Sutton’s £50 million claim sounds mad. In fact, it’s perfect feasible.

Yesterday, Chris Sutton made the latest in a long line of statements about Celtic’s transfer policy, and this one generated a lot of headlines because he suggested that Martin O’Neill might need as much as £50 million.

That is a big number. It is a gargantuan number.

And you know what? It is not a crazy number.

Both Paulina and I have written separate articles on the subject of Celtic’s possible transfer war chest. One of us pitched it at £30 million. The other pitched it at £40 million.

Do we believe those sums are actually going to be spent? Probably not. But that does not mean they are outside the realms of possibility. It does not mean they are impractical, unfeasible or fantastical.

Sutton has put a larger ceiling on the possible total than either of us would have suggested, but it is easy enough to see how he got there.

If Celtic sell Arne Engels for between £25 million and £30 million, that is more than half of what Sutton is talking about right away. And let us not forget that we have not spent proper money in years. We have not had a meaningful net spend since Ange Postecoglou’s second summer, and his first summer made so much money from player sales that we rebuilt the whole team without spending a penny over what came in.

But Sutton is not stopping with one player, and nor should we.

If you get £6 million for Reo Hatate, which is not an unreasonable fee, and if you get another couple of million for Paulo Bernardo should the club decide to sell him, and if you cash in on Daizen Maeda for anything near the £12 million to £15 million people have been talking about, then you are already covering most of the other half.

And if Benjamin Nygren is sold, the sky is the limit.

Add the possible sale of Alistair Johnston on top of that, and yes, you have a lot of players to replace. But you also have an absolute mountain of cash with which to replace them.

When the Ibrox club talks about spending vast sums of money, it is fantasy.

It is fantasy because they treat money as if it grows on trees or as if there is a mountain of it buried in the backyard. The idea that they could make those sums on player sales is pretty ridiculous, and the transfer window is full of their usual rubbish.

Celtic are dealing with a different type of reality. The money here is real. The figures are not ridiculous. There is genuine interest in these players, and there is a genuine ability to raise that kind of cash. This is not theoretical.

At least two of those players are likely to go in this window. I suspect it will be Maeda and Engels. If that happens, you are talking about the better part of £40 million from two sales alone. Straight away, the conservative estimate of a £30 million spend is not just within reach, but it still allows the club to post a profit.

With the sale of those two players, a £40 million spend is not a crazy idea. You would simply be spending what you bring in, and you would barely trouble the bank balance.

Yet, I saw a lot of dismissive commentary yesterday, most of it centred around the idea that spending that kind of money is ridiculous. It is not ridiculous. Not if you have a board with the ambition to do it.

The problem, of course, is that we do not have that board.

That is why it sounds ridiculous to a lot of people. But sounding ridiculous does not make it impossible. Believing this board will never do it does not make it impractical. The suspicion that we will not spend even half of what we bring in does not render the fact that we could any less real or any less true.

That is the simple truth of it.

Celtic have the wherewithal to do exactly what people are saying cannot be done.

It can be done. Of course it can be done. It just requires the will to do it.

Let me put it another way.

Even half of Sutton’s £50 million figure would buy you a serious rebuild. In case anyone wonders what spending in the £25 million range looks like, Celtic’s spending in Ange Postecoglou’s first two transfer windows was somewhere around £22 million to £24 million, depending on the exchange rate and the exact timing of the deals.

When you then add in the permanent fees for Jota and Cameron Carter-Vickers, which came the following summer, you edge up towards the £40 million range. That is the squad Ange built. That is the work that went into it.

That is the level of investment which rebuilt Celtic from the ground up.

Our needs are greater now, but so is our ability to act. Even allowing for financial sustainability rules, our capacity to spend should still be high, particularly when you account for the extra revenues that come from European football.

It is worth remembering that some players were on loan in Ange’s first window and had to be bought later. But to assemble a squad of that quality for that kind of money proves that it can be done. It also proves that if Celtic pushed the boat out even further, into the £30 million range and upwards towards £40 million, the transformation of this team could be dramatic. For the opposition, it could be cataclysmic.

It would retool us for Europe. It would refire us for the domestic campaign. It would give Martin O’Neill the kind of platform from which he could reshape the squad properly, rather than patch it together and hope for the best.

And again, it is not difficult to see the circumstances under which that could be done.

Ange’s rebuild was enabled by major sales.

Kris Ajer, Odsonne Edouard and Ryan Christie all left, and the club used that income to reshape the squad. The fact is that there is more potential resale value in the current squad than there was in that one. The sales of three players such as Engels, Maeda and Nygren would generate a far greater return than those departures did, and would allow an even greater spend as a result.

So, when I hear talk of £50 million, I do not think it is absurd. I do not think it is wrong. I think it is improbable, and that is a very different thing.

It is improbable because of the board, not because of Celtic’s resources. Not because of football finance. Not because of the arithmetic. Because of the will.

Sutton says it could take that much to replace the players we are going to lose, and that is where I slightly disagree with him. As I have already pointed out, Ange’s title-winning team and double-winning squad were assembled for less than that.

If Martin O’Neill is similarly backed, Celtic have the opportunity to reshape this team again without needing to hit the full £50 million mark.

So we do not necessarily need to spend that kind of money.

But we could. That is the point too many people are missing.

The debate should not be whether Celtic can afford a serious rebuild. Of course Celtic can afford it. The debate should be whether the people running the club have the ambition, courage and imagination to sanction one.

That is where the doubt lies. Not in the bank account. Not in the transfer market. Not in the logic of it. In the boardroom.

And that is why Chris Sutton’s figure matters. Not because £50 million is guaranteed. Not because Celtic must spend exactly that sum. But because it challenges the low-expectation culture that has been allowed to settle around this club.

It forces people to ask why serious spending sounds outrageous at a club sitting on major assets, major revenues and major transfer possibilities.

It forces people to confront the difference between what Celtic can do and what Celtic usually choose to do.

Those are not the same thing. They have never been the same thing.

And this summer, with players likely to leave, major money likely to come in and a manager needing proper backing, that distinction matters more than ever.

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