

The media got all excited and said it was all good news, that they were obviously there to talk about upgrades and expansion. What I saw were a bunch of potential investors coming in and looking for where they could trim the fat. Turns out that’s exactly what it was. These people, just in the door, have already made £250,000 in savings by cutting back on meals for the academy players.

It follows on from a similar statement that one of the newspapers carried last week. During that same tour, one of the Americans allegedly said to another that “this place needs gutting.” And, as this blog said the night the takeover was completed, one of their first acts — just in the door — was the cull of 13 academy players, including a couple who had played first-team football.

That is not the behaviour of a benevolent regime intent on throwing money at every problem. It’s the act of a ruthless, business-minded, profit-centred group whose first real decisions have been where to make cuts.

If Low’s estimate is even close to what they need to spend to catch Celtic, then these cuts are only the beginning. These people won’t put another penny into the club until they’ve identified where to make savings. And whatever money is invested will be targeted at areas they believe will return a profit.

Chris Jack’s piece tried to spin things positively by talking how the club will present figures soon showing what he’s called a “pre-transfer trading profit.” That’s a concept I’ve never even heard of before — a criteria by which no football club I’ve ever known has had its finances judged.

So what does that even mean? They posted a profit before taking into account player signings? How does that work? Are we forever going to get these daft, made-up criteria to justify accounts that are dripping in red ink?

What they really mean, of course, is that they made a multi-million-pound loss — a substantial one. Again, that comes as no surprise to regular readers here. Or indeed, to anyone who pays attention to their accounts for longer than two seconds — which, of course, means nobody in the Scottish media.

Here’s the thing: if these Americans intend to run this as a business, a break-even enterprise — let alone one that turns a profit — then you have to ask how that’s substantially different from what the previous board was trying to do. Except that this will be more savage in terms of where they trim the fat.

It’s far from clear that it’s going to lead to any of the positive outcomes the Ibrox fans are expecting. Yes, it might professionalise them.

Yes, it might turn them into a better business.

But a better football team? That remains to be seen. There certainly won’t be the summer of epic spending their fans were dreaming of. Certainly no major on-field revolution of the sort they were sold before this deal was done.

Because, as I’ve already said in the “Phoney War” article, that term didn’t just apply to the situation at Celtic, where we were sitting around waiting for things across the city to take shape before understanding what we were up against.

At Ibrox, too, they got away with radio silence for a long time. They’re no longer being judged on what the media thinks they’ll do, or what it claims they’ll do. They’re being judged on what they actually do, and as we’ve all said from the start, that’s going to be a far cry from what the media led their fans to expect.

I strongly recommend the David Low podcast to anyone interested in this. Go and seek it out, and listen to what the man has to say.

He talks sense, as usual — not just about the situation at Ibrox, but also about things inside our own club. About the need for modernisation. A very familiar subject for David — he’s spoken on it often.

He is one of those figures in Celtic social media who is worth listening to all the time. He’s always got something worth hearing and I was particularly interested to get his take on events across the city. As usual, he did not disappoint.