Barry Ferguson still fumes over Celtic’s ability to sell for big profits.

From now until the Rapture, Barry Ferguson will always be good for a laugh. You are always going to get a few giggles out of him, and his latest contention that Nicolas Raskin is a better player than Arne Engels and should therefore command a bigger transfer fee is exactly the kind of thing I mean.

Ferguson appears to believe that if Engels can attract a fee in the region of £25 million, then Raskin should automatically be worth something similar or even more. That mindset tells you plenty about the way people around the Ibrox club think.

They have been trapped in this logic for years. If Celtic gets this, then they should get that. If Celtic sells a midfielder for £25 million, then one of theirs must be worth £25 million too. If Celtic can produce a major transfer fee, then surely they can do the same.

It is less about football and much more about ego.

Raskin being a Belgian international is apparently part of Ferguson’s case, but that is lazy thinking. If Raskin and Engels were remotely similar players, then perhaps the comparison would be worth making.

They are not. They play different roles and have different strengths. Simply sticking the word “midfielder” beside both names does not suddenly make them interchangeable assets. Raskin would have to be exceptional in his particular role to command the kind of fee Ferguson seems to have in mind.

And this is not the first summer we have heard this.

For the last few years there has been constant talk about Raskin eventually leaving for a huge number, with the usual line that the Ibrox club does not want to lose him but would reluctantly have to consider a major offer. Come off it. They are desperate to make one of these big sales and have been desperate for years.

They know this may be one of their best opportunities, especially while Raskin remains a Belgian international and still has profile around him. Perhaps somebody will be persuaded by a strong tournament or a good run of form, but major clubs do not generally spend tens of millions because someone had a decent few weeks.

They look deeper than that, and that is where Engels becomes a very different proposition.

He is younger than Raskin, arrived at Celtic with an excellent development background, cost a club-record fee and possesses the physical and technical attributes required to become far more than simply a good Scottish Premiership player. I genuinely believe that at the right club, Engels’ development could explode.

He has the profile of a player who could eventually operate at a very high level, and that matters enormously in valuation. Clubs are not just buying what a footballer is today. They are buying what he may become three, four or five years from now.

That is where Ferguson’s comparison really falls apart. By the time Raskin is entering his thirties, Engels could be reaching the peak of his career. One is being valued partly on what he already is; the other is being valued heavily on what he could still become.

Those are completely different markets.

The fact that Raskin currently has more international recognition does not automatically make him the more valuable player. That is not how recruitment departments think, how elite clubs think or how transfer markets work.

But this is what Ferguson and others around that club repeatedly do. They compare apples with oranges and then complain that the prices are different.

Always lurking underneath it is the same thought: if Celtic can get that fee, then we should be able to get one too. Why? What does Celtic’s ability to sell Arne Engels for a major fee have to do with Nicolas Raskin? Nothing.

The other thing Ferguson seems to misunderstand is Celtic’s reputation in the market. We develop players, improve them and then sell them. That is not something which happened once by accident. It has become part of Celtic’s identity.

Buying clubs know that. They know Celtic has produced or developed players who have moved on and succeeded at higher levels, and that creates trust. It creates confidence in the product.

The Ibrox club does not have that same reputation. Quite the opposite. It has signed numerous players for relatively large fees by Scottish standards and then either allowed their value to stagnate or watched it collapse.

How many times has that happened now? Dozens. And still every summer the same fantasy begins again.

This one is worth £20 million. That one is attracting Premier League interest. Another one is apparently being watched by Milan or clubs in Spain.

During the latter part of last season, we were hearing ridiculous claims about Fernandes, the central defender they now do not even appear particularly convinced by. If you believed some of the stories, he was going to Milan, Spain or the English Premier League.

Arsenal was even mentioned. Arsenal.

That is the level of delusion we are dealing with.

And once again, it is rooted in Celtic. They see the fees we generate and assume those numbers must somehow be available to them as well.

It drives them mad that Celtic can sell players for huge money and then use that money to operate in a transfer market they increasingly cannot reach. Whether Celtic actually reinvests enough of it is another argument entirely.

God knows I have written enough about that.

But having the money gives us the ability to operate at a level they struggle to match, and that is what bothers them. They look across the city and ask why they cannot do the same because, in their minds, if Celtic can do it then it cannot be particularly difficult.

That logic extends beyond transfers. If Celtic can win doubles and trebles, why can’t they? If Celtic can dominate domestically, why can’t they? If Celtic can develop players and sell them for enormous profits, why can’t they?

Well, how is all of that going?

Maybe the standard of player across the city is simply not as high as the people surrounding that club desperately want to believe. Maybe that is why they did not finish first last season. Maybe that is why they did not even finish second.

They finished third, trophyless again, and yet here we are heading into another transfer period listening to the same fantasies about enormous valuations.

None of this means Raskin is a bad player. He is not. He is a modestly talented footballer with high energy who ever stops working. That quality will attract clubs. But those sorts of footballers do not automatically become £25 million assets because Barry Ferguson wants parity with Celtic.

Transfer values are not handed out according to rivalry. They are determined by age, potential, position, contract length, performance level, physical profile, technical quality and the selling club’s reputation for development.

On most of those measures, Engels and Raskin are not remotely the same proposition. That is why one can realistically attract a fee which the other probably cannot.

And that is the part Ferguson will never understand, not that he really wants to. He prefers to live in the same fantasy world as the rest of them over there.

This is not about fairness, what the Ibrox club “deserves” or keeping up with Celtic. The market does not care about any of that. It looks at the player, the ceiling and the evidence. No amount of Barry Ferguson shouting that Raskin is better than Engels is going to change what professional recruitment departments see.

That is why this stuff is always so funny.

The Ibrox club spends half its life insisting that Celtic is nothing special, while the other half is spent demanding access to the same rewards Celtic earns. They want our transfer fees, our trading model and our success.

They just do not want to admit that perhaps there is a reason we get them and they do not.

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