Chris Sutton has revealed that while he was playing for Blackburn there were rumours of a move to Ibrox.
Alongside Alan Shearer he had helped take the 1995 EPL title to Ewood Park as the money started to flow through English football.
A year after the title win Shearer was a world record £15m signing for Newcastle United, three years later it cost Chelsea £10m to take Sutton to Stamford Bridge.
At that stage, with the help of the Bank of Scotland, some of the biggest fees in the game were coming out of Ibrox with £5.5m used in 1998 to take Andrei Kanchelskis to join the Dick Advocaat revolution.
Sutton did take the scenic route from Blackburn to Glasgow but could just as easily have ended up on the blue side.
Discussing the current transfer situation In the Daily Record he recalled his own situation:
We are getting back to a situation where Rangers are every bit as attractive a proposition as Celtic. They would be even more attractive if they can win the title.
It was like that in my playing days. There were a few sniffs about interest in me from Ibrox when I was at Blackburn but nothing concrete. They signed Tore Andre Flo instead, mind you.
But we also saw it with John Hartson. It’s well-known how close he came to moving to Rangers but he ended up across the city.
Back then most players coming north of the border would have had a sniff at both clubs. If one declared an interest, the agent would immediately go to the other and at that stage it could come down to something as simple as wages.
Celtic paid a club record fee of £6m to sign Sutton from Chelsea in July 2000, within 13 months Neil Lennon and John Hartson had been signed for the same fee. Eleven days into the transfer window Celtic fans are still waiting on the club’s first signing of 2020.
