Ibrox’s Latest Nonsensical Price Tag Simply Sets Their Fans Up For Disappointment.

The papers are filling up today with the latest dreck.

This time it’s not Kent or Morelos or Aribo, three players soon to be out of contract and thus worth less than they already were, which is far less than all the media build-up about them …. this time the propaganda machine is focussed on Calvin Bassey who, after one good season, is getting hyped to the max.

Hysteria is the order of the day, with clowns like Nicholas suggesting that they should be looking for Kieran Tierney style money for him. That’s barmy, but it’s actually pretty reflective of some of the other nonsense that is in the media at the moment.

The thing that all the people making this case have in common is that nobody has ever trusted them with a budget.

Few of them have ever been managers.

Of those who have spent time in a dugout, none has ever been at a club where the spending of that sort of money is even a remote possibility, and so we should put as much store in their opinions on this as we would Kris Boyd’s views on particle physics.

Bassey is not remotely worth the £25 million Nicholas seems to believe.

The kind of people who are allowed to make a judgement call like that would never sanction that sort of deal in a million years. The supposition is that Gerrard will want him; based on what, I don’t know.

But people do believe it. Yet even if it were true, the implication that will pay Ibrox whatever it wants to secure his signature is ridiculous if we’re being generous.

Gerrard has his own bosses to answer to.

His budget for the coming campaign will not be limited when compared to ours or the one across the city, but in comparison to other teams in that league he might as well be rooting around in the bargain bin.

There is no chance whatsoever of him taking a punt that large on anything but a proven talent. He will not do so on some one season wonder. Nobody else with any sense of responsibility would do it either.

As incredible as it might seem when you consider the prices down there, there are far better players out there in his position available for far less. All across Europe there are talents who are capable of blossoming into top class footballers … we’ve signed a few of them down through the years, with Van Dijk certainly the worthiest amongst them.

We paid £6 million for him. Even when he transferred to England a couple of years later, he went for E13 million … not the sky-high numbers the media is talking about here. Furthermore, he arrived at Celtic on the back of over 60 games in Holland’s top flight.

Kieran Tierney left Celtic after 170 games, of which more than 40 were in Europe. He was a full international, and the scouts from England had been sniffing around him for a long time before he departed Scotland. The interest in him was not theoretical; it was real, and it was no surprise that he went to a giant club and not a mid-table EPL side.

There is no comparison between Tierney and Bassey.

Even now, Tierney is only 24 years old.

Bassey is only two years younger, so where’s he been all this time?

He played 11 games for Leicester, and they let him leave on a free. He 76 career appearances in total.

This is his first full season of football, and you might say it’s been impressive … but not that impressive when you consider that Kieran had an armful of honours and awards when he left Celtic Park.

Being in the Europa League Squad of the Tournament is being touted as some proof that he is destined for great things; Tavernier and Kent were in that same team and we all know that the idea that either of them is an elite footballer is ridiculous.

I had a good look at some of the Teams of The Tournament from previous years and you know what I found? Players who were not already in a top five league are invariably still at the clubs they were at.

Most notable, from last year’s team, are Dominik Livakovi? and Mislav Orši?, who were Dinamo Zagreb when they made the squad for last season’s tournament. Guess what? Both of them are still at Zagreb. Lukáš Provod of Sparta Prague made last year’s squad too … he remains a player at that club, playing in the Czech league.

Top clubs were not beating a path to the doors of these footballers.

Almost half of last season’s team of the tournament play their football at Villarreal, who are one of the miracle teams of the last 24 months. Not only did they win last season’s Europa League but they then got all the way to the Champions League semis.

You would have thought that winning a European trophy would have seen the bulk of their squad depart for bigger things, comparatively speaking; not one of their Team of the Year players did so.

I guarantee that they will now, with their Champions League exploits adding to their value and profile.

Bassey is not going to leave Ibrox for £25 million or anything remotely near that.

All the Ibrox PR machine is doing is setting the fans up for another big disappointment, and greater disillusionment.

That club has no sense of proportion or realism, and part of the reason why is that they are surrounded by people who talk this kind of nonsense, and they swallow it all.