Defective window leaves plenty room for reflection at Old Firm

NO ONE attached to either side of the Old Firm should be shouting from the rooftops over the way the transfer window worked out. Indeed, both clubs still don’t look like they really know what they are doing in terms of building for the future.

At Celtic, still without a technical director or recruitment chief, the squad looks short despite 12 new faces — a turnaround indicative of how the board allowed all the advantages of nine-in-a-row to dissolve through neglect.

Turning cartwheels over fees brought in for certain players rang hollow too. Getting £13.5million for Kris Ajer was good, but £15m for Odsonne Edouard as he entered the final year of his contract was no triumph.

This is a guy once spoken about as a £40m property. He was rated the best striker France had at Under-21s level and smashed their scoring records. That’s a high-level pedigree for a pretty low-level price.

Let’s not even go into why Leigh Griffiths got a new deal before going to Dundee or how Jack Hendry could be sold by Oostende for a healthy profit weeks after leaving Parkhead.

Over at Rangers, the mystery deepens. Their MD Stewart Robertson said they had to focus on selling. They didn’t. Instead, their main assets are closer to their contracts expiring with their values decreasing.

This is bearable as long as backers keep soaking up the losses, but it is not sustainable and it isn’t the supposed business model.

Manager Steven Gerrard, meanwhile, spoke about quality being more important than quantity — and signed Fashion Sakala, John Lundstram, Nnamdi Ofoborh and Juninho Bacuna.

Eager to avoid being branded an agendadriven SMSM goon, perhaps it is best to let Rangers fans themselves answer whether that is the kind of haul they anticipated.

Rather than indulging in tit-for-tat over who came out of the window best, punters at both clubs should be figuring out where the fortunes they pour into their favourites are going and asking: ‘What’s the plan?’.