A number of years ago Rangers were strongly linked with Kilmarnock’s Greg Taylor and Dundee’s Jack Hendry. Indeed, information is both were quite close.

Both of these two ended up at Celtic instead for a combined cost of £3M.

Taylor was benched today in favour of Milan flop Diego Laxalt, while Hendry flopped too and ended up in some football backwater.

Rangers, ‘unfortunately’, ended up with Borna Barisic instead of Taylor, and Filip Helander instead of Hendry for a total fee of around £4M.

Fate, you would have to say, is a cruel mistress and Rangers have ended up with at least one, maybe two world class players for roughly the same cash it took for Celtic to have two epic fails on their hands.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, truly, and Rangers can be absolutely delighted we dodged those bullets.

We could have ended up with a guy who can’t get off the bench till the 85th minute at Parkhead for the biggest match of the season, or a guy who crumbled there and ended up out in some God knows where forsaken football land.

Instead we have to make do with a £30M left back who strolls it for the world cup finalists every international break, and a Swede who is close to securing a starting jersey for his country and who has demonstrated just how good he is this season.

One million difference between these two scenarios.

Is this what they call ‘sliding doors’?