NO matter what your opinion is of a defender costing the astronomical sum of £75 million, Virgil Van Dijk deserves great credit.

After all, it took him a mere 80 games for Southampton to go from being a duffer in a pub league to becoming the world’s most expensive centre-half.

It’s incredible, really. One minute, the Dutchman is playing for Celtic and scouts of Crystal Palace and Newcastle, among others, deem him not good enough but then, within two seasons – one of which was curtailed by injury – Liverpool are breaking records to get him.

“When I was at Palace, it was difficult to sign players,” Neil Warnock told talkSport, a radio station which devotes hours to putting down Scottish football. “I went after the centre-half at Celtic, Van Dijk, and they wanted £6 million. I said, ‘We have got to buy him, don’t we?’ The chief scout went to watch him and said, ‘He is not very quick, it’s Scottish football’. That was before Southampton came in for him.”

Well done that chief scout. He’s right up there with the guy at Newcastle who had Victor Wanyama watched a dozen times and then made it clear his club were above buying players from such a backwater and instead signed a ragtag bunch of French player who got them relegated.

This is what footballing genius Alan Pardew said about Fraser Forster, who was loaned to Celtic from Newcastle where he was manager, on the goalkeeper’s return: “He’s coming back to a completely different level of football, I’ll tell you that now.”

“We have watched that division and watched him all year. We’ve been disappointed with the quality of the games, other than the occasional Rangers versus Celtic game, and even some of those have been poor.”

I covered Pardew’s God-awful Newcastle United and watched them lose 15 out of 21 competitive fixtures.

Incidentally, during my stint in England I saw some great players – Gareth Bale in the flesh was a joy – but some bang-average footballers make millions down there.

Southampton have made a fortune out of Van Dijk and also Wanyama, who moved to Tottenham two years ago. Forster forced his way into the England squad because of his performances for the south coast club, while ex-Rangers man Steven Davis is team captain and has played over 200 games.

James McCarthy and James McArthur from lowly Hamilton won the FA Cup with Wigan while former Falkirk player Scott Arfield plays every week for an excellent Burnley side. Andy Robertson, who began his career at Queen’s Park, cost Liverpool £10m in the summer from Hull City. Barry Douglas also began at Hampden and moved to Wolves via Dundee United.

His team currently sit eight points clear at the top of the Championship.

And talking of English football’s second tier, there is, among many others, Steven Naismith (Norwich City), Kevin McDonald (Fulham) and Barrie McKay (Nottingham Forest).

Ross McCormack’s career may have gone off the rails but he scored goals for fun in that division. I could mention plenty more. Moreover, just look at the clubs they began with: not all are products of the big two.

And yet most English clubs would rather pay millions for a League One player than take a risk on someone with 150 SPFL appearances behind them.

An agent I spoke to recently said: “I stopped offering players from Scotland to any Premier League team because they’re not interested. You can sell them to the Championship but that’s about it.

“The odd thing is that they would be getting good players for a bargain. I could offer a lad from up here for a couple of million but they would rather spend four times that on a player who isn’t any better and sometimes is worse. It’s madness.”

Returning to the Van Dijk deal – which, it must be said, is obscene – the question is, has he improved so much he’s gone from being not good enough for Crystal Palace to Liverpool’s possible saviour? Of course not.

Look, nobody is claiming Pep Guardiola should start hanging about Tynecastle or Rugby Park. None of the Scots mentioned above – Robertson aside – play for a truly big club and those at the top can afford just about anyone.

But if Scottish football is such a joke, then please explain how one of our clubs found the world’s best defender two years before anyone in England had heard of him?

In terms of developing hidden gems, our game is punching way about its weight and if England wants to ignore this fact until said gems are worth a fortune, then hell mend them.