Dream Celtic transfer window means only Rangers regime change will halt an unbridgeable chasm – Keith Jackson

With one week still to go before the end of the January sales, it’s beginning to feel as if Celtic are showboating around their own boardroom already.

Put it this way, it doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to envisage chairman Peter Lawwell doing keepy-uppies at one end of the big oak table and CEO Michael Nicholson lollipopping stepovers and nutmegging a chair at the other.

Because right now the pair of them are smashing the window to pieces while enabling manager Brendan Rodgers to take his team to an entirely new level. And, let’s face it, Scotland’s champions were already some considerable distance ahead of all the rest before Lawwell and Nicholson started pulling all manner of rabbits out of their respective hats.

It’s worth stating here the sleight of hand involved in pulling this all together has been nothing short of remarkable. Having been bounced against their will into sanctioning the sale of talisman Kyogo Furuhashi, Celtic’s hierarchy have responded in rapid and emphatic fashion.

In Kieran Tierney and Jota, they are about to seal the return of two much loved prodigal sons previously sold for a combined sum of £50million. Tierney will arrive as a free transfer from Arsenal while Celtic will welcome Jota back from Rennes with open arms while still being a couple of million quid up on the deal which takes a 30-year-old Kyogo to a relegation fight in France.

And – aged 27 and 25 and in spite of Tierney’s wretched history of injuries – it seems reasonable to assume both of these players may still have their best years still ahead of them. And plenty of them. It all adds up to a quite sensational bit of ducking and diving and it seems very likely that at least one further addition will be made in