Celtic and the Ibrox club are trolling their fans with their latest transfer nonsense.

As Celtic head towards the end of the window, both ourselves and the club across the city are playing the same contemptible game with supporters that they always do. This is not new for either club. It is a well-worn routine.

Fans start getting anxious about the holes in the squad that still have not been addressed, and suddenly there is a flurry of strategic leaks in the final days about bids being turned down. Today, we got a whole bundle of them.

There is interest in Hatate. There is interest in Tounekti. Also in Bernardo.

All of it, apparently, knocked back by Celtic.

None of that impresses me. Not in the slightest.

They are not getting applause or awards for it. They are not getting thanks for the simple act of not further weakening an already thin squad. Fans are not interested in standing still at this point, and standing still does not deserve special praise.

Supporters want to see players coming in through the doors.

Martin said today that we should trust him. We do trust him. What we do not trust is everybody around him. But we do not trust the directors. We do not trust the people whose job it is to negotiate contracts and close deals. Martin, though, we trust completely.

We have all seen how this ends. So when he sits there and tells us that deals have not been done for one reason or another, we know exactly what that means. At least some of those deals have collapsed because the club is tight-fisted, because it is cheap, because it refuses to spend serious money when serious money is required. We know this because we have watched it happen to other managers before.

We also know that the people who tolerate it ultimately pay the price for it.

All this chatter about interest in our players feels like spin. Some of it is coming directly from Celtic. Some of it exists to create the impression that, look, we might not be signing anyone, but at least we are not selling anyone either.

We are ambitious. We are keeping our stars. It must be comforting for these people to reassure themselves that other clubs rate our talent, because that allows them to feel vindicated about their transfer policies up to now.

But there is nothing ambitious about simply holding on to what you already have. Ambition means adding to this Celtic squad, developing it, strengthening it, and pushing it forward. It does not mean resisting the urge to weaken it further.

So no, I am not impressed by stories about bids being rejected. Martin O’Neill would walk straight out the door if Celtic sold first-team players now, after he has made his needs abundantly clear.

I am sure some of the interest is real.

We have sold high-profile players for big fees before.

Other clubs might not trust us as buyers, but the game certainly trusts Celtic as sellers.

That is why I actually laughed out loud last night when I read that the Ibrox club was briefing the media that it had turned down a £13 million bid for Chermiti.

There is no polite way to say this. There is no chance that happened. None. He is not worth what they paid for him, let alone that figure. If they were offered even a fraction of what they spent, they would bite the hand off the club making the offer. The idea that Fenerbahce put £13 million on the table is so remote you would need the National Observatory just to spot it.

Yet they were confident they would get away with it. Confident enough to feed the line to their friendly PR outlet, via Chris Jack, who functions less as a journalist and more as a nodding donkey for the club. Unsurprisingly, the story unravelled within hours. I would say it took Jack’s credibility with it, but you need credibility to lose it, and he does not have any.

Fenerbahce themselves confirmed the story was nonsense, and they did so in the most brutal way possible. Their chief executive simply said they were looking at high-profile players. That was it. That single sentence shredded the claim completely. It was an absolute demolition, and it was no more than the club deserved for briefing it in the first place. It was also no more than our media deserved for swallowing it without question.

So here we are. Both clubs heading into the final weekend with major work still undone.

Both increasingly floundering in the face of the task ahead. One feeling the financial squeeze. Celtic sitting on tens of millions it refuses to spend. And both feeding garbage to their own fans and to the press about turning down bids, just to look ambitious.

It is transparent. Nobody should be falling for any of it.