GIVEN the frantic and increasingly desperate nature of the transfer dealings down south this week it would not have been a huge surprise to learn Chelsea had slapped in a late £50m bid for the woman that locks up at Liverpool’s training ground or the guy at Man City that washes Pep Guardiola’s car.

In England it seems every player has a price and clubs are often more than willing to ignore it and offer miles over that value regardless. In a world where money is effectively no object, what harm adding another ten million or more on to a transfer fee if it means getting your man? That a large number of clubs still failed to land their top targets despite having the entire summer to do so only adds to the farcical nature of the situation.

It all serves as lively light entertainment but is the most reckless fashion in which to conduct business. Chief executives in other lines of work must shake their head repeatedly in dismay. Whatever happened to sticking to a carefully-crafted and prudent business plan?

In Scotland it was a rather more sedate and sensible affair. And for that we ought to be glad. If for a while we used to watch what was going on across the border with wishful envy, then in recent years that feeling has been replaced by a sensation that English football has metamorphosed into a vulgar caricature of itself. £45m for Kyle Walker and £40m for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain - who wants to live in a world where that is accepted as rational behaviour?

The bubble may eventually burst in English football but don’t expect it to happen any time soon. As long as broadcasters are willing to continue feeding the machine by offering billion-pound TV deals then clubs will continue splurging excessive sums on average players just because they can. Just like the housing crash, however, the market will eventually overheat and collapse. Perhaps subscribers will become fed up with paying increasingly hefty subscriptions to Sky and/or BT and simply decide it is a household bill they can live without. When that starts to happen in significant numbers, alarm bells should ring at clubs all around England.

Scottish football has already had that watershed moment, albeit on a much smaller scale. The speculate-to-accumulate policy backed by a shaky TV deal around the turn of the century eventually proved unsustainable and many clubs, who had been paying extortionate wages to journeymen plodders, suffered the consequences. Most have been repenting at leisure ever since.

That has been no bad thing in the long run. Scottish football can no longer be built on a platform made of straw. Clubs have had to cut their clothes accordingly, take on more prudent measures and only pay what they can afford. If that has meant an increased reliance on cultivating a youth programme rather than wasting wages on a one-season wonder, then that can only be positive.

Scottish football needs to forge its own identity rather than simply wishing it had the riches of the English or the other major European nations. If anything, our other qualities should be shouted even louder from the rooftops.

Most clubs are giving young players a chance and that is something that should be emphasised as much as possible. Many clubs are also small enough to retain a community feel where fans feel a distinct part of things, their voices heard and reacted to. Even at the city-based teams there is still, for the most part, a positive connect between directors, managers, players and fans that many English clubs can only wish for. If Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and the rest have merely become corporate behemoths where the assets are £50m-rated footballers, then Scottish football should welcome the fact that it is still small enough for everyone to feel a genuine part of it.

If things sometimes take a turn for the farcical, then so be it. Whether it is Mark McGhee cursing at a camera-phone, Rod Stewart looking more like Rod Hull as he conducts a Scottish Cup draw or the Rangers manager addressing supporters from a bush, these are the events that make Scottish football what it is. An ability to laugh at ourselves is one of our most admirable traits as a nation and in a sporting setting we have usually needed that sense of self-deprecating humour more than most. It is who we are. We should embrace that difference, rather than wishing we could be more like those wasting millions down the road.