Ibrox has signed “quantity and quality.” Jesus wept. Celtic fans are laughing.

You will no doubt remember that a couple of weeks ago I did a piece on how Ibrox always wins the pre-season cup. It is a familiar routine by now, and there is another familiar routine that goes alongside it.

One of the most idiotic men in the Scottish commentariat tips them to win the title halfway through pre-season based on, well, I do not really know what. But he never lets us down. He never lets us down.

The Sunday Mail’s embarrassing desperado, Hugh Keevins, has again suggested that they are the best bet for the title. He also seems to think that if Lewis Ferguson signs, they are a lock, while also admitting that Lewis Ferguson probably will not sign because they do not have the money.

That is quite the intellectual journey.

It is pointless trying to challenge much of what this guy says, because he is not serious. He cannot possibly be serious. And if he is serious, then you are arguing with a maniac, which is not something I advise anyone with a brain cell in their head to attempt. How are you ever going to win that argument? You are not going up against fact. You are not going up against logic. So it is virtually impossible to get any kind of result.

Under normal circumstances, I would not bother with what this clown thinks about anything. But he did make a claim today which you hear echoed around other sections of the mainstream media, although perhaps not always as egregiously as he puts it. Nevertheless, it remains out there. It remains in the public discourse, and it ought to be challenged.

The idea in question is that the Ibrox club has done some kind of tremendous transfer business and that Celtic are lagging miles behind them.

That is the claim.

And it is nonsense.

I said this in January about the media’s hyping of their signings: you do not judge how good transfers are based on the hype. You judge them on the results. There was at least some reason for the hype back then, because they had spent serious money. They looked, at least on the surface, as if they were pushing the boat out.

But this summer?

What if I told you Celtic have spent twice as much money as they have in this transfer window? Even if you believe they paid £3 million plus their goalkeeper to get their new goalkeeper, even if that story is true, our £6 million-plus fee for Camilo Duran is twice as much as that.

And if we end up having signed Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Kelechi Iheanacho on one-year deals, we will have achieved the same sort of thing they have achieved in signing Lawrence Shankland and Cameron Devlin, except our guys are English Premier League title winners and theirs are second-place SPFL silver medal holders.

When you put it like that, it does make you wonder who has really had the better transfer window.

I am not going to argue that it is us. I am not going to argue that our strategy makes any sense, has any coherence or in any way justifies the people on our board of directors thinking themselves masters of the universe. They are clowns. This has been a clown-car summer.

But if someone wanted to make the argument that Celtic are stronger than we were when the season ended, they could try it. Nawrocki has returned. Oxlade-Chamberlain has arrived. Duran has signed. If someone wanted to construct that argument, they could make an attempt.

Of course, no one wants to make that argument, least of all Celtic fans, because we know it would be a fairly preposterous one.

But the idea that the Ibrox club has gone for quality and quantity, which is what Keevins was arguing today and which I have heard other people argue, is equally hard to credit. To put it another way, it is a package of bollocks.

The defender they have signed is being touted as some sort of superstar because he is a former England international. Well, so is Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Oxlade-Chamberlain played a damn sight more games for England than their guy did. Their guy is injury prone. Their guy may once have been touted as a £20 million player, but when he is being allowed to leave on loan with an option to buy for much less than that, he is no longer a £20 million player.

They have signed Neil Danns from Sunderland on a free transfer. They have signed Lawrence Shankland and Cameron Devlin on free transfers. They have signed Ross McCrorie, you guessed it, on a free transfer.

So forgive me if I am not quaking in my boots because they have signed a World Cup goalkeeper. We were told that Jack Butland was the Second Coming, and now apparently he is simply surplus to requirements.

Between that and the new manager, we are supposed to be fearful. We are told they have signed a squad of winners. But Shankland has never won anything major. Devlin has never won anything major. McCrorie has never won anything major. Neil Danns has an English League One title to his name, and his club was promoted to the Premier League. Fine. Congratulations. Leaders of men, they may be.

It has not done the clubs they played for previously all that much good.

Maybe it is me. Maybe I am missing something. But I am just not seeing a game-changer. I am not seeing any signing that makes me believe something fundamental has shifted. They finished third in the title race last season. They have gone for the second-place manager and two members of his team. That may elevate them to second themselves. That may be what makes the difference and edges them ahead of Hearts.

It is not making me sleep any less easily in my bed at night.

I do not see quality being signed over there. More to the point, I do not see big money being spent over there. In spite of all the suggestions to the contrary, all the noise about how they are after this player and that player, the reality looks a lot less impressive than the headlines.

Let me say this again, because it matters. This has been a disaster of a summer at Celtic. It has been a monumental embarrassment and a series of cock-ups from start to finish. But as things stand, we have still outspent them.

Do not tell the media that, though. You do not want to burst their bubble, and they are quite happy and cosy living inside it. They have to be, otherwise they would stop doing this to themselves every year.

This has become their annual embarrassment.

And I will make you a prediction right now. This time next year, we will be back here again. They will be talking up a brand new Ibrox manager, a brand new Ibrox regime, a brand new Ibrox signing policy and a brand new set of players who are supposedly going to come and wrestle the title from Celtic.

That is how unimpressed I am by what they are doing. I am so unimpressed, and so sceptical that they can pull anything together out of this staunch policy of theirs, that I still think Celtic can make it over the line even in our present shambles.

That is not praise for Celtic.

It is not praise for our board.

It is not even a defence of this transfer window, which has been every bit as chaotic, sluggish and ridiculous as we have said it is.

It is simply a refusal to swallow the annual Ibrox myth-making exercise as if it were serious analysis.

They have won the pre-season cup again. Congratulations to them. Polish the imaginary trophy. Hang the imaginary bunting. Prepare the imaginary open-top bus.

Then the real football starts.

And that is usually where this stuff falls apart.

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