Kasper Hogh to Celtic is back on, and Kyogo, again? When those two names land in the same sentence, you know it’s board BS

So here we are.

Kelechi Iheanacho snubs us, and within 48 hours the well runs dry and the Stenography Corps go rummaging in the bargain bin.

Two names fall out.

Kasper Hogh.

And Kyogo Furuhashi.

Now, one of those names might just be a real, live, breathing transfer target.

The other one is the tell.

Because the second Kyogo gets mentioned in the same breath as a striker search, you know exactly what you’re reading.

You’re reading a club with nothing to say, and a media pack with a deadline to fill.

Pull the other one. It’s got bells on.

Let me get this straight, we are being linked with a 31-year-old who scored 3 goals last season.

Three.

In the EFL Championship.

At a club, Birmingham City, where the manager, one Chris Davies, has now told him he isn’t part of the plans and can leave.

And this is the man Michael Gannon of the Record tells us has “put the feelers out” over a Parkhead return.

Of course he has.

The man had a nightmare at Rennes, netted the grand total of zero, then stuttered his way through a season in England.

Where else would he put the feelers out?

We’ve been down this road before, haven’t we?

Last January, we almost replaced Kyogo, with Kyogo.

Now, in the middle of an actual striker crisis, the tried and tested well gets dropped down one more time.

I genuinely cannot tell you whether the board are daft enough to entertain it.

But I can tell you the Record are, because Celtic Park has gone quiet, and something has to go on the back page.

Kasper Hogh, on the other hand, is the one name in this that carries a whiff of the truth.

Martin O’Neill was keen on the Dane back in January.

The move was scuppered when Bodo/Glimt did the unthinkable and reached the knockout stages of the Champions League.

Fair enough.

Now Bodo are ready to cash in, and the reported price is “north of £7 million”.

And there, my friends, is where the record scratches and the music stops.

Because £7 million to actually buy a proven, in-form striker is precisely the sort of number that sends the absent meddling golfer reaching for the beta blockers.

You know the two magic numbers by now.

Three million to buy a player, twenty-five million to sell one.

Anything above the buy ceiling needs an email, a signature, and a favourable tee time in Barbados.

Every pound is a prisoner in Desmond’s world.

So forgive me if I don’t start clearing a space in the trophy cabinet just yet.

And then, right on cue, out trots a homegrown kid to tell us all to calm down and trust the process.

Colby Donovan, bless him, was wheeled out to say this:

Yeah. But you have to put your trust in the board that they’ll make the right decisions. We just go out on the park and play our football.

Trust the board.

Read that again.

Trust the board that lowballed Marcelo Saracchi and wanted to take him on loan instead.

Trust the board that let Iheanacho’s extension option expire, then briefed their “media partners” a pile of nonsense about a £47k wage demand to cover their own tracks, as I laid out yesterday.

Really?

Trust the board that has turned a double-winning summer into a jumble sale.

I don’t blame the boy for a second.

He’s 19, he says what he’s told to say, and he goes and plays his football.

But trust the board?

I’d sooner trust Hugh Nostradamus Keevins with my pension.

Meanwhile, the one target that actually excites me is the one we’ll almost certainly fumble.

Haissem Hassan.

Egypt’s World Cup man, a €12 million release clause at Real Oviedo, and Celtic apparently convinced they can “land him for less”.

Land him for less.

There it is again.

Premium player, bargain-shop bid, and Marseille circling like they mean it.

Anybody fancy placing a bet on how that one ends?

I’ll wait.

Credit where credit is due, mind.

Camilo Duran has come in from Qarabag, cost a reported £6 million, and already has two goals in two pre-season outings.

Silent Mike must have had a lie down after signing off on that one.

So it can be done.

The club can, on occasion, open the chequebook and buy a footballer.

It just does it once, blinks, and goes back to sleep.

The bottom line is the fans have already delivered their verdict, and they delivered it on Saturday.

Thousands of them swerved the Middlesbrough friendly entirely.

An empty stand is not apathy.

An empty stand is a message.

As I said this morning, this has gone way beyond a “civil war” at Celtic, and an empty stand at a pre-season friendly is what the closing stages of a regime looks like.

And no amount of Kyogo-shaped filler dressed up as a “transfer story” is going to bring those people back through the turnstiles.

Sign Hogh, if he’s real, and back your manager for once.

Or keep floating 31-year-olds and Egyptian bargains you’ll never actually close, and watch the stands empty further.

We already know which one it’ll be, don’t we?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, does it?

Aren’t we just blessed?

Oh, what a summer of joy!

As evidenced on Saturday by this happiest happy clapping stand of happiness.

Yay!

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