Rangers’ multi-million pound babies…

Historically speaking Rangers (and Celtic) have always been selling clubs. It’s part of the football cycle and our best players are usually found by our wily scouts and signed for sub £3M before being sold to English sides for double or even triple.

Barry Ferguson, our youth player, sold for £8.5M to Blackburn.

GVB, signed for £4M and sold for over double that.

Cuellar, sold for almost four times what we paid.

Boumsong, sold for a sweet £8M profit. It goes on and on.

With Rangers of the past six years, it definitely hasn’t been the case. We have sold ourselves short and failed badly to get the right amount for our best assets. Circa £2M for Josh Windass and Declan John combined was a borderline disgrace, and the humiliation of £1.5M for Barrie McKay remains to this day.

But in a stronger position, we can and will command more. And with the superb start our summer signings have made (Goldson, Katic and Barisic for sure are already worth well over double what we paid for them) there are already notions of January sales at large profit.

Apparently small rumours have already surfaced linking Goldson with a big-profit switch back to England next year, with Newcastle touted.

Fact is, Goldson is an outstanding defender whose health meant Brighton rather left him to rot on their bench. All of their supporters were disappointed to lose him, and we’re seeing why. And now with first team football under his belt and coping perfectly with the weight of the shirt, Connor Goldson is showing just what a defender he is and why he is a slim candidate for an England call in the future.

Right now, Goldson is an easy £6M defender and with continued performances will stroll up to the £10M mark. Then there’s Katic. He’s a different defender. Less cerebral and more dirty – and the perfect foil for Goldson. He cost only £2M from Slaven Belupo, but is easily worth double now and with continued progress will reach similar price levels to his English team mate. And a flying fullback with Croatian caps? You do the maths.

Rangers will definitely be tested in January. There will be interest in our star performers. But if our management team and scouting network continue to produce the goods they have so far, even if we were to sell these outstanding talents in the winter, we’d trust them to replace with similarly forgotten or unearthed gems at low prices.

But this, all this, is of course in the future. We’d rather keep these guys and grow with them – we’re not advocating sales. It can only be a great reflection of the state of the Gerrard regime that our recently-signed players have quickly become assets and valuable.

The way it should be.