RUEFUL IS a useful word for a football manager, suitable for all circumstances beyond his control. Having watched Spurs dispose of his side in Feyenoord's Jubilee Tournament on Friday, Gordon Strachan at least added a dash of humour to his doleful description of cruel reality.

Tottenham have just secured David Bentley's services for £17 million. A fine player, but not yet an automatic choice for England, and one committing himself to a club that finished 30 points behind Liverpool last season. Spurs and Bentley are ambitious, but they are a long way from the top of the English tree. So where does that leave Strachan's Celtic?

"What are our limits?" asked the manager rhetorically. "Do you get half a Bentley, a quarter of Bentley? Do we get a Bentley right leg?"

The truth is that this one player, all limbs attached, cost Juande Ramos and his board £4 million more than Strachan has been able to spend in the last year on (count them) Scott Brown, Massimo Donati, Scott McDonald, Andreas Hinkel, Barry Robson and Georgios Samaras.

Peter Lawwell, Celtic's chief executive, continues to sound positive about the possibility of further recruits, but the rumour mill is calibrated to match Celtic's financial discipline. Millions are millions - ask Thomas Gravesen, the £50,000 a week reserve - but Parkhead does not deal in double digits. The talk is of negotiations with Auxerre, Shakhtar Donetsk and West Brom. The price range, broadly speaking, is £2 million to £3 million. Buttons.

Contrast that with Spurs. The London club has been spending big in an effort to turn the English big four into a big five, but no bottom lines have been injured in the process. If - less of an if as the season approaches - Dimitar Berbatov heads for Old Trafford, and if Andrei Arshavin and Roman Pavlyuchenko can be signed, Tottenham will have achieved perfect financial symmetry this summer: £77 million in, say the analysts, and £77 million going out.

Perhaps we should repeat that for the benefit of Celtic fans: £77 million. Spurs have, in fact, spent a bit more than even that if you take the year as a whole - more, indeed, than any of the big four - but Ramos and his board have not put the club at risk. Berbatov will be sorely missed, but £30 million (or thereabouts) is £30 million.

So are Tottenham a vastly bigger club than Celtic? Not in terms of support, not in terms of turnover, and not in terms of recent attainment in Europe. English football at all levels has Sky money to burn (at Sunderland, Roy Keane has the cheque stubs to prove it) while Scotland enjoys the blessings of Setanta, albeit with a new, improved deal. Is that the whole story?

It certainly accounts for several chapters. The English Premiership these days embraces three constituencies: the super-rich quartet, a middle order doing very nicely while achieving nothing much, and the handful living in terror of relegation. What distinguishes the first two tiers is that one has European riches (and/or a Russian oligarch) while the other would dearly love a taste. If the hope is forlorn, there is Sky for consolation.

This is not, patently, the situation facing the Old Firm. Europe is crucial, financial restraint, these days, a necessity. Or so we are told. The argument is certainly plausible. Given the prices being paid in England even for middling players, a Champions League run alone does not cause the books to balance. Buying success is always risky, but spending fortunes with no realistic hope of a return is, they say, the road to perdition.

The fans don't care for that, and you cannot seriously blame them. They support authentically huge clubs condemned to muddle along, languishing in a backwater and denied access to the money river flooding the English game. But Lawwell would be an irresponsible chief executive if he sanctioned the purchase of half a Bentley. David Murray would be a poor excuse for a tycoon if he chose to absorb another £80m of debt out of his own pocket.

Walter Smith, like Strachan, understands all this. The failure even to score at home against the likes of FBK Kaunas is dispiriting. A £2.5 million deal to secure Madjid Bougherra from Charlton - is that now the benchmark? - hardly makes the pulse race. To hear that Smith has been approaching Sir Alex Ferguson in the hope of borrowing players surplus to Old Trafford requirements must confirm the worst fears of fans.

But what else is Smith supposed to do? Though his budget is not yet exhausted, he has spent less than £9 million (Alan Hutton, take a bow). Last week, Smith spoke of a "balancing act with the finances". He also noted that the "financial gap" - between Scotland and England - has existed "for a number of years". The deeper reality is that the gulf is widening with each passing season.

Could the Old Firm spend more? The fans' perennial inquiry is misconceived. Better to ask if their clubs could take on debt, lots of it, while hoping that the best players are prepared to spend their time facing Hibs or Hamilton in the hope that European competition - and big wages - will compensate them for their trouble.

Vast wealth does not guarantee success. Ask Chelsea and its frustrated owner, Mr Abramovich. The real risk for the Old Firm, however, is stagnation. The scale of their support guarantees that they will never sink to the level of the wider SPL. But as each straitened year passes, their right to hold their heads up in the company of clubs such as Spurs becomes increasingly questionable.

Two possibilities. First, nothing would be lost by another attempt to break into the Premiership. The chances are slim - strangely, English clubs are very attached to that Sky money - but the Old Firm are not spoiled for choices.

Secondly, an equally forlorn hope. Either or both of the clubs could take a punt, loosen the purse strings, and hope that this time the investment pays off. Clearly, there is no appetite for that sort of rash behaviour at Parkhead or Ibrox. But what, if anything, will they do instead?