As Rangers midfielder Ianis Hagi is linked with an exit to Serie A side Lazio, you’d be forgiven for immediately believing that most fans would be warning any interested party off the Romanian.
After all – and whilst Hagi shown a tendency to drift in and out of games – this is a young midfielder who has finally found a home and who is certainly beginning to find his feet.
This is a feeling you’d imagine would be intensified when the reports – stemming from coverage in La Lazio Siamo Noi – claims Italian giants Lazio only want to spend around €10m (£9m) on the player’s services.
But incredibly, there are bears aplenty out there who’d bite your hand off for this amount in an almost criminal response to reported interest in one of the club’s top talents.
And that’s exactly what Ianis Hagi is – a top talent.
Forget the player’s father, although the genes inherited from Gheorghe might help Hagi is a different type of attacking midfielder to the mazy dribbling, direct one his father was.
Hagi – even at 22 – is amongst the most creative players in Scotland and a continuing matchwinner and gamechanger for Rangers.
His twelve assists and seven goals this season are an impressive haul for a player some fans genuinely believe is only worth the meagre amount to Rangers.
Two of those strikes have been the only goals in 1-0 victories in the Scottish Premiership.
The thing is, if Hagi is posting these numbers when he’s apparently not firing on all cylinders, just imagine what a full year settled in Scotland experiencing first-team football will do to the kid?
It’s genuinely astounding that there are voices out there suggesting Ianis Hagi should go for that amount – but it’s not a surprise.
Rangers fans criminally underrate and undervalue our own talent on a repeated basis, something which is perhaps a hangover from a decade devoid of playing assets.
Take one look across the city – where their ex-players are admittedly overindulgent with estimations – and Celtic are repeatedly overvaluing their players. It’s also working.
Rangers have said time and again that the club is to be a mid-level operational club, where players are bought low, developed and sold high.
So far we’ve yet to fully see the benefit of this but where some fans are selling the club short the current regime certainly are not, something evidenced by that £16m Lille bid for Alfredo Morelos.
Lazio can come knocking with a £9m bid for Ianis Hagi but it will be laughed out of Ibrox, as should the notion Rangers should let the Romanian exit the club at that price.
This is a kid who at one point was labelled amongst Europe’s brightest talents and he’s shown enough in his first full season at Ibrox to suggest exactly why.
One more season in royal blue, and it won’t be £9m we’re arguing over, it’ll be approaching double that.
The attacking midfielder’s development took another step over the weekend as he officially silenced his critics in Romania with a landmark goal for his country.
