Hamish McTavish. 19 October 2026.
Alex Scott has gone from a first England start to a £100m price tag in under three weeks, which is quicker than the club shop can get his name on a shirt, pal. Bournemouth will consider a January exit for a fee rising to that figure, provided their Premier League status isn't in jeopardy. That's a very English sentence, ken: a hundred million pounds, subject to no going doon.
The phrase doing the lifting is "the complete package". Fine. Let's treat it like a parcel. Who signed for it? Where's the delivery note? Was anybody in when it came, or did Tuchel leave it wi a neighbour in Rijeka? Because a package that complete should come with a box, and so far aw we've seen is a very big number written on the side in marker pen.
Ye ken the night it arrived. England beat Croatia 7-0 in the Nations League, Kane and Saka got two each, Bellingham got one and made three, and Gordon and Rogers helped themselves too. Scott made his first start in the middle of it. A midfielder in a seven-goal night is the man who held the coats, and naebody kent coats were that dear.
Tuchel's review came in complete sentences. "So smooth on the ball." "His decision making is at the highest level." "Just the complete package." That's three compliments and one Croatian humiliation, and the humiliation did most of the typing, son.
Chelsea bid £64m in July and Bournemouth turned them down, which in January terms makes it a wee deposit. The Athletic has Liverpool as leading contenders and Arsenal admiring from a distance, so the shopping list is lang and the shop is wee.
Liverpool have already committed over £650m in fees across the last three windows, according to Football Culture. At that rate £100m is jist the cost of the lanyard. Stuart James calls Scott "a joy to watch", Guardiola called him an "unbelievable player", and somewhere a finance director is nodding along, aye, and muttering that a joy is cheaper than a hundred million.
Put it beside the school tombola. A tin of shortbread wins, aw the weans clap, and naebody slaps a nine-figure sticker on the shortbread because the heidie called it "complete". That's the scale of England's hype: one lovely night in Rijeka, valued like the Crown Jewels, because somebody said a big word into a microphone before the invoice was drawn up.
They even have a nickname ready, the Guernsey Grealish, so the sticker comes pre-laminated. He wanted a start, and he got a start, and the start got a valuation, and the valuation got a nickname. It's a conveyor belt wi a very wee man on it.
I'll grant England this much: a fee rising to £100m is a stunning number for a lad whose job in Rijeka was to gie it to Kane. Elliot Anderson was standing right next to him, and he's jist checked his ain back for a price.
Seven goals, one start, and a hundred million pounds. And when they finally open the complete package, it'll be a midfielder, still smooth on the ball, wondering who left the receipt in his boots.