The transfer window opens today. Celtic will be; ‘keeping tabs on’, ‘eyeing’, ‘scouting’, ‘targeting’, ‘monitoring the situation’, ‘preparing to make an offer’, all while signing nobody…

The transfer window officially opens this morning folks.

It’s that time of year that the fans of most clubs love, and the rumour mill churns into life.

Add the excitement of the World Cup into the mix, and lots of fans get to view players who could conceivably move to their clubs after a good showing at football’s showcase tournament.

The papers are full of stories on prospective moves, and for some odd reason, other clubs on the island of Britain manage to actually get their business done early in the window.

Not Celtic though.

For Celtic fans, the summer transfer window is always a slog.

It’s a period where we tear our hair out in frustration, culminating in the build up to the final day, where we hope against hope we’ll get our business done in the last knockings of the window.

Our club is the epitome of the old adage, fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

Now, there are the eternal optimists out there.

Who, for some reason beyond explanation, actually have faith in the Celtic board, and a belief that they’ll somehow manage to get our transfer business done in a timely fashion.

They tell us realists to calm down, there’s weeks, even months, left in the window.

They call us bedwetters, shit stirrers, and constantly tell us to keep the faith.

This happens during every summer transfer window.

They are still at it in the final week of the window, assuring us that the board will get the business done.

But the Celtic board never does.

And just like the Celtic board, these eternal optimists never learn.

The SMSM will subject us to all the old tried and trusted buzzwords, and default statements.

As stated in the headline to this article, we’ll get ‘targeted’, ‘eyeing’, and ‘scouting’.

My personal favourite, though, is ‘preparing to make an offer’.

I often wonder how you actually ‘prepare to make an offer’?

You either make an offer, or you don’t.

Celtic seem to do an awful lot of preparation, with very little end product.

I’m sure many people will call me a pessimist, especially since it’s only the first day of the transfer window.

But let’s just say all of this comes from the PTSD I’ve experienced from many previous transfer window shitshows.

Courtesy of our ‘world class in everything it does’ Celtic board.

So forgive me if I don’t place much faith in this summer’s transfer window being any different.

However, I’ll begin it with the first official transfer rumour of the now open summer transfer window.

We have apparently ‘targeted’ midfielder Ivan Bašić, who is representing Bosnia and Herzegovina in this summer’s World Cup.

Bašić plies his trade in the might of the Kazakh Premier League.

I know I shouldn’t scoff at that, we were after all, knocked out of the Champions League by Kairat Almaty of the Kazakh Premier League last season.

I guess maybe that’s why the board have ‘targeted’ a player who plies his trade there.

If they’ve actually targeted him at all.

Who knows?

Late yesterday evening, Robbie Copeland had this to say about Bašić:

The Hoops are yet to get their transfer business started for next season but that’s expected to change in the days ahead, with the window officially opening tomorrow morning.

They’ve been linked with a number of names including Brondby’s Bosnian midfielder Benjamin Tahirovic.

Now his international teammate and midfield partner Basic is also being targeted as part of what could be an ambitious double swoop.

The Scottish Sun say the 24-year-old, who plays his club football for Astana in Kazakhstan, is being watched closely by Celtic at the World Cup.

Both Basic and Tahirovic started their country’s opening game against host nation Canada, forming the midfield double pivot in Sergej Barbarez’s team.

Wow, get that, we’re looking at not one, but two midfielders from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Benjamin Tahirović is a 23 year old defensive midfielder who plies his trade at Brondby.

It looks like he and Bašić form the spine of the Bosnia and Herzegovina midfield.

Well, I’m not going to get too excited about this.

In fact, as I’ve said, this is the first official transfer rumour of the summer window.

So, let’s see if either of these two players end up at Celtic by the end of the window.

Can you see it happening?

Or will it just end up being another one of those rumours?

Which will get lost amongst many rumours throughout the summer?

I’d tell you to strap in for a roller coaster ride of a summer window if I was an optmist.

But this is more likely to be a slow moving car crash.

It’s never been anything else at Celtic, has it?

It was ever thus.

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