Newcastle United may be living to regret a transfer decision they made a few years ago as James Tavernier has continued to shine with Rangers.
Remarkably, the Magpies sold Tavernier for just £90k after a series of loan spells in which he’d failed to impress, but he’s now gone on to earn legendary status at Ibrox.
The 32-year-old is now club captain and has been a top performer at right-back since he joined in 2015, with more goals now in his career even than current Magpies star forward Alexander Isak.
Tavernier is on a total of 133 career goals, while Isak is only on 108, despite being a striker, though of course he’s also quite a lot younger, which also needs to be taken into consideration.
It’s fairly clear, however, that Newcastle didn’t give Tavernier enough of a chance when they had him, as he surely could have contributed something at St James’ Park, even if not quite the form we’ve seen from him in a Rangers shirt.
Being a star player in the Scottish Premiership is obviously no measure of how a player could do in English top flight, but at the same time he probably also could’ve benefited from having better players around him, and a higher standard of coaching.
Unfortunately this is one NUFC will have to live to regret as they barely even made any money from his sale. Bad business all round.