Rangers FC handed Ipswich Town transfer gold - it was short-lived | OneFootball

Martyn Waghorn ended up making the Tractor Boys £4m in profit after just one season in the Championship

Ipswich Town must have left Rangers with serious transfer regret when they ended up making £4m profit on Martyn Waghorn after just one season in the Championship.

When then-Tractor Boys manager Mick McCarthy splashed out a reported £1m to bring the forward to Portman Road, it would’ve left the Glaswegian giants thinking they got the better end of the deal.

Rangers had just bolstered their own attacking options with the signing of Colombian Alfredo Morelos from HJK Helsinki two months earlier, leaving Waghorn lower down the pecking order of a strike-force that already included the likes of Kenny Miller and Ryan Hardie.

Bearing in mind the last time Waghorn was in the second-tier - with Wigan Athletic in 14/15 - he only scored three league goals, perhaps there was little expectation for him to deliver the goods straight away in Suffolk.

But less than 12 months later, Derby County came calling with a £5m bid that had the possibility of reaching £7.5m - so just how did that come to be?

How Rangers handed Ipswich Town transfer gold with Martyn Waghorn

In all fairness, two years at Rangers had somewhat transformed him from a journeyman striker scrapping around the EFL into a genuine threat in front of goal - but even that started in the Scottish second-tier.

After a 28-goal campaign in 15/16 helped fire Rangers back up to the Premiership, the Scottish club had resurrected Waghorn's career when nobody else seemed particularly interested.

For some added context, the Gers swooped in to sign the striker alongside his Wigan teammate James Tavernier in a double deal for an undisclosed fee, yet you can imagine it would've been pennies.

McCarthy's side had finished mid-table the season before Waghorn's arrival - when he netted seven Scottish Premiership goals - so again, it was surely only expected that the ex-Latic would just 'do a job' and nothing spectacular.

But six goals in his first six starts set the tone for what would become one of the most productive individual campaigns by an Ipswich forward in recent memory - that has actually only since been bettered by Conor Chaplin in League One, who scored 26 in 22/23.

A brace in a dramatic 4-3 victory over Millwall, which was just eight days after he joined, announced his arrival in emphatic fashion - whilst that winner at Barnsley had endeared him to the Tractor Boys fans even more.

By October, he was averaging a goal every 81 minutes, as per a tweet by Sky Bet on X at the time.

His 16 league goals was obviously the top scorer's tally at Portman Road, whilst his 11 assists suggested a player whose influence extended far beyond his own finishing. For the money they ended up getting for him, he definitely earned it.

Martyn Waghorn never reached 16 league goals in a season again after Ipswich Town departure

Regarding his departure from Suffolk, Waghorn revealed on an episode of an Under The Cosh Podcast that some Town players were offered "life-changing" deals to stay at the club, which the striker thought he should've received.

By that point, McCarthy had been replaced by Paul Hurst, with Waghorn going on to say in the aforementioned Podcast that he told the former Shrewsbury Town boss he "wanted to move".

Waghorn would go on to score 13 goals for Derby in 18/19 across all competitions as the Rams reached the Championship play-off final, in which he only came on as a substitute for just over 20 minutes as they lost to Aston Villa. If they managed to get over the line, you can imagine every Derby fan would've agreed that he was an "absolute snip at £5m."

Ultimately, his initial stint at Pride Park would definitely prove productive as he managed to net another 12 in the Championship the following season - but in his seven seasons after leaving Ipswich, which included spells elsewhere at the likes of Coventry City and Huddersfield, as well as going back to the Rams, he never managed to at least equal that tally of 16.

Ipswich’s decision to not offer Waghorn the money he wanted and sell meant that they ended up doing the right thing long-term, and it was all down to Rangers for that initial transfer.

Now 35-years-old, the striker came out of retirement on the 28th December to link up with former teammate David Nugent at Anstey Nomads, where the latter is a player-coach.