Michael Nicholson is testing Celtic fan patience with spotlight now on him to swerve transfer apoplexy – Keith Jackson

Let's get one thing perfectly straight.

At some point, over the course of the next three weeks, Celtic will spend some significant sums of money. Of course they will, because failure to do so would represent a potentially catastrophic dereliction of duty and the men in charge of the Parkhead club simply aren’t foolish enough to fall into such an obvious trap.

They might not much like the idea of signing cheques just for the sake of it but the fact remains it would be entirely counterproductive should they baulk at the idea of loosening the purse strings while there is business still to be done during what is left of the current summer transfer window. For a start, they have an elite and ambitious manager to keep content and Brendan Rodgers has made no secret of his desire to sprinkle a bit of stardust ‘quality’ on a squad which was strong enough to help itself to two of the three domestic trophies up for grabs last season.

And they must also dig deep to prevent their own support from going into the kind of full scale rebellion which often leads to protests and public disorder in the car park. These fans are paying out hand over fist to fill their own stadium and kit themselves out in the club’s official merchandise and the last thing the board of directors need now is for them to start getting all militant again now that the club is back in charge of its own destiny in its own backyard.

With Rangers attempting to haul themselves out of a state of disrepair, the biggest enemy to Celtic’s supremacy is complacency itself which is precisely why all eyes are now locked onto the men in charge of keeping the till.

Rodgers actually did his under fire superiors a turn the other week when he stopped short of putting a number on