No one likes the phoney war.

The waiting is nearly over. Glasgow’s Fitba feud is about to resume.Experts on either side try and divide some meaning from the close season and the pre-season.

In the meantime we in Ireland have the Gah.

Tomorrow’s match  between Roscommon V Mayo is anything but meaningless.

However, if you’re not part of that world then this is the summer were the fix of soccer adrenalin is most acutely felt as there is no World Cup or European championship to maintain the dosage of elation and schadenfreude (that’s what you feel when Germany beat England).

This summer all the Fitba has had to sustain him is transfer rumours and little else.

These non-competitive games are really for the benefit of the players and the coaching staff.

It’s about the four Fs: Fitness, Formation, familiarity and Form.

Just getting the legs going again, then working out if last season’s 442 really would be better as a 433.

Also bringing in a new bunch of players and getting them to act and think as one.

The Task that Wim Jansen had to do at Celtic comes to mind when he was presented with a clutch of players who had never played together before. I doubt he cared much how the pre-season worked out.

Finally the manager must ask himself “who is playing out of their skin, who is knocking on the door up from the reserves?”

The manager can learn all of this in a three nil trouncing by Faroese fishermen.

As long as those minnows don’t gaff you in euro qualifiers.

Meaningless friendless, funnily enough, have no meaning.

That, however, isn’t good enough for the true addict. He (and it usually is a he) needs Fitba meaning in ever turn of the back page, in every rumour.

In recent years another “F” has been added: Finance.

Celtic travelled to Australia only a few days into their pre-season to “build the brand” in the antipodes.

In two weeks they will take part in a pre-season tournament after the season has started.

Once more it’s a Harlem Globetrotter gig in Dublin for the paying punters.

Every summer it’s always the same. The close season is meaningless. Yet many forget this basic truth.

Rangers recently played several matches in Germany and lost all of them.

Significance? Zero.

Some years back a similar spate of results for Celtic had the famous cracked crest in the daily Record.

Of course that was back in the day when they thought that Celtic supporters HAD to buy their newspaper.

Wrong.

Today a Celtic team were beaten by Partick Thistle.

Significance?

Zero.

Soon it will matter again.

Rangers, with the best goalie in Scotland and the core of a championship winning team should be the bookie’s favourites.

What has changed on that side of the city is the manager.

Perhaps only now will people get a handle on what a brilliant organiser of journeyman Walter Smith was.

For Glasgow’s Fitba tribes the phoney war is nearly over.