Will Ferry makes sense for Celtic. Let’s go and get him Bhoys.

I have to admit something. Sometimes I look at Celtic’s transfer activity and genuinely wonder whether I am watching the same football club as everybody else.

We have a squad which clearly needs strengthening. We have already lost important players, Reo Hatate could still be on his way out, there are injuries to deal with, European football to negotiate and a domestic campaign to win.

Martin O’Neill needs options, and yet when a player like Will Ferry is sitting right in front of us, I find myself asking a very obvious question: if Celtic are not trying to sign him, why the hell aren’t we? Well, apparently, tonight we are.

And you know what? I actually think Ferry makes a huge amount of sense for Celtic.

He is at Dundee United, he knows Scottish football and he knows this league. He is not some name we have discovered because a spreadsheet threw up an interesting number from a competition none of us watches. He has played here, been tested here and impressed here.

More importantly, Celtic has already looked at him.

Courier Sport reported last month that Ferry was on the club’s radar, with scout Tosh McKinlay having watched him in person several times over the last year. That included his outstanding performance in Dundee United’s 3-0 win over Dundee, where he scored twice and assisted the other goal, and his display in United’s 2-0 victory over Celtic itself.

So, this is not some supporter fantasy based on one good game.

Celtic knows the player. The question is why we have not acted before now. Dundee United have already accepted a bid of around £1.7 million for Ferry this summer, although he rejected the move to Sigma Olomouc.

Jim Goodwin has also said openly that United want to offer him a new contract, while acknowledging that every player has a valuation and that once it is met, the matter can be taken out of his hands.

Well, Celtic? Meet the valuation.

That is not some terrifying number. In the modern transfer market, and especially for a player who already understands this league and fills an obvious squad weakness, £1.7 million is hardly an outrageous gamble.

This interests me particularly because of the left-back situation. Kieran Tierney is our first-choice left-back when fit. Fine. Nobody is disputing that.

But we cannot simply cross our fingers, look towards the heavens and hope his body behaves itself for an entire season. Football does not work like that, and neither does serious squad planning.

What happens when Tierney is unavailable? Right now, we improvise. Liam Scales gets moved across. Somebody else gets shuffled around. We start doing that wonderful Celtic thing where instead of having two proper players for a position, we convince ourselves that somebody who can sort of play there will probably do.

No. Enough of that. If Celtic wants to compete properly, particularly with a Europa League campaign sitting alongside the domestic programme, then there has to be real cover in specialist positions. Left-back is one of them.

That is where Ferry becomes so attractive.

He is energetic, aggressive and attack-minded. He gets forward naturally, contributes in the final third and has shown he can affect games from full-back, but he is not simply a winger masquerading as a defender.

Scott Brown made essentially this argument after watching him at the weekend. Brown called Ferry a relatively inexpensive option and praised both his attacking drive and his defensive qualities, while making the obvious point that Celtic needs proper left-back cover.

When Scott Brown tells Celtic to look at a player like this, I am inclined to listen.

Not because Brown is incapable of being wrong, but because he understands the environment into which that player would be walking. He understands Scottish football, its physical demands, the pressure around Celtic and what happens when someone puts that shirt on and suddenly discovers that merely being a decent footballer is not enough.

Ferry has already survived the first part of that test. He has played in this league and stood out. That matters. There is also something else I like about him: he looks hungry.

I do not want Celtic filling the squad with players who arrive because Celtic is a bigger club, collect a very healthy wage and then disappear emotionally when the difficult nights arrive. I want players who look as if they actually want to play football, who want responsibility and who have fought their way into recognition.

Ferry gives me that impression. His performances have continued to attract attention this season, and his recent goal against Kilmarnock prompted another discussion about Celtic’s lack of left-back depth. Brown’s recommendation came immediately after having a close look at him in that game.

So again, I ask the question. If Celtic are only now moving for him, what has taken so long? And if they aren’t moving for him, why not?

I understand that there are other priorities. Celtic is trying to reshape the midfield. Joël van den Berg is close, Oliver Sørensen is reportedly coming in and there are other positions which still need attention.

Not eleven good footballers followed by a collection of emergency solutions, positional compromises and players the manager does not really trust.

That is not depth. And I certainly do not want to reach November and hear everybody saying that perhaps we should have strengthened at left-back after all. We have done that far too often. Celtic has spent too many transfer windows staring directly at obvious weaknesses and then acting astonished when those weaknesses eventually hurt us.

Will Ferry might not be the glamorous signing. He might not arrive with an £8 million fee, an exotic highlight reel and 147 Champions League appearances. But perhaps that is precisely the point. Sometimes the clever signing is the one which simply makes sense.

Ferry makes sense to me. He would come into a squad where competition should actually exist. Tierney remains first choice, but suddenly there is another genuine left-back behind him. Ferry gets the opportunity to develop at Celtic without carrying the entire burden of the position, while O’Neill gets a player he can actually use rather than having to reconstruct the defence every time Tierney is unavailable.

That is squad building. Competition, options and depth.

Those are not glamorous concepts, but when you are trying to survive a season containing the Premiership, Scottish Cup, League Cup and Europa League, they are absolutely essential. We have already learned the hard way what happens when Celtic goes into major European football without enough depth.

If Ferry is available at anything close to the £1.7 million Dundee United were already prepared to accept from Sigma Olomouc, the financial argument against doing it is extraordinarily difficult to understand.

If Dundee United wants to keep him, make them a serious offer. If another club wants him, move quickly. Because that is the other thing which worries me. Celtic has apparently been interested. Other clubs have been interested. Dundee United is trying to secure his future, and Ferry has only a year remaining on his current deal.

The clock is ticking. We no longer have weeks to spend admiring a footballer we already know, watching everybody else make approaches, and then act surprised when somebody else gets him. This is Celtic Football Club.

We should be decisive. We should know what we want. And when the price is sensible and the football case is obvious, we should move.

If the football department genuinely believes Ferry is not good enough for Celtic, then fine. That is a legitimate judgement. But then I want to know what the alternative is. If there is a better left-back about to walk through the door, terrific. If there is somebody with greater upside, better quality and a deal which makes more sense, I will happily accept that.

What I will not accept is Celtic reaching the end of this window with Kieran Tierney as the only natural senior left-back and then pretending Liam Scales represents some carefully constructed contingency plan. That is not a plan. That is improvisation.

And if the reason for not signing Ferry is simply that Celtic does not want to spend the money? Then I really am going to lose my ginger temper. Because this is exactly the sort of player Celtic should be looking at.

A player who knows the league, has already demonstrated that he can perform in it, still has room to improve and can immediately strengthen the squad without requiring some ridiculous Premier League-sized transfer fee.

There is another point here too. The Scottish market should not be regarded as some inferior place which Celtic only visits when everything else fails. There are good footballers here. There are players developing underneath our noses who understand this league, the stadiums, the physicality and the pressure.

Sometimes the cleverest scouting operation in the world should still be capable of noticing the guy playing two hours up the road.

That does not mean Celtic should buy every decent player in Scotland. As James has said, a lot of these people will not be worth the premium we have to pay. But this guy is, and the club should not ignore an obvious solution simply because it does not feel exotic enough.

And Ferry looks suspiciously like an obvious solution.

So Celtic, I am asking again. If we’re not really in for him why not? Because, from where I am sitting, it makes far too much sense to ignore. Celtic has spent too many years overlooking obvious things. Maybe, just this once, we should actually do the obvious thing.

Go and get the bloody boy right now.

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