As Celtic quietly get on with their recruitment, the Ibrox side receive ‘invaluable’ transfer advice from ‘expert’ Graeme Souness. Aren’t they just blessed?

Yesterday it was Barry Ferguson with the wig and the gown.

Today it’s Graeme Souness with a clipboard and a lanyard.

Tomorrow it’ll be somebody else, because there is now a queue forming outside Ibrox, and not one of the men standing in it is actually going to go in and do the job.

I wrote yesterday about Barry appointing himself defence counsel for Staunch Del, a thousand words of it, three games into the man’s reign, because he can hear us laughing and it is killing him.

Well, Mark Pirie in the Record has this morning’s instalment, and it’s a beauty.

Graeme Souness turns Rangers transfer advisor as he gives final answer on official Ibrox return.

Transfer advisor.

The man is 73.

He last picked a player for that club in 1991.

And he is now the recruitment brain they’re leaning on with three weeks of the window left.

Jesus wept.

Here is the actual advice, and I want you to weigh up what a club would pay for it.

Souness was asked by the Sunday Post whether he would sign a player on the recommendation of analytics.

Not a chance. That would be a recipe be for disaster.

Stats can be very confusing. There was a stat 10 or 12 years ago. (Per) Mertesacker, who played for Arsenal as a centre-back had the most completed passes of all Premier League players is England.

He was centre-half, playing for Arsenal, passing 10 yards there and 10 yards there. Of course, he’s going to be the most successful passer of the ball.

That’s it.

That’s the case against modern recruitment, and the evidence for the prosecution is a Per Mertesacker passing statistic from around 2014.

A German centre-half who retired eight years ago, sideways-passing his way into an argument about a club that has just spent north of £20 million in a single summer.

Look, I’ll give him this much.

I’ll be fair here, because the underlying point about character isn’t wrong.

You do want to know how a player reacts after he’s misplaced two passes.

You do want to know whether the striker still wants the ball after he’s missed a sitter.

Nobody is arguing with that.

But that is a scout’s job, and a coach’s job, and a Director of Football’s job, and every single one of those roles is a salaried position inside a football club rather than a newspaper column.

And then, because he cannot help himself, he tells you exactly how he used to do it.

But then, of course, you meet them. I think it’s called tapping up. Guilty.

Guilty.

Said with a wink, printed without a follow-up question, and not one soul in the Stenography Corps thought to ask him about it.

Imagine, just for one second, a Celtic manager of any era putting that in print.

Could you Imagine the week we’d have?

Imagine Keevins.

Of course, when it’s an Ibrox legend admitting to it in a Sunday paper, it’s a charming anecdote about the old days, isn’t it?

It always is.

Then comes the line he thinks is a warning, and it’s actually a confession.

I think the pressure is enormous on all the players who come to play for Rangers or Celtic. If you finish second, you’re deemed a failure. That’s the price on the ticket.

That’s the price on the ticket.

Ten signings in the door, five more promised by Andrew Cavenagh, £7 million going on Couhaib Driouech, an injury crisis, Chermiti and Rommens crocked, and a 2-1 hole to climb out of against Jagiellonia on Thursday night.

Five points behind us on the 13th of August.

By his own measure, the ticket has already been priced, and they cannot afford it.

But here’s the part that makes the whole column collapse in on itself.

The same piece confirms that Souness has ruled out ever going back in an official capacity.

He sat down with James Bisgrove in 2023, informal talks were held, and nothing came of it.

The murmurs started again after the American takeover, and he has shut the door on it entirely.

I’m not interested. Those days are gone.

I sleep at night. I’m 73, I have the most wonderful life.

And do you know what?

Fair enough.

Genuinely, no sarcasm from me on that one.

A man of 73 talking about lost pals, and about making the most of what he has left, is entitled to every bit of the peace he’s earned.

I wouldn’t take that from anybody.

But you don’t get both.

You don’t get to sleep at night, keep the wonderful life, decline the responsibility, and then tell the man who did take the job how to spend twenty million quid.

That isn’t expertise.

That’s a pundit’s fee.

Meanwhile, over at Celtic Park, nobody is asking Chris Sutton how to run a scouting department.

We have our own problems, and I’ve spent most of this summer roaring about them.

But at least the arguments we’re having are with the people who actually work there.

Michael Nicholson. Dermot Desmond. Martin O’Neill.

The men whose names are on the paperwork.

At Ibrox, the analysis comes from Barry on a Tuesday and Graeme on a Wednesday, and the two of them between them have all the answers and none of the accountability.

The defence lawyer and the transfer consultant.

Neither of whom will be anywhere near the building when it goes wrong on Thursday.

Aren’t they just blessed?

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