Ally McCoist has admitted that he was priced out of a deal to bring Leicester City legend Jamie Vardy to Rangers during his spell as the Ibrox boss, speaking to the talkSPORT (24 June, 9.20am).
With the benefit of hindsight, the £1 million fee paid to bring a little-known non-league frontman to the King Power Stadium in 2012 is probably one of the best pieces of business conducted by any Premier League club since the turn of the century (BBC).
Eight years on, Vardy has firmly established himself as a modern-day great of English football.
This blood-thirsty shark of a striker inspired Leicester to Premier League glory in 2016 and, with 99 top-flight efforts to his name, he is on the verge of joining the exclusive 100-goal club.
So while Rangers may be one of the biggest and best-supported clubs in the whole of Europe, it’s fair to say Vardy won’t have any regrets about missing out on a move to Ibrox when he was still banging in the goals in England’s fifth-tier.
“I remember looking at him when he was at Fleetwood and I was at Rangers. I couldn’t get the money to get him,” McCoist explains.
“John Brown, the chief scout, looked at him a few times and it was an absolute no-brainer but we couldn’t get the money. We weren’t talking a lot of money but it was more the position our club was in at the time.
“He’s been fantastic (for Leicester). Thankfully for Jamie, he made the correct decision and never let me anywhere near him!”
Vardy is not the only genuinely world-class footballer who very nearly joined forces with McCoist north of the border.
Speaking to talkSPORT in December, the Rangers hero admitted that he recommended a ‘wee fella’ by the name of Luka Modric to former Ibrox boss Walter Smith.
Whatever happened to him?
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