Rangers have produced a handful of players who have gone on to do well under the bright lights of the Premier League.
One who didn’t reach the heights that he should have done was the current interim Rangers manager.
Barry Ferguson left the club he loves to sign for Blackburn Rovers in 2003, with the biggest surprise being that nobody bigger came in for the Light Blues skipper.
It was Graeme Souness who took Ferguson to the Premier League, and he was rewarded with a string of man of the match performances until disaster struck.
But did a fractured patella caused by an innocuous challenge with the late Gary Speed see Ferguson miss out on a dream move to Man Utd?
Alex McLeish on when Man Utd wanted Barry Ferguson
Speaking as part of the build up to the Scottish Cup semi-finals, former Gers boss Alex McLeish recalled a conversation with managerial legend Sir Alex Ferguson that suggests he did:
“I remember Sir Alex Ferguson phoning me around the time he fell out with Roy Keane,” reported the Glasgow Times.
“He said: ‘Look, I’m watching Barry Ferguson and he is doing good stuff at Blackburn’.
“He was thinking about him but it never quite happened. Barry would have handled a move like that with no problems because he has a massive mentality and belief in himself.
“He would have been replacing Keane which would have been a big one. I told him back in the day that the gaffer (Sir Alex Ferguson) had mentioned him and asked him about him.
“I told the gaffer he was one of the best I’d ever worked with and seen from my own playing days as a driving midfielder.
“He was like some of the guys you see nowadays like Declan Rice.
“Fergie maybe wasn’t quite the tackler that Roy was – Erling Haaland’s dad knows all about that!
“The move never quite happened.”
Could Ferguson have hacked it at Man Utd?
McLeish, who wants Rangers to go “all guns blazing” against Athletic, won’t be making up the conversation with Ferguson, at the time, the Scotland international was already attracting interest despite only just joining Blackburn Rovers.
For two seasons, he was in the top five passers in the league, despite not playing for a dominant side and, previously, Ferguson was consistently one of Rangers’ best performers in Europe against top opposition.
What Big Eck does get wrong is the timeline.
Sir Alex and Keane fell out in the winter of 2005, but by this point Ferguson was back at Rangers and playing for McLeish again.
Ferguson has spoken about his immediate regret about leaving Rangers in the past, even if his talent deserved a higher platform to showcase what he was capable of.
He proved his point that he could mix it with the best though and returned to Rangers where even more silverware and a UEFA Cup final appearance would follow.
A bigger regret will be how it all ended.
