Former Aston Villa striker Ross McCormack signed a four-year contract with Rangers

Former Aston Villa striker Ross McCormack has revealed that he came closing to leaving the club to return north of the border and join Rangers, prior to heading Down Under and trying his hand in Australia’s A-League – but the Glasgow club ignored his agent’s calls.

McCormack signed for Villa from Fulham, during the manic first transfer window of the Dr Tony Xia era. McCormack cost £12m from Fulham, as part of a transfer spree which cost Villa north of £60m and which continued into the January transfer window. Things began well for the forward under Roberto Di Matteo, with goals against Huddersfield and Nottingham Forest, but things began to turn awry for him under Steve Bruce.

McCormack infamously was dug out by Bruce, who accused him of failing to attend training after the electric gates outside of his house one morning refused to open. He signed a four-year contract upon arriving at Villa but didn’t play for the club again after January 2017 and embarked on a series of loan ventures away from B6.

The first was at nearby Nottingham Forest, while the following season he headed to Australia and excelled in the A-League, netting 14 goals for Melbourne City. Returning to Villa in 2018, still under Bruce’s management and having missed out on promotion – and, because of Xia, in deep trouble before NSWE swooped in – McCormack would eventually return to Oz, with Central Coast Mariners.

He has now claimed that, in that summer, he was all set to join new manager Steven Gerrard at Ibrox – he had just replaced Graeme Murty as manager of the Gers and was making changes to his inherited squad. McCormack was ready to leave Villa again, only Rangers ghosted him and his agent and the move never materialised.

“A bit of both,” he explained to the Open Goal channel, when asked if leaving for Australia was due to a lack of UK offers or to get away from his surroundings at the time.