Having hit the jackpot with Nathan Patterson, Rangers will be hoping there’s another tidy windfall on the way if Calvin Bassey decides the time is ripe to move on from Ibrox.
But Gers youth supremo Craig Mulholland insists the Light Blues won’t be satisfied with just one lottery win as he revealed the Light Blues are already planning for their next lucky dip into the English market.
Bassey was a £300,000 gamble when he was poached from Leicester’s academy two years ago.
The returns on that punt are set to pay out handsomely now though, with Ibrox chiefs confident they can hold out for a fee of around £25million on the back of a breakthrough campaign that saw the 22-year-old powerhouse centre-back take Europe by storm on the surge to Seville.
Their belief is further strengthened by the 12million notes they managed to squeeze out of Everton for Nathan Patterson, a player who when compared to Bassey’s achievements had barely made a ripple on the first-team scene before sealing his Goodison switch.
As hard as losing young talent - whether homegrown or pinched from clubs down south - is for the Ibrox faithful to stomach, it’s the stated policy of the club to now to rear their own starlets in the hope of generating vital profits.
And Mulholland reckons the successful sale of Patterson has only strengthened their resolve as Ross Wilson prepares to raid England again in the hope of finding fresh diamonds that can be polished up and sold on.
The academy boss - who confirmed Rangers have now raked in over £1million thanks to add-ons inserted into the £500,000 deal that took the then 15-year-old Billy Gilmour to Chelsea in 2017 - said of the Patterson deal: "It was massively important. We look at the eight figures we got for Nathan and the seven figures we now have for Billy Gilmour, a few other sales along the way, and the contingent sums and sell-ons we will get from these players as well.
“I think it was important from the board’s point of view that we provided that return on investment.
“For this academy it was important to see those outcomes.
“In the last five or six years, you look at Nathan, look at Billy, look at Leon King, Alex Lowry, Adam Devine, Charlie McCann and Cole McKinnon, there is a level of player coming out of the academy that the Rangers support can say they are proud at what we are starting to do.
“It is another area of the club, as we have gone on this rebuild, that is really functioning at a high level now. We want to get more of it, we want to be relentless.
“The sale of Nathan was important in terms of our player trading strategy. The other part of it is that we will always have interest in our players from down south, whether that is ones who break into the first team or younger players.
“At times, we accept that those guys will move on to EPL or other leagues.
“But, at the same time, our own recruitment team, headed by David Stevenson, have done a fantastic job and this summer, for example, will see a lot of recruitment come the other way using the FIFA cross border model to make sure we exploit that as well.
“Selling Nathan gives everyone belief that Rangers can not only be a club that wins but actually we can go and develop talent for a return on the investment as well.”
Mulholland is well aware the interest in rising stars works both ways across Hadrian’s Wall.
Brexit has made it difficult for English clubs to source young talent from abroad, so they are now increasingly turning their attention to Scotland in the hope of pinching our best prospects.
Rangers have already found that to their cost after being forced to accept a £350,000 offer for teenage striker Rory Wilson from Aston Villa after Steven Gerrard filled the Premier League giants in on the hotly-rated Ibrox kid’s potential
But Mulholland insists Gers should take that interest as a compliment after years of seeing their academy recruits being ignored by English scouts.
“There is a lot of speculation around players that other clubs might be interested in that we have here at Rangers,” Mulholland told RTV. “We look at it in a really positive way.
“Years ago when we started this project, we didn’t have much interest in our players. Now all our top talent has interest from down south and everywhere else. We see that as exciting.
“One, it means that our processes are producing a level of player that other clubs want to have. Secondly it means that if we get our player trading piece right, both across the first team and the academy side, it means that we can make a good return on the investment.
“But what we will also do, we will happily accept that some of the lads will move to a different destination, that is part of their journey.”
Gers have again signed up their B-team to take part in the Lowland League next year alongside Celtic and Hearts.
It’s proved a controversial experiment but Mulholland insists it’s a vital pathway that will eventually benefit both Gio van Bronckhorst’s first team and Steve Clarke’s Scotland set-up.
He said: “We’re trying to expose our players to first-team football as early as we possibly can and the Lowland League has been outstanding in that sense.
“By the end of the season we ended up with twelve graduates that had played in the first team and that wouldn’t have happened if those B team players had been on loan.
“If you watch the interviews with Alex Lowry, Cole McKinnon and Adam Devine after they played at Tynecastle, they all reference the Lowland League’s importance.
“The loan model is really important to us as well but I think that when we reflect on it now, the B team was a massive success.
“Alex and Leon are now called up to the Scotland Under-21 squad when they are actually Under-19 players. When you see that progress it is really important and I think a big part of that has been down to our involvement in the Lowland League.”
