Celtic are riding high, and Michael Gannon has turned up with a brolly to burst the bubble. The annoying thing is, he’s not entirely wrong, is he?

There’s an old saying that you should never trust a sunny morning in Glasgow.

Michael Gannon of the Record has clearly taken that one to heart.

Because the mood around Celtic Park this weekend is about as good as it has been in two years, and the Record man has arrived at the party with a golf umbrella and a wet fish.

Now, I wrote a piece yesterday morning arguing that we finally look like a club with a strategy while the Ibrox side is drowning in strategic chaos.

I stand by every word of it.

But I also finished that article by saying that one good fortnight does not buy back three bad windows, and that everything I’d written would be re-marked at about twenty to ten on Wednesday night.

So when Gannon turned up a few hours later saying almost exactly the same thing in his own words, I could hardly go looking for the pitchforks, could I?

Because the thing about the man’s article is that it isn’t a hit job, it’s a warning, and there is a difference.

The headline on it reads “Celtic £30m transfer splurge still risks Champions League bellyflop and my LASK experience shows rain is never far away”, and for once the sprawl is doing a job.

Here’s how he opens it.

The skies erupted with the kind of biblical downpour last seen when Noah was ushering pairs of pets on to his ark.

That’s Linz, 2014.

The last time we played LASK, back when they were LASK Linz and about as threatening as a damp dishcloth.

Gannon was standing outside the old Linzer Stadion getting soaked to the undercrakers with the rest of the hacks while Germany were putting seven past Brazil on their phones.

And he uses it to remind us all what was happening at Celtic that particular summer.

Scott Brown and James Forrest out for three months.

Virgil van Dijk and Fraser Forster spending more time on the phone to agents than on a football pitch.

Aleksandar Tonev turning up days late.

Jo Inge Berget and Wakaso Mubarak arriving on loan to complete what he calls an unholy trinity, and I’d struggle to improve on that.

And then this absolute belter of a line.

Celtic wanted neither John Guidetti or Stefan Scepovic but accidentally ended up with the pair of them amid the midnight scramble on deadline day.

Accidentally ended up with the pair of them.

Jesus wept.

Weeks later we got lashed 6-1 by Legia Warsaw and then pumped out by Maribor in the Champions League play-off.

And what did we say afterwards?

We said we’d learn the lessons.

Lawwell said it, Nicholson has said it, and Brian “Unity” Wilson has said it, and Gannon has clocked exactly why that phrase keeps coming back around.

He points out that the recent versions came “albeit after underarm questions from club media”.

Underarm questions from club media.

The Daily Record just called our media partners exactly what they are, and I’ll happily take the assist.

But here’s the number in his article that I cannot get out of my head this morning.

Nine attempts at Champions League qualifiers.

Seven bellyflops.

Seven.

That is not bad luck.

No way.

That is not a bad night in Maribor.

That is a decade-long pattern of the same club making the same mistake, then holding a press conference to promise it won’t happen again.

And the Austrians waiting for us on Wednesday are not the middling outfit of twelve years ago.

They’ve moved house since then as well, into a fancy new gaff that’s waiting for us in the return leg.

So the question Gannon actually asks is the only one that matters, and it’s whether the penny has finally dropped this time.

His verdict is that we’ve gone from an F last summer to a B minus at best.

And do you know what?

I think that’s about right.

Around £30 million on Kasper Hogh, Camilo Duran, Haissem Hassan and Mika Baur is a serious outlay by the standards of this board.

But as Gannon himself notes, it wasn’t remotely reckless when there’s Daizen Maeda money already banked and a £22 million cheque for Arne Engels still to drop through the letterbox.

Net it all off and the real spend starts to look an awful lot less heroic.

Which is the point I keep making about the magic £3 million price range and every pound being a prisoner for the absent golfing meddler.

We didn’t suddenly discover ambition.

We discovered a manager who refused to be messed around, and a European tie we cannot afford to lose.

That’s not a plan. That’s a deadline.

And then Gannon lands the three punches that nobody at Celtic Park has an answer for.

Martin O’Neill should not have been standing there on Friday talking about a replacement for Arne Engels.

The replacement should already be in the building.

Alistair Johnston is the same story in reverse, because the boy was red hot after the World Cup, and now injury has ruled him out of next week and scuppered his move to Everton entirely.

We should have been ready to shake his hand and wish him well a fortnight ago.

Hot after a World Cup is not a permanent condition, it’s a window, and we let it close.

Then there’s the goalkeeper.

And the left back.

And the left wing.

Three positions, still unfilled, five days out from the biggest night of our season.

Five days out??

Hassan and Baur could have done with another fortnight to find their feet, and instead they may well be finding them in Austria on Wednesday.

Last night’s run out at Tannadice certainly won’t have been enough for them.

But considering how light our midfield is now after the departure of Arne Engels to West Ham, we may have not other option that to throw these guys in at the deep end against LASK.

Now, before anybody accuses me of doing a full 180 on my own article from yesterday, I’m not.

Everything I said about the Ibrox side stands.

Three head coaches in twelve months, three rebuilds stitched into one another, Driouech failing a medical, Chermiti’s knee, and Staunch Del standing in his platform brogues asking for a striker he was promised in June.

That is still chaos, and it is still funnier than it has any right to be.

But the whole point of what I wrote yesterday was that we do not get to laugh at their crisis management until we’ve proved we’ve stopped doing our own.

Gannon has just handed me the receipts on that.

Because a B minus is a pass.

A B minus is not a triumph.

And a B minus in August is worth precisely nothing if we’re sitting in the Europa League by ten o’clock on Wednesday night.

So here’s where I land on the man’s article, and it isn’t where I expected to land when I opened it.

He’s right.

Actually right, not “right” the way the SMSM is usually “right”, where they find a cloud over Celtic Park on a day when there isn’t one.

Right in the way a friend is right when they tell you something you already know and would rather not hear.

We have had a good fortnight.

We have not had a good three years.

The club has the financial wriggle room to spend another chunk without losing a wink of sleep.

There are still two weeks of this window left.

Two weeks to prove the penny has genuinely dropped, or to confirm we just got frightened into acting like a big club for a fortnight.

Gannon finishes by saying we still need to learn it’s better to buy a brolly beforehand, because the rain is never far away.

I’d go further than that.

We’ve been standing in the same downpour since 2014, soaked through, insisting it’s about to clear up.

Wednesday tells us whether we finally went out and bought the brolly.

But you’ve already got one eye on the forecast, haven’t you?

You have, don’t you…

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