Haissem Hassan may prove Celtic transfers don’t need to be difficult.

Haissem Hassan is reportedly close to becoming a Celtic player.

At the time of writing, nothing has been formally announced, and we have all followed enough transfer stories to know that nothing is complete until the contracts are signed and the player is standing at Celtic Park.

This one has already been in the “advanced stages” before now; only the clubs had yet to agree. These stories suggest that has changed.

The reports are now strong. Celtic is apparently prepared to pay around £6 million up front, with possible add-ons taking the total package close to £9 million. The player is said to be open to the move, and negotiations with Real Oviedo have reached an advanced stage.

Should the deal be completed, there will be plenty of time to discuss Hassan as a footballer.

There will be analysis of his pace, his directness, his statistics, his preferred position and where Martin O’Neill sees him fitting into the team. Our right sider attacker it seems, with a penchant for cutting in and using his left foot. Like Kuhn. Not bad.

That is not what interests me most at the moment. What interests me is what this transfer appears to prove about Celtic.

Transfers are only as difficult as you choose to make them.

That does not mean every deal is easy. It does not mean selling clubs surrender the moment Celtic makes a telephone call, or that every player immediately drops everything and races towards Glasgow.

Real obstacles exist. Clubs have valuations. Players have preferences. Agents have demands. Other teams become involved. Wage structures matter. Contracts contain clauses, and negotiations can change direction without warning.

But obstacles are not necessarily immovable. They remain in place until somebody makes a serious attempt to shift them.

Hassan reportedly rejected an extremely lucrative opportunity in Saudi Arabia because he preferred to remain in European football. Marseille was also interested, and reports even suggested that the player had reached an understanding with the French club.

But Marseille had its own financial restrictions. Reports suggested that it needed outgoing business before it could complete the deal and was operating under limitations which made an immediate move difficult.

That did not automatically make Hassan a Celtic player.

It merely created an opportunity. Celtic still had to recognise it, move decisively and put down an offer capable of changing the conversation.

That appears to be what finally happened. We can speculate as to what finally moved the needle – indeed, I have some ideas – and why this move suddenly got the injection of urgency it required, but what matters is we finally found the motivation to get over ourselves and get something moving forward.

Earlier in the summer, Celtic reportedly submitted an offer of approximately £3.4 million. That was rejected. Real Oviedo had a much higher valuation, and there was international competition for the player.

At that point, Celtic was making on set of choices. Offer something so derisory it gets you nowhere and come up in steady increments. All that does is infuriate people and waste everyone’s time. We have seen that approach before.

We have watched deals drag on until the opportunity disappeared. We have heard endless explanations about agents, wages, rival leagues, selling clubs and the supposed impossibility of completing business quickly.

Sometimes those explanations are legitimate. But they have been used so frequently that they have become part of Celtic’s institutional vocabulary and that’s the vocabulary that all of us now treat with the maximum distrust.

Every failed transfer appears to come with a detailed explanation of why success was beyond the club’s control. The market was difficult. The player wanted too much. The selling club moved the goalposts. Another league offered better wages. An agent introduced complications. There is always another obstacle.

Yet here Celtic appears to have done something radically different.

It got real. The club apparently increased the offer to a level which Real Oviedo could seriously consider. It constructed a package with a substantial initial payment and further add-ons. It moved towards the selling club’s valuation rather than waiting indefinitely for the valuation to collapse. In doing so, Celtic appears to have unlocked the door.

That is what serious transfer business requires and it makes our reticence at other points not only annoying but baffling.

You identify the player. You decide what he is worth to you. You work out whether the potential upside justifies the cost, and then you make an offer capable of producing a decision. In short, you do not spend the entire window standing outside the door complaining that it is locked. You find the key.

Sometimes the key is a larger initial fee. Sometimes it is achievable add-ons, a sell-on percentage, a different payment schedule or a stronger wage package. Sometimes it is simply the willingness to make the selling club understand that you are serious, that you want the guy, that you won’t go away.

That does not guarantee success. Hassan could still have rejected Celtic. Real Oviedo could still have demanded the full release clause. Marseille could have found the money, or another club could have entered negotiations.

But Celtic could control its own conduct. That is the part which matters.

The club could make a serious bid, negotiate with purpose and demonstrate that it wanted the player badly enough to move. Apparently, it has done exactly that. If it hadn’t we would not have moved the needle at all.

Should Hassan sign, nobody should pretend that the obstacles were imaginary. They were real. He had other options. He had reportedly turned down enormous Saudi money, while Marseille provided a serious alternative in a stronger domestic league. Real Oviedo possessed an asset it was under no obligation to surrender cheaply.

But none of those things made the transfer impossible. They merely established the conditions Celtic had to overcome.

For too long, Celtic has spoken and behaved as though every complication is a final answer.

A club quotes a high fee, and Celtic withdraws. An agent asks for improved terms, and negotiations stall. A player attracts rival interest, and the club behaves as though the entire process has become unwinnable.

Then supporters are told that transfers are complicated. Of course they are complicated. They are complicated when you don’t act professionally. They are complicated when you complicate them yourself.

The purpose of having highly paid executives, recruitment departments, scouts and negotiators is to resolve complications. Nobody is being paid simply to identify the reasons a deal cannot happen. Their job is to discover how it can.

That is what appears to have happened with Hassan.

This should also force us to reconsider the excuses surrounding other deals.

When Celtic loses a target over a relatively small difference in valuation, was the deal really impossible, or did the club simply decide not to bridge the gap?

When negotiations last for weeks without progress, is that because the market is uniquely difficult, or because Celtic refuses to make the decision which would move them forward?

When a manager identifies a player as a priority and the club eventually allows him to go elsewhere, was there truly no deal available, or was there no willingness to pay the price required to complete it?

Those are different things.

Supporters understand that Celtic cannot sign every player. Nobody sensible expects the club to accept every demand or abandon all financial discipline. There are prices which should not be paid and deals from which Celtic should walk away.

But there is an enormous difference between discipline and paralysis. Discipline means deciding that a player is not worth the price and moving immediately to the next serious target. Paralysis means spending weeks trying to complete a deal on terms the selling club has already rejected, then scrambling for alternatives when the deadline approaches.

The Hassan episode appears to show Celtic snapping out of its lethargy to offer a club the proper terms needed to get something done. The first offer was not enough. Circumstances changed. Rival options weakened. Celtic returned with a package which moved the deal forward. This is how we should have done it in the first place.

Because this proves Celtic can act when it chooses to.

It can spend a significant fee. It can increase an offer. It can structure add-ons. It can exploit an opening created by another club’s difficulties and move ahead of competing interest. The machinery can work when those running it are motivated to.

The problem has been the reluctance to switch it on.

Imagine how different the squad would look had Celtic approached every major weakness with the same urgency. Imagine if the club had moved decisively for a right-sided attacker when Nicolas Kühn left rather than allowing the need to remain unresolved for a year. Imagine if it had secured a first-choice goalkeeper as soon as it knew that position would become a problem. Imagine if it had completed the left-back deal O’Neill wanted instead of allowing Marcello Saracchi to disappear elsewhere.

One decisive transfer will not undo the damage caused by a summer of hesitation. But it’s like the Hogh deal; this demolishes the whole idea that this club cannot move fast and well and get things done when it wants to. It might be better to wonder what gives the club its motivation at certain times.

Hassan will not fill the gaps at goalkeeper, full-back and midfield. His arrival would not make the squad complete, and it would it prove that Celtic’s recruitment structure has suddenly become efficient. I said last night that this club might still need as many as nine signings if things are to be where they need to be.

But this shows clearly that the barriers Celtic complains about can be moved. Fees can be negotiated. Competition can be beaten. Players can be persuaded, and selling clubs can be brought to the table. The difference is whether Celtic genuinely wants to complete the deal or merely wants to be seen trying.

This time, the club appears to have chosen action.

Its previous hesitation was a choice.

This decisiveness is another choice.

What have I been saying about choices? If we make different choices we will get different outcomes. The fans would not be so furious, the manager not so stressed. Part of the frustration is knowing that it does not have to be this way.

More decisions like this, taken earlier and across several positions, would have prevented the squad from reaching its present condition.

That is why I do not want the Hassan deal presented as some extraordinary feat of executive brilliance should it be completed.

This is what Celtic should be doing. This is what we could have been doing all along. Once again, I’m looking at a club which, to use the analogy I’ve deployed before, has made a hinge in under a minute, and yet … such a small pile of them.

The summer did not have to be this messy. Now if we do it for the goalkeeper, do it for the left-back, do it in midfield and wherever else O’Neill believes the squad requires immediate reinforcement, we can start thinking about the season as something more than a grind, something more than a dark nightmare from which we all long to escape.

Celtic decided that it wanted this guy, and made the move.

We put forth our full strength, as I have often said we could, and pulled off a major coup as a club. We had more financial muscle than any other club in this league; deploying it is an act of will. It’s just as simple as that.

Sometimes all it takes is clarity, urgency and the willingness to put a proper offer on the table. The door was never permanently locked. Celtic simply had to stop standing outside it and turn the key and walk in.

If we get this job done I’ll be well pleased.

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