Bonner’s Kuhn intervention is most unwelcome as Celtic tries to navigate this tricky window.

There’s a moment in the magnificent Glengarry Glen Ross when one of the characters—a hard-nosed professional—mercilessly berates another after he’s made a mistake that only someone with no understanding of the business would have made. In doing so, he’s cost a man a crucial sale.

“You wanna learn the first rule… you’d know if you ever spent a day in your life,” the salesman says mockingly, white-hot with fury. “You never open your mouth till you know what the shot is.”

I’ve been in political strategy meetings where that same mocking tone was used against someone who said more than they should have. I can well imagine executive meetings in advertising, PR, and elsewhere where it happens too—because it’s a universal lesson. If you walked into the middle of a situation about which you knew nothing, you wouldn’t speak, would you?

You wouldn’t offer an opinion on one side or the other without knowing the full context. Equally, if you walked into the middle of a poker game and saw someone’s hand, you wouldn’t broadcast that information to the rest of the table.

I’ve done something akin to that.

Way back in the sands of time—before PC gaming made everything possible—the only strategy games you could play were board games. I remember my first time walking into the middle of a Risk match, picking up someone’s objective card and reading it aloud, not realising this information was crucial to the game and supposed to remain a secret from the other players. Mortifying.

I didn’t get invited to observe another game that night… but I never made that mistake again, in Risk or anywhere else.

“You’d know if you ever spent a day in your life…”

That might be one of the coldest lines in the whole film—and that’s saying something. It says you’re ignorant. You’re stupid. You’re flat-footed. You are reckless and charge heedlessly into situations you don’t understand. It’s, in many ways, the ultimate insult—it suggests you’ve spent too long in your own wee bubble.

I reckon Pat Bonner has spent too long in his.

I’ll be talking about his Brendan Rodgers comments later, but for the moment, I wonder just why this guy thought it was appropriate—when we’re awaiting bids for Nicolas Kühn—to suggest that he’s only worth £15 million because he’s inconsistent, and that it would be “good business.” Thanks, Pat.

That’s what our club really needed from a BBC commentator.

I’m not saying it’s going to make any difference. This probably isn’t one of those moments that wrecks a negotiating stance. But see, the word “probably” there is exactly what’s wrong with what he’s done. He has no idea what’s going on behind the scenes. He has no idea, in short, what the shot is.

So it’s a damned stupid thing to say.

I think most of us would regard a £15 million fee not as “good business” at all, but as a situation where we are dramatically underselling the player. The club would have a lot of explaining to do to the fans if they did something so daft.

We’ve set a standard now with our transfer sales. We’ve put down a marker with the kind of money we’ve got for people like Matt O’Riley. Kühn is at the right age. He’s on the right development curve. He’s come through top leagues and has more than justified a much bigger transfer fee than Bonner and others are suggesting. And I really wish these people would just keep their traps shut.

It’s Celtic—our club, Celtic itself—which will decide what a good transfer fee looks like, what a reasonable valuation is. It is our club that will decide what constitutes good business, and what does not.

Former players chipping in with their uninformed, speculative rubbish doesn’t help anybody. We have traditionally done alright at this stuff without Bonner’s help, without his interpretation of what someone is worth.

Now imagine we were in negotiations with someone right now. Imagine we’re trying to get them to pay our own fee, the one we reckon reflects his value.

Then Bonner comes stumbling into the frame, with the BBC and the rest of the Scottish media as his megaphone, talking about how the player is “inconsistent” and lowballing his valuation. He won’t tank the deal, but you never know what might give a club an excuse to aim low in their own strategy.

Does he know that’s not happening behind the scenes? Does he know that talks aren’t at a delicate stage with one or more clubs? No. So what’s he doing?

I really do wish these people would stop this nonsense. They’re not helping. Especially ex-players chiming in with their two cents’ worth, because that’s exactly the kind of stuff that makes headlines. And I think sometimes, that’s all some of them want—their own name in the headlines.

But you never open your mouth until you know what the shot is. Transfer business is difficult enough without people who have no idea what they’re talking about, and no understanding of where things stand, throwing their daft views into the ring.

And this guy works for the national broadcaster, for God’s sake. A little more thinking before he talks. That’s all. Not too much to ask, is it?