By Keith Jackson
Something significant is already well underway in the latest chapter of the ongoing tussle for domestic dominance in Scottish football.
Celtic – having made the place their own over the last decade and a half – have made a strategic decision not to allow the grass to grow under their feet, now that there’s a new sheriff on the other side of town.
Now that health insurance tycoon Andrew Cavenagh and his well healed associates from the San Francisco 49ers have claimed control at Rangers, those in charge of keeping the champions on their perch are getting their retaliation in first.
Four new signings have been paraded at their Lennoxtown HQ already, with Kierean Tierney the crown jewel in a rapidly constructed recruitment drive which has also brought in highly rated Swede Benjamin Nygren, keeper Ross Doohan and Fulham’s young gun Callum Osmand.
A fifth new addition will follow imminently as left sided defender Hayato Inamura makes his way to Glasgow from the Far East.
Five new arrivals all signed, sealed and delivered before the end of the opening week of July?
That’s not the way Celtic fans are used to seeing their club go about its business in the transfer market and it points to a leadership which is determined to put its foot to the floor while their new American neighbours are still settling into the house next door.
The plan seems pretty clear. To put as much distance between the pair of them as possible in order to make the gap at the top even more unbridgeable that may previously have seemed.
And this, let’s not forget, is a club which has been monopolising this country’s silverware by stock piling 13 of the last 14 top flight titles on top of seven Scottish Cups and eight League Cups all secured over the same period.
That’s a quite staggering haul of 28 trophies in 14 years. During the same stretch Rangers have won just three.
So Cavenagh and his consortium already had its work cut out which, ultimately, is precisely why the previous dysfunctional Rangers board was happy to hand over the baton in the first place.
They had been beaten over the head by it for way too long and by selling up, they also acknowledged they had been locked into a playground fight which they were simply not adequately equipped to win.
And yet, throughout, there were Celtic supporters out there who regularly accused their own club of not doing enough to grind their old rivals down into the dust.
In their view, the men in charge of their own club were content so long as they did just enough – and spent the minimum amounts required – in order just to stay one or two steps ahead.
Enough to keep the cabinet stuffed by domestic goodies and the bank balance bloated by UEFA’s reward money.
While that may have seemed like a fairly sound business plan to the rest of us it didn’t satisfy the hunger of those fans who wanted Celtic’s ambitions to be extended way beyond the club’s own borders.
And yet, in the real world, the board’s approach made perfect sense. They could have emptied the financial tank on chasing an impossible European dream and ended up with nothing but a succession of bloody noses for their trouble – dished out to them in the big boys’ playground.
Winning the Champions League is simply not a realistic aim. But getting even richer by accessing it more often than not? Supporter entitlement aside, it’s hard to see a flaw in the thinking.
But it does now feel as if the recent transfer of power at Ibrox is being met by a reaction.
This perceived raised level of potential threat has got the likes of chairman Peter Lawwell and chief executive Michael Nicholson back on their toes now that the summer market is open for business.
Four new faces in place already and a fifth well on the way. And it feels as if this is only just for starters.
A major overhaul of the squad which Brendan Rodgers has built over these last two seasons is hardly required. The manager and his players are already some distance clear of the rest.
Rather, Rodgers is looking to make the small tweaks which will make his starting XI even stronger than it already was. And that means further reinforcements can be expected before his work is done.
Having sanctioned the sale of talisman Kyogo Furuhashi midway through last season – and without having a replacement striker lined up at the time – Rodgers is well within his rights to demand a significant sum is set aside for that area of his team before the September 1 deadline.
Indeed, it would constitute a major surprise if Celtic don’t allow him to spend lavishly on at least one major front line target and especially – but not necessarily – if he succeeds in leading the club back into European football’s most lucrative competition.
And, against this backdrop of financial muscle flexing and carefully focussed spending, Cavenagh and his US backers must attempt to finance something even more impressive if Rangers are to make themselves credible again over the course of the coming campaign.
Celtic may have calculated that the scale of the task confronting the Americans is already too big and that, in all probability, it will be close to impossible for them to turn so much around, or at least to do it quickly enough to make a decent fist of things next season.
That seems like a reasonable assessment. But it has not stopped the champions from mounting a quick, coordinated response.
If an arms race is on the way in Glasgow’s eternal battle for supremacy then Celtic are getting tooled up accordingly for it already.
What comes next, over the course of these coming weeks, promises to be very much worth the watching.