Pedro Caixinha selling Barrie McKay to Nottingham Forest will haunt Rangers

Follow us on Google Discover

Rangers only made £500,000 from the sale of Barrie McKay – though reports suggest Nottingham Forest were willing to pay double that.

Barrie McKay made no secret of his desire to commit his future to Rangers this summer. The homegrown winger rejected the new deal put on the table in February but, by May, was making it clear that his only focus was on earning improved terms at Ibrox.

‘This is where I want to stay,’ McKay said in quotes reported by The Mail. ‘It’s a big club and despite having ups and downs, I’ve enjoyed every minute at Rangers.”

It seemed that the club, and manager Pedro Caixinha, were less enthused by the prospect of handing McKay a deal beyond the summer of 2019.

The 22-year-old added that no contract offers had come his way in the previous three months – despite Caixinha publically putting pressure on the winger to commit his future to the Ibrox giants.

And, somewhat inevitably, a messy saga ended in McKay’s premature departure from the blue side of Glasgow – joining Nottingham Forest for just £500,000, as reported by The Sun.

Goodbye, McKay

With McKay thriving south of the border however, topping the Championship’s assist charts with seven and producing one of the finest individual performances of the season in the 4-0 hammering of QPR on Saturday, Caixinha’s decision to let McKay go looks increasingly bizarre.

Especially as the Daily Record report that Forest were willing to pay up to £1 million for his signature.

“Barrie was someone who was going to make them real money,” McKay’s agent Grant Smith told the Daily Record.

“Forest were interested and they made £15m on a player (selling Britt Assombalonga to Middlesbrough). Then Pedro decided not to involve him. Yeah, he ostracised him.”

McKay was regularly omitted from Rangers’ squad in the last few weeks of the 2016/17 season and even forced to train with the reserves. It’s this heavy handed approach that rather summed up the unstable Caixinha reign at Ibrox.

And the now departed manager’s decision to get rid of arguably Rangers’ most gifted player is likely to haunt the club for the foreseeable future.