It is correct that while his contract was being run down his value would decrease. If however he hadn't been binned to the under 20's and played well in matches then other clubs may have shown interest.
Refusing to play him and publicly showing him to be demoted from the first team decreased his value.
If Pedro had decreed him to be sold the board could hardly go against him, they had to get the best figure whilst negotiating with no real position.
If anything him being binned to the U-20s would've increased interest if he was as good as many seem to want to make out. His value decreased because it was abundantly clear he was going. He wasn't signing the contract on offer and was leaving on a free at the end of the season.
His being demoted made that concrete and if clubs were the least bit interested in buying him, based on the ability he had shown in the more than ample game time he had, they'd have been like flies round shite.
Instead, he ended up at Forest... playing for Warburton... who he also rejected a Rangers extension with...
If McKay was showing himself as anything like the top talent in the country, he'd have been in demand. He was nothing of the sort.
Billy Gilmour was snapped up by Chelsea from us for not a kick in the baws off the fee paid for McKay the second he was able to be.
If one of the top sides in the EPL are aware of our youth players enough to sign them up like that for fees over and above what they needed to pay in terms of the rules, any suggestion that McKay somehow went under the RADAR while playing first team football for Rangers in the SPFL is patent nonsense.
I think the situation is fairly obvious. McKay didn't
want to stay at Rangers. McKay was
willing to stay with Rangers IF the club paid him enough money to do so.
The club didn't agree with his demands and an impasse was reached. McKay was more than entitled to find an alternative club which would give him more money. I have no issue with that. Pedro's man management I think was arguably questionable on a number of occasions.
However, we need to get past the notions that McKay was some sort of wonderkid for us, that we could have got a notably higher fee, that he was treated "like no human ever should be" or that he genuinely wanted to stay.
Frankly, he might go to do reasonably well down in the Championship. He may move around for inflated fees in the English bubble. I have next to zero interest in that, because the reality is that it has no bearing on anything relating to Rangers.
He had several years and multiple managers at our club to become the player he is bummed up as. He never ever reached the level he hinted he might be capable of. He never looked like he would IMHO. I think he may thrive somewhat at a smaller club with lower expectations in a league that is more forgiving to smaller, lightweight, technical players - I don't think he is close to looking like the top talent the country has produced in a decade. If he was, while supposedly proving a revelation in England, he'd have been on the team-sheet last night too.
Best of luck to him, but he was never going to be anything more than we'd already seen while at our club in my opinion.
