Ibrox made a catastrophic decision in trying to bleed Galatasaray for Chermiti.

We will probably never know the full truth about Galatasaray’s alleged £22 million bid for Youssef Chermiti.

We will never know whether it was a formal written offer, a verbal proposal, an exploratory conversation or one of those transfer stories which hangs around in the media for a few days before disappearing into the ether.

It may be that Galatasaray were genuinely interested and wanted to test the water. It may be that they were prepared to do a deal at one valuation but not at another.

We may never get a definitive answer.

My own suspicion is that Galatasaray, who seem to be asking questions about a remarkable number of strikers across Europe, wanted to discover whether a deal could be done.

Reports from Turkey have suggested that the Ibrox club’s valuation was regarded as excessive and that, if they were determined to stick to it, there was little realistic prospect of an agreement. Again, we may never know exactly how serious the interest became.

And in the end, that almost does not matter. Because what happened next was the sort of plot twist a Hollywood producer would reject for being too contrived.

Hours after the £22 million story appeared, Chermiti was stretchered off at Ibrox.

At the time it looked bad. According to subsequent reports, it may be worse than that, with the club now confirming that it’s an ACL injury.

There is absolutely nothing funny about that for the player.

An ACL injury is one of the most serious injuries a footballer can suffer, and Celtic supporters hardly need reminding of that when Jota has spent such a long period working his way back from his own major knee injury.

I am not laughing at Chermiti. I hope he recovers fully and as quickly as his rehabilitation allows. But the decision-making of the club around him is another matter entirely.

Because if there really was anything resembling a £22 million offer on the table, then turning it down was astonishing.

I remain convinced that one key factor in their thinking was the obsession with breaking Celtic’s Scottish transfer record.

They know what our biggest sales have brought in, they know what those figures represent symbolically, and there is a constant desire across the city to prove that anything Celtic can do, they can somehow do bigger.

If that thinking played even a small part in this, it was madness. A footballer is not a trophy in an executive bragging contest. He is an asset whose value can rise, fall or disappear almost overnight. And that is exactly what appears to have happened here.

Reports from people close to the story have continued to insist that the Galatasaray interest was genuine. The Ibrox club itself has indicated there was an approach. Turkish sources have also suggested that contact took place.

Maybe it was only a fishing expedition. Maybe Galatasaray were never going to pay the full amount being discussed.

But if somebody was willing to get anywhere close to £22 million for Chermiti, the sensible response should have been to engage seriously, negotiate and find the number at which both sides could walk away satisfied.

Frankly, they should have put him on a plane right away. Because they were never likely to get much more than that. I think even £22 million would have been an extraordinary price.

They spent heavily to sign him in the first place, and there have been suggestions that Everton retained a significant sell-on clause which would have reduced the eventual profit. Even allowing for that, a sale around that level would still have represented a huge return.

A more rational club would have looked at the numbers and thought: take it.

Instead, if the reports are accurate, they apparently decided that the valuation still was not high enough. Then they put him on the pitch. That is the part which will haunt them.

Because once a player is carrying that kind of reported valuation, every appearance carries risk. That is not an argument for wrapping players in cotton wool every time somebody expresses interest. Football clubs still need to field teams, and players cannot be removed from matches every time a transfer rumour appears.

I mean, none of us would be happy if we dropped Engels.

Still … if this happened to Engels, we’re well placed to spend on a replacement anyway, and it helps that there’s one in Germany we only need to get real over and push the button to do the deal.

But when you are supposedly discussing a fee which would transform your summer finances, and give you a way out of a big massive hole you have dug for yourself, the risk calculation changes. And now the nightmare scenario has arrived.

The player is injured, the alleged deal is effectively dead, and the club has lost what might have been its biggest opportunity to generate significant transfer income this summer. That is catastrophic asset management if the offer was genuine.

The player himself also cannot have been completely untouched psychologically by all the noise. Imagine being told that a huge bid has been made for you, that another major club wants you, and that your current club has decided the number is not enough.

Then you are sent onto the pitch. Nobody outside the dressing room can know exactly what was going through his head, but it is hardly an ideal environment.

The Ibrox support does not need anybody to explain how bad this looks.

They already know. A lot of their own coverage reflects that. There is shock, frustration and a real sense that their club may have allowed an enormous opportunity to disappear, and now the consequences spread through the rest of their transfer planning.

They have already spent significant money this summer without making the kind of major sale which would obviously help rebalance the books. They still appear to want reinforcements in several positions.

There is also talk of injury problems elsewhere in the squad, including at left-back, while they have reportedly been looking at a right-back and another central defender. Now they may need another striker as well.

That creates an obvious problem.

Every additional requirement costs money, and unlike Celtic, they do not appear to have the same financial room to rebuild almost every part of the squad at once.

Celtic can sell a major player and replace him. We can spend significant money while still maintaining a substantial financial cushion.

Across the city, the margins appear considerably tighter. That means Chermiti’s injury is not simply the loss of a player. It potentially blows a hole in the financial and sporting plan for the remainder of the window.

If they are knocked out of the Europa League on Thursday, those choices become harder still. European revenue matters. So does the prestige of that competition when trying to attract players.

And if a substantial bid for Nicolas Raskin does not emerge before the window closes, then they may find themselves with very few remaining routes to the kind of player-trading income they were presumably hoping to generate.

Raskin is probably their most obviously saleable remaining asset. That puts even more pressure on whatever decisions come next.

And all of this brings us back to the original question.

Was the £22 million offer real? I do not know. Neither do most of the people discussing it. Perhaps Galatasaray were serious. Perhaps they were testing the market. Perhaps the final number was never going to be anywhere near £22 million.

But if the Ibrox club genuinely had the opportunity to negotiate from a position where that kind of figure was being discussed and chose instead to hold out for even more, then they have made a monumental error and paid for it.

Because transfer value is not permanent. It is not money sitting safely in a bank account. It exists only while somebody is prepared to pay it. One injury can change everything. And that is exactly what seems to have happened.

There is no humour in what has happened to Chermiti. There is plenty to criticise in what the club may have done around him.

If £22 million was genuinely available, or anything close to it, they should have taken the money, accepted the enormous profit and moved on. Instead, they may now have an injured striker, no major sale, more positions to fill and less room to manoeuvre.

That is the kind of moment that can haunt a club for years … especially one that has to be skating near to the limit for UEFA FSR. It’s a catastrophe.

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