Calvin Bassey move proved me wrong but one other pre season prediction is looking good after West Ham win - Barry Ferguson

If there’s anyone out there who still can’t bring themselves to accept what a good player Calvin Bassey is then let me put it this way. Never mind the fact that he’s just left Rangers for a fee which could bring in more than £22.5m. And forget that it’s a club the size of Ajax that has decided to put that amount of cash on the table. No, the simplest way of explaining how valuable Bassey was to my old club is the fact that Giovanni van Bronckhorst is going to have to sign two players just to replace him.

Hands up at this point. I did write in this column at the start of the transfer window that Bassey was the one player Rangers couldn’t afford to sell this summer. But it turns out that they couldn’t afford NOT to take the money and run given the enormous sum that the Dutch club were willing to hand over. As much as I would have loved to see him stay and continue to develop in a blue shirt, the truth of the matter is the club had no choice but to agree to let him go.

I have believed for a long time now that Bassey had the potential to go all the way to the top. That’s why I didn’t want to see him leave for a fraction of what he will end up being worth one day. You look at Arsenal paying out £25m for Kieran Tierney and you realise that clubs are now willing to pay top dollar for the best players in Scottish football. And I thought Bassey would have to get a similar number of games under his belt before anyone would match that kind of fee.

But I was wrong. Ajax saw enough in him over the last six months of last season - when he emerged a real man mountain in van Bronckhorst’s defence - to be convinced that he was worth breaking the bank for. And Rangers have walked away from the deal with more than £20m for a player