Stewart Robertson may just have lost Rangers around £20M

“We rate Morelos at least the same as Dembele in terms of value.”

These are the words which will haunt Stewart Robertson for the rest his spell as Rangers Managing Director, which he uttered in 2019, and then rejected a £16.5M bid the following year from Lille.

Morelos, of course, is now set to leave for diddly squat this summer, having, we understand, now signed a precontract with Spanish giants Sevilla.

Robertson’s words, and Rangers board in general, has cost the club a sum approaching £20M, the ballpark of Celtic’s former striker’s value, and this is, admittedly with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, an absolutely howling error which should really cost the MD his job.

As it happens, Robertson and Sporting Director Ross Wilson have become deeply unpopular among fans – as the two main heads of how Rangers operate as a business in the football world, these two are accountable for every success and failure the club is at the centre of.

And the Morelos bid in 2019 being rejected now looks like a deeply costly error, one which has lost Rangers around £20M, regardless of who was actually responsible for saying no.

Since that bid was rejected, Morelos’ body language has been extremely poor. He peaked in 2019, during that sensational Europa League run of his, and that led to the bid Lille put in around 6 months later.

Since then? While his numbers posted have been pretty alright (12 in 26, 11 in 25, 11 in 26) it’s worth noting that in his 6-year spell at Ibrox, he’s only actually played 171 of a possible 260 SPL matches – that’s notably over half. Domestically there can be few complaints on his goal tally (it’s basically 1 in 2) but his availability has been a lot less useful.

And his demeanour distinctly lacking.

There is no simple answer to Morelos’ time at Ibrox, but it’s gone on too long. And crucially, a £16.5M windfall is down the drain.

After all the hype of £30M transfer fees, the boy will end up cost us the £1M and that’s the end of his story.

A lot of that sits on Robertson…