Ally McCoist has been reliving the time that he almost brought Luca Modric to Rangers but the club was unable to come up with the £3.5m transfer fee needed to sign the Croatian.
No timeline is suggested for the mystery deal which sounds similar to the time that Alex McLeish almost brought Lionel Messi to Ibrox on loan from Barcelona.
McCoist walked out of Scotland in January 2007 to assist Walter Smith at Ibrox, 18 months later Modric joined Spurs in a £20m transfer, four years later he moved to Real Madrid in a £33m deal.
Listening in to his yarn on TalkSPORT, the Daily Record reports:
McCoist told TalkSPORT listeners: “I went to Zagreb to watch it, big derby game. Walter phoned me after the game and said ‘what do you think?’, I said they’ve got a wee boy in the middle of the park, he is absolutely outrageous.
“See how much money we have got, I think we could have got him, at that time, for about £3.5m, we didn’t have the money.”
And sparring partner Alan Brazil was quick as a flash in response.
He joked: “Thank god you didnae.”
McCoist responded: “Aw, Al, we didnae have the money, I said how much, about £3.5m, he (Walter) said we couldn’t afford it. What a football player.”
During Smith’s time in charge, Rangers used a disguised remuneration scam to sign players like Pedro Mendes, Edu and Steve Davis, players that they wouldn’t normally be able to afford.
McCoist took over as manager in 2011 signing Lee Wallace, Juan Mata, Matt McKay and Juan Ortiz in a memorable summer that led to European defeats to Malmo and Maribor and the decision to stop paying Income Tax and National Insurance to HMRC.
After he TUPE’d his contract to Sevco 5088 under Charles Green, Coisty splashed the cash on Kevin Kyle, Ian Black, Dean Shiels, Fran Sandaza and David Templeton.
Almost? Kind of sums up the corpulent speech challenged one’s career both as player and manager.
Delusions of adequacy.
They still haven’t got the money