The media is indulging Ibrox’s Lewis Ferguson fantasy as though it were real.

It is easy to be critical of Celtic right now. They practically load the gun for you.

It is easy to give this club stick, because they practically invite it with their condescending contempt for the supporters.

It is easy to point to Celtic’s failings right now, because there are many of them.

Even if you remove malignant motivation from the list of possible explanations and simply conclude that the failure to conclude deals for players we had options on, and the failure to properly complete deals for coaches in a timely and uncontroversial fashion, is about incompetence rather than wilful self-harm, criticising Celtic right now is still shooting fish in a barrel.

But Celtic are not the only people in the Scottish game.

Celtic are not the only people this blog talks about either, because as I have said many times before, although some people still refuse to accept it, this is not simply a Celtic site. It is a site written by a Celtic fan, from a Celtic fan’s perspective. But this site is about Scottish football, and I make no apology for discussing the wider game here. I make no apology for talking about the national team here, or the media, or other clubs.

And it just so happens that tonight there is a sterling example of both media and Ibrox delusion playing out right in front of us.

The subject in hand is Lewis Ferguson, and it is almost mind-blowing how long the media has been clutching at this straw, and how tightly they are holding on to an idea that has no intellectual merit whatsoever.

Lewis Ferguson is not going to Ibrox.

The idea is fantasyland stuff. He would cost them an eight-figure sum of money, and probably one close to having a two at the front of it. The idea that they are going to spend that kind of money on a single player is a media invention so rich that it should have its own fiction category.

The thing about this stuff that always amazes me is how insulting it is to the intelligence of those of us who can do basic mathematics.

They overspent last season because they gambled on automatic Champions League qualification. It must have seemed like a reasonable gamble at the time. Celtic were a mess. Hearts were floundering. They looked vulnerable.

So, the Ibrox club took an educated guess that Celtic’s season was in a tailspin and that Hearts would not be able to go the distance.

Based on what the view from inside their club must have looked like, that was probably a reasonable bet to make.

But the gamble failed.

Not only are they not in the Champions League directly, they are not even in the running for the competition. They are not guaranteed Europa League group stage football either.

They have to play qualifiers just to make sure they have any European group stage football at all. That third-place finish was a calamity, and it is not for nothing that they have executed what I have called the Scottish Pivot.

I would imagine that the reality of the Scottish Pivot is starting to sink in with a lot of their supporters now.

I know they are doing business. I know they are completing signings. But none of those signings is going to keep me awake at night.

It is Celtic, as ever, who keep me awake at night. It is Celtic, as ever, who pose the clear and present danger to my emotional wellbeing through either their inability or unwillingness to take proper action in the transfer market.

But the issue here is not even Celtic’s business, or the business the Ibrox club has done. It is the way the media feeds delusion over there, forever talking about unreasonable targets as if they are grounded in reality.

As I said in a previous piece, the Scottish Pivot narrows their ability to put together any kind of coherent team. The fact that they are going staunch means there are only a handful of players who tick the boxes.

That is why Lewis Ferguson matters to the fantasy.

Ferguson is the perfect pedigree for them.

He comes from the right background. He is a club supporter. If you believe some of what you hear, he is a diehard club supporter, although I have never doubted for one second that had Celtic come calling before Italy, he would have gone to Celtic Park in a heartbeat and none of his family members would have stood in the way.

But Lewis Ferguson is the acceptable face of the Scottish Pivot, and that is why the fantasyland stories about him are so prevalent across the media.

Without Ferguson, the pivot looks like penny-pinching. With Ferguson in the mix, it looks like a grand strategy. That is the reason they have leaned so heavily into it. It is the sole reason they have leaned so heavily into it. And the media is going along with it as if it makes sense, as if there is any realistic prospect of this happening.

But the Ibrox club will have to sell before it spends any kind of serious money, and it is not spending that kind of money on one player, no matter what players might go out the door.

The media has been brilliant at denying that financial reality and Ibrox are subjects which belong in the same discussion.

What is infuriating is how readily these ideas are gone along with, as though they make any sense. The club over there is forever acting like other people’s money is actually their money. Because the Americans are allegedly wealthy, the assumption is that the club itself is now incredibly wealthy too.

But you are going to have to go some to get Dermot Desmond-style cash. Nobody mistakes Desmond’s money for ours, and nor should they.

Celtic spend only what we earn, and most of the time not even that.

Only one club in this country is obsessed with sugar-daddy spending, as if the consequences of it haven’t been spelled out and understood for years now. As if there isn’t already a dead Ibrox club to prove the point.

But I guess when you have spent all these years telling yourselves that it didn’t actually happen, the idea that some lessons might be learned from it is a difficult one to sustain. For those of us who do acknowledge the events of 2012 and what they meant, it is truly bizarre to see other people acting as if we just made that up.

Lewis Ferguson to Ibrox is not a serious transfer story.

It is not a serious financial proposition.

It is a pipe dream being kept alive because it helps sell the idea that the Scottish Pivot is something grander than bargain-bin nationalism and cultural comfort food. The truth is much simpler.

If the Ibrox club had the money to sign Lewis Ferguson, they would not need the Scottish Pivot in the first place. If they had the financial muscle the media keeps pretending they have, they would not be rummaging around for players who tick identity boxes before footballing ones.

And if this was a genuine strategy rather than a sales pitch, it would not require the media to keep breathing life into the most unrealistic name on the list.

That is what this is. A story for the fans. A promise without concerns over ever having to pay the price tag. A fantasy with a famous surname attached.

And like most Ibrox fantasies, it only works for as long as nobody asks the most basic question of all. How exactly are they paying for it?

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