Aston Villa have stumped up £350,000 to land Rory Wilson from Rangers and avoid FIFA stepping in to solve a transfer fee row.
The Ibrox side have accepted the money on offer from former boss Steven Gerrard’s side for the young strike sensation.
Rangers were at loggerheads with the English Premier League outfit over the transfer of the Scotland Under 17s hitman who bagged 49 goals at youth level for club and country this season.
Wilson, 16, will sign for Villa on July 1 and had agreed terms, but the clubs couldn’t agree on the fee, with Rangers initially adamant they were due substantially more than just Villa’s offers.
But Villa warned they could end up just paying cross-border training compensation because the player was on amateur forms until the end of the year and will be signing his first professional contract with the Birmingham club.
Aston Villa and the player believed current rules are prohibitively restrictive and were confident this would be upheld by FIFA, with world football’s governing body automatically intervening because the SFA wouldn’t have released his registration if Rangers hadn’t agreed on the fee.
And Rangers this week reconsidered and offered to get around the table again with the Midlands side to avoid the dispute going all the way to FIFA.
They have now accepted Viila’s offer of £350,000, plus add-ons depending on how many English Premier League appearances the striker makes.
And the youngster will be the first Rangers player that Gerrard has returned to his old club to raid and will join up with his new teammates at the start of next month.
