Sold at £3m, now valued at £50m: Celtic had a shocker on "outstanding" £70k-p/w "star" - opinion

Celtic appeared to hold all the cards in their pursuit of John McGinn back in 2018, with the 27-year-old being a boyhood fan of the Hoops, and the Bhoys very much having the inside track on English teams regarding the then-Hibernian maestro.

However, the club ultimately failed to get a deal over the line for the midfielder, with Aston Villa instead going on to seal a £3m swoop for him.

Since then, McGinn has gone from strength to strength at Villa, scoring seven goals and registering 10 assists over his 43 Championship appearances in 2018/19 and playing a huge role in their promotion to the Premier League, before establishing himself as a crucial component of the Villans’ midfield in the top flight.

Indeed, the £70k-p/w Scotland international earned an impressive seasonal SofaScore rating of 6.95 in his debut Premier League campaign in 2019/20, improving on this score over his 37 top-flight outings last season as he earned a rating of 6.99 in 2020/21.

However, it has been over McGinn’s 24 league fixtures this season that the 27-year-old has truly proven himself as one of the most talented midfielders in the division. He has scored three goals, registered two assists and created four big chances for his team-mates, along with averaging 1.5 key passes, 0.9 interceptions and three tackles and winning seven duels per game.

These returns have seen the player who Steven Gerrard dubbed “outstanding” average a remarkable SofaScore match rating of 7.29, not only ranking him as Villa’s second-best performer in the Premier League but also as the 16th-best player in the entire division.

As such, it is not difficult to understand why Villa are apparently demanding a fee in the region of £50m to even consider parting with the