"Tugay would definitely be worth" - Blackburn Rovers: £40-50m claim made around Ewood Park icon | OneFootball

FLW's Rovers' fan pundit believes Tugay would have been worth upwards of £40 million nowadays

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

Tugay is considered a legend at Blackburn Rovers for his exploits at Ewood Park as a player from 2001 to 2009.

The Turkish midfielder was already 30 by the time he made the move to English football after a long spell at boyhood club Galatasaray, and a short one at Rangers, but that did not stop him from instantly becoming a fan favourite for his performances in the Premier League.

He built a reputation at Rovers for being a deep-lying playmaker with an eye for a long-range goal in his eight years at the club under four different managers in the top-flight, and hung up his boots in 2009 amid an emotional Ewood Park farewell after making 294 appearances in blue and white, with 13 goals to his name.

The 94-time Turkey international was arguably in his prime in his first few years at Blackburn, as he helped the club win the League Cup in his debut season, and then was named as the club's Player of the Year for the 2003/04 campaign after registering a goal and seven assists in 36 league outings.

Despite his talent being clear from his time at Galatasaray, he had suffered a tough time at Rangers, and so was signed by Graeme Souness in the summer of 2001 for a relatively modest fee of £1.3m from the Glasgow giants, which he certainly more than repaid over the next eight years.

The prices that are paid for players nowadays are very different to 23 years ago though, and FLW's Blackburn fan pundit, Toby Wilding, believes that Tugay would be worth no less than £40m in today's market.

He said: "Tugay would definitely be worth a lot, I’d imagine. When you look at what he could do, even toward the latter stages of his career with Blackburn he still offered so much all round.

"I remember Mark Hughes being asked once if he wished he’d had Tugay when he was ten years younger, and his response was no, because if that was the case he’d have been playing for Barcelona and not Blackburn!

"If you look on the basis of those sorts of comparisons, and the money that Barcelona spend on players at the minute, I think you would probably have to say Tugay at his peak now would be worth somewhere in the £40 million to £50 million region."

Tugay was an icon in some of Blackburn's best years as a club

Blackburn were out of the top-flight altogether from 1966 to 1992, and so their next 20 years of mostly Premier League football are regarded as some of the greatest in the club's history, and Tugay was a key part of numerous successful seasons for the club in that time.

Rovers had just been promoted from Division One upon his arrival, and he was an immediate starter at the base of Souness' midfield as the club won the League Cup and came 10th in their first season back in the Premier League after two years away, with his first goal for his new club a brilliant long-range strike against West Ham.

41 appearances followed in the next campaign, as Rovers finished sixth in the top-flight and secured UEFA Cup football for the second season in a row, then he played 38 more games in 2003/04 before missing a lot of 2004/05 due to injury.

Three more top-half finishes in the Premier League followed, with Tugay still a key component in the middle of the park under Mark Hughes, and they came 15th in his final season in football as he bid an emotional farewell to the Ewood Park faithful in the last game of the campaign against West Brom.

Rovers were relegated back to the second-tier just three years later, with the likes of Tugay seriously missed over the next few seasons in terms of adding steel and quality, and just how fondly remembered he is there to this day is testament to his iconic status at the club.