Celtic’s so-called prudence has stopped making financial sense.

Earlier today, someone on Twitter sent me a message which resonated loudly. The £300,000 Celtic are reportedly haggling over represents approximately 5,000 seats.

That is 5,000 seats which may remain empty at Celtic Park tomorrow. It is 5,000 seats which could still be empty against Dundee, and 5,000 seats which almost certainly will not be filled if Celtic supporters eventually decide, en masse, to boycott the Europa League.

Isn’t that an extraordinary way of looking at it? Isn’t that an extraordinary way of calculating the true cost of what these people are doing and the damage they are inflicting on this club?

I have another piece going up later tonight which sets out my emotional response to everything happening at Celtic right now. But even if we strip all the emotion away and look only at the hard numbers, the situation is shocking.

This board appears willing to risk substantial income, supporter goodwill and the club’s reputation for the sake of a comparatively paltry sum.

Even if this were not another breach in the compact between Celtic and its supporters, and even if it did not inflict further reputational damage on us with clubs, agents and players across Europe, it would still be financially idiotic.

There is no logic to what Celtic are doing. Perhaps it has not occurred to the people running the club that if Marcello Saracchi were here, if Kelechi Iheanacho were here and if Mika Baur had already been signed, more supporters might have bought tickets for tomorrow. Perhaps more would have attended last week.

Perhaps people who are currently sitting at home, utterly disillusioned, would have felt some small spark of excitement and decided to go along. Feel-good matters when you are asking supporters to part with more of their money.

Enthusiasm sells tickets. Ambition sells merchandise. Hope sells subscriptions. Supporters who believe the club is building something want to be part of it.

This board has generated none of that. It has created no excitement and offered no sense of momentum. As a result, it has left money on the table.

For people supposedly obsessed with the bottom line, determined to make every penny go further and seemingly committed to squeezing every last pound from supporters while offering less in return, this is a bizarre way to conduct business.

We live in an increasingly strange and dangerous world. Everywhere you look, people and institutions make choices which are plainly contrary to their own interests and cannot be justified by rational thought or serious analysis.

Perhaps we should not therefore be surprised that Celtic appear to be engaged in an ongoing act of institutional self-harm. It remains disturbing, especially when people attempt to rationalise these decisions on the grounds of financial prudence.

That argument no longer survives even the most basic scrutiny. There is nothing financially prudent about putting supporters off spending money, and there is nothing prudent about jeopardising Champions League income because you refuse to spend a few hundred thousand pounds on a player the football department has identified as important.

They are risking tens of millions to save paltry sums. Are these people mad? Have they taken complete leave of their senses?

You cannot justify leaving vast amounts of income on the table because you refuse to pay a relatively minor part of a transfer fee. It makes no commercial sense, no footballing sense and no sense in any universe we might inhabit.

Let us return to those 5,000 seats. I am not claiming that Celtic Park would definitely have contained another 5,000 supporters tomorrow if the Baur deal had already been completed. Nobody can know that.

But it is possible, isn’t it?

It is entirely possible that a few thousand people were wavering over whether to buy tickets. They may have been waiting for something positive, something ambitious or simply some evidence that Celtic were finally serious. Perhaps they would have come along to see two or three new signings.

Perhaps one completed transfer would have been enough to give them a reason. If so, that single act would have recovered most or all of the money Celtic are reportedly trying to save. The deal begins to justify itself before the player has even kicked a competitive ball.

Instead, the club haggles. Supporters who might have been swithering over whether to attend are given no incentive to do so because the people running Celtic appear not to care whether the team improves or whether the atmosphere around the club deteriorates further.

The emotional appeal has already been damaged. What argument do they have left?

Come along and see the show? What show?

The show refuses to hire the best performers. It will not push the boat out to offer anything new or exciting. It is presenting the same tired production we have already seen, only now with the knowledge that some of its leading performers may soon depart.

We know the squad will probably become weaker before it becomes stronger, assuming it becomes stronger at all. We know that the encore came at the end of last season, when the title was secured with minutes to spare, and that the version being offered now is likely to be inferior.

Yet supporters are being asked to watch a lesser product and pay more money for the privilege. I am not exactly rushing to open my wallet.

The board has made that increasingly difficult for all of us. Even if Celtic avoid paying the additional £300,000, they may still lose it several times over. It will manifest itself in reduced attendances, lower merchandise sales and dwindling subscriptions.

It will be visible in the lack of enthusiasm surrounding the club, and it will be visible tomorrow when Celtic Park may be three-quarters empty.

Tell me where that makes financial sense. Tell me how stripping the game of any sense of occasion or excitement is commercially justified.

The people running Celtic have repeatedly invited us to judge them as businessmen. They tell us that the balance sheet matters, that every deal must represent value and that the club has to be run sustainably.

Fine. Let us judge them by those standards.

A business which alienates its customers, damages its product, refuses to invest in the quality of what it sells and then loses revenue as a result is not well run. It is badly run.

A business which risks tens of millions in future income to save a few hundred thousand in the present is not prudent. It is reckless.

A business which destroys confidence and then wonders why people stop buying is not being betrayed by its customers. It is suffering the consequences of its own choices.

The £300,000 Celtic are reportedly haggling over is not merely part of a transfer fee. It represents 5,000 seats, thousands of shirts, subscriptions and match tickets, and a symbol of ambition withheld and goodwill squandered.

Even if the board saves the money, it will still pay the price. The only difference is that the cost will appear elsewhere in the accounts.

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