The story yesterday about how Everton owe Rangers around £8M for Nathan Patterson is only bizarre that it’s news, not that it’s fact.

‘Football finance expert’ Kieran Maguire (who gets regularly rolled out for clickbait articles) suggested the Goodison side are still to shell out half of the fee, but the only bewildering aspect is that this could in any way be news.

Any football fan who thinks Man City gave Villa £100M clean for Jack Grealish is more than a spot naïve – indeed, in order to stay within FFP rules and generally behave one’s self responsibly, the majority of transfer fees most definitely are NOT paid up front.

It’s usually instalments, on an agreed basis, simply because clubs don’t have £20M disposal cash lying around catching dust, far less £100M.

So the deals are usually agreed instalment-based – Ajax and Southampton still owe Rangers as well, the amount we wouldn’t guess (as Maguire IS guessing on Patterson) but while addons for Patterson’s fee (and Bassey and Aribo’s) will take the fee to the full gross amount, even the net amount is instalment-based.

Rangers are still paying off Ianis Hagi’s deal, a particularly good one, a £3M deal paid £1M per year, and this is how most transfers tend to be done.

So it’s not really news that Everton owe us for Patterson, it’s generally standard football practise.

Be more surprising if all the cash was actually in our coffers already.