The first week in June is the dark side of the moon as far as domestic football supporters are concerned.
Everyone can get whipped up in the excitement of the international side when when it comes to the sides they love most, they’ve lost all forms of contact and it’s rumour and speculation left to fill the abyss.
It’a hokey-cokey time with an obsession with ins and outs – and it’s no wonder Rangers fans are the ones doing the dance right now.
They are scouring for clues, pouring over the slightest bit of information and trying to work out if it’s a sign.
Look, Calvin Bassey’s drinking a Blue WKD on his hols – he must be staying!
Joe Aribo is walking through an airport whistling I’m Feeling It – he’s going nowhere!
Oh no, is that a For Sale sign out of Alfredo Morelos' gaff?
You can’t blame them. These are slightly uncertain times on Glasgow’s South Side.
The Ibrox legions are rightly still basking in the warm glow of a campaign that might not have delivered the big rewards they craved, but it did deliver memories that will last a lifetime.
There’s no trophy for beating Leipzig or making an exodus to Seville, but there will be tales told over a pint or two in 20 years time.
But that doesn’t mean the club can stand still waiting for the nostalgia to kick in – because there’s serious business to be done right now.
The problem is, no one really knows what the scale of the job will be.
Gio van Bronckhorst might just need to make a few tweaks and his squad will be ready to go again.
Likewise, the Dutchman might need to perform a pretty hefty rebuild.
In reality, it will be somewhere in between.
What Van Bronckhorst can’t afford is to be left with the same uncertainty towards the end of the transfer window.
The ducks need to be in a row as soon as possible as the Champions League qualifiers come round quick and the Premiership fight will be as intense as ever next term.
There’s not much Rangers can do with fevered chat around Bassey. The big fella is under contract and if some EPL outfit fancies a sizeable punt, then it will come down to the player being keen and the cash being right.
It’ll need to be some wedge to land the defender right enough. Celtic fans scoff about the £25m chat and the comparisons to Kieran Tierney.
They say Tierney played more than 150 games for Celtic, won a stack of silverware and did the business in the Champions League, while Bassey’s body of work is an impressive last six months or so.
That’s not really the point. Bassey has been brilliant in recent times but he’s more about potential.
You can see a ball playing centre back built like a brick outhouse in the youngster, and that’s the kind of thing English sides look for these days.
It’s not Bassey who is the issue for Gers though.
Alfredo Morelos, Joe Aribo and Ryan Kent are heading in to the final year of their contracts and it is coming up to stick or twist time.
It’s a tricky one through. Fans think the simple solution is just stick the three of them on new deals, they either stay longer or make the club more dosh.
That’s easier said than done. Just ask Celtic. Odsonne Edouard and Kris Ajer let their deals run down to the final 12 months and it knocked millions off their valuations.
Ajer in particular. Brentford nabbed a guy who’d captained Norway for just £13.5m, but Celtic couldn’t complain too much. They wanted to keep hold of him an extra year for the 10 bid and it backfired big time.
You can’t force a player to sign a new deal when they know the lower their transfer cost the more likely they are of attracting attention and banking a chunky signing on fee.
Some might even like the idea of another year in Glasgow and then seeing their options as a free agent.
Good for them, not so much for the club.
It’s a minefield.
The good thing for Gers is they no longer have any real need to sell this summer thanks to the epic European run.
But that dosh won’t last forever and assets are only assets when they are locked in for the long term.
Rangers have to walk a tightrope. Do they set a deadline for them to sign a new deal or find one elsewhere, with no guarantees they’ll play ball?
Or sit tight and hope these guys can get the club to the Champions League group stage where the dosh made will offset any losses in transfer fees?
That would be a decent scenario and the carrot of that competition might even persuade them to pen new contracts to further add to their value.
There’s no right or wrong answer when you’re dancing on the shifting sands of the transfer market.
That’s no comfort to Gers fans who are on the dark side of the moon while desperate to keep hold of their stars.
