Celtic have a once in a lifetime chance to win 10-in-a-row, can we trust them to take it?

I don’t often listen to the Clyde phone-in, but I tuned in last week on the same day the Celtic splashed the cash. Hugh Keevins called the signing of Christopher Jullien from Toulouse for £7m as a marquee signing – which ensured Celtic fans lauded the signing and a Rangers fan called the phone-in to complain of the hyperbole from the aged reporter.

Jullien is our second most expensive signing behind Odsonne Edouard and demonstrates a real statement of intent from Peter Lawwell and the board to secure nine-in-a-row, or does it?

Since the end of last season, we have lost the two first-choice centre-backs at the club in Benkovic and Boyata. It was of paramount importance that one, if not both, were replaced for the team to simply stand still. We also let go the serial winner Mikael Lustig. There were further departures in Izaguirre, Gamboa, Allan, de Vries and Compper, while Timothy Weah and Oliver Burke also returned to their parent clubs.

Other than the two centre backs, the general consensus is that the others weren’t going to add anything in the coming season.

Since the last day of the January transfer window, 2019 Celtic has secured around £29m in fees from Moussa Dembele and Brendan Rodgers. From these two high earners, they are believed to have shaved another £65k per week off the wage bill. That ignores the backroom team.

In steps Neil Lennon and although not my original hope for our new manager, there is no denying he did what he had to do in a highly pressurised situation. He deserves a crack at the job on a permanent basis though he also happens to be the conveniently cheap option.

I have no doubt that Celtic will also punt Tierney. I don’t think the player or the manager will get much of a say in it if Arsenal, Napoli or whoever hits the magic £25m target. He will be off. The board will see to that. He will break the hearts of the support, including my own lad, but he will have to get over it the same way I had to when Dalglish was sold back in 1977.

I suspect we will also find a buyer willing to pay £10m for Ntcham – a guy whose technical ability I rate highly, but who didn’t do anything to justify being a high earner. It is good to see the club already lining up a replacement for Tierney in Bolingoli-Mbombo, but there’s no hiding the fact that the quality is diluted in another position on the park. On the positive side, I would expect that this window will see us bank more money through season tickets.

So, we have started to splash the cash, but jeez we can afford to. If the Turnbull deal had happened we would have been sitting at £10m in fees alone. As it is, we have spent £7m on a central defender and another £3m to replace a left-back we may well sell for £25m.

Whether that will that be the progress towards the other four permanent bona fide signings that Lennon wants remains to be seen, but I’m betting that we won’t be paying any significant fees in the remainder of the transfer window.

We will spend £1.5m here and £2m there and I reckon the sum total of expenditure will be around £15m. Sure, it will be supplemented by incoming loans from decent clubs but with Brendan Rodgers no longer at the helm, will we have the likes of PSG and Man City trusting us with their young talent or will it be the guys like Burke who couldn’t get a game for a mid-ranking Championship side?

The squad is benefiting from some competition created by youngsters, most notably Dembele and Oko-Flex. We have added another project player with the signing of Luca Connell. We have Shved to add some competition, but he is largely unknown and will take time to acclimatise to our game. Leigh Griffiths returns and already the language from Lennon is that Griff is like a new signing. Really? Not in my eyes. Great to have him back all the same. He now needs to get his head down and pull his weight as a senior squad player, but Griff should not be considered as a new signing.

Make no bones about it, the next two seasons are the most important consecutive years in the history of this club. It is not about long term strategy. It is not about progress in Europe. It is about hitting nine and then the magic 10. The supporters would sell their souls for the magic 10 and then let the celebrations and the gloating to end all gloating begin.

The question is how far will the board financially commit to achieving this? Instead of flexing the incredible financial stranglehold we have over the rest of Scottish football, they seem hell-bent on keeping a healthy amount of cash in the bank instead of sprinting off into the distance. Our net outlay on players will be dwarfed by the money from sales.

I get that this is all a wee bit premature. There are still weeks to go in the transfer window. We have made a positive start and I can’t wait to see Jullien pull the Hoops on. We now need our director of football Nicky Hammond, to show why the club gave him that attractive “loan contract” and bring in some real talent to improve what we have.

What I am concerned about is that I am watching our club rake in fees from sales year after year whilst not replacing those sold with the same level of quality coming in. We are downsizing our ambitions and it worries me that a £7m signing gets the heat off the board so easily. We haven’t progressed yet – we lost two excellent centre backs. I repeat again, with the Jullien signing we are at best only treading water. Will the board back the manager with more marquee signings or is it loose change only from here on in?

This board need to get it right this time around. They need to back the manager by giving him the funds he needs to secure number nine. No nine then no legacy for the board, no legacy for the players and no gloating for the fans.

Most of all, no nine means the eight will be seen as nothing more than a failure to get to the nine and the march to the glorious ten.