WHEN a former Rangers player takes time out of his busy schedule to advise a current Celtic star to defy the understandable lure of English Premier League football and stay at Parkhead, you know we are living in strange times.

Yet it happened this week when Frank de Boer, manager of Ajax, fully-fledged Dutch legend and briefly an Ibrox employee, advised countryman Virgil van Dijk what would be best for his career if he were to remain in Glasgow and play in the Champions League, at least for one more season.

And not to jump at the first chance of signing for the likes of Sunderland, who are very keen, and their near rivals Newcastle United, who are desperate for a decent centre-half of any description, never mind one who has the potential to be great.

De Boer, never a man to mince his words, made the point that if Van Dijk opted for a relegation battle, albeit in a far bigger domestic league, compared to testing himself against Europe’s best if Celtic, and it remains a big if, make it through three qualifying rounds, then his chance of making the Dutch squad for next summer’s European Championships would be placed in doubt.

Rather ironically, this is the opposite of what the 23-year-old defender said about his own situation only last week.

His take on the matter was that it would be in his, and Celtic’s, best interests if he were to go now, for a fee close to £10million, which is what the club is looking for, and probably to the Barclays Premier League, most specifically the North East of England.

Having worked in that region for three years, I know that Sunderland had watched Van Dijk before Dick Advocaat arrived there last season, and the Little General is apparently a big fan. So, two and two almost makes four in a sense that it seems a good fit.

There was a time when Newcastle refused to look to Scotland – although they watched Victor Wanyama a number of times – and when asked why they scouted everywhere but the country an hour’s drive away, the line was that they didn’t want to buy players from an inferior league.

That’s the Champions League, by the way.

Since then, Newcastle have almost been relegated twice, so they have had to give themselves a shake and admit that only buying cheap French imports and some nonentities from a club on the continent’s reserve team isn’t always the way to go. So they are watching what happens at Celtic Park with some interest.

Both Newcastle and Sunderland are fine football clubs in terms of their size, support and tradition. It’s just that they could be run better, never win anything, so forget about Europe as both will have to invest heavily just to become mid-table.

This is the crux of De Boer’s argument. Van Dijk is good enough to play in the Premier League, as we will get to in a moment, but would his career truly benefit from swapping the Champions League with a club for which a 12th-place finish is deemed acceptable?

Having watching a lot of Newcastle and Sunderland, let me tell you that the former Groningen man would stroll into either back four without a bead of sweat forming on his brow.

The Premier League can boast some truly world-class stars, but there are also some vastly over-rated players. Put it this way, of the centre-halves who plied their trade on Tyneside and Wearside last season, not one would make it into the current Celtic team.

They get paid more, on occasions lots more, and the league enjoys greater glamour in terms of the stadiums and opposition; to pretend otherwise is plainly daft, but the decision to move south is not as straightforward as many in England would have you think.

THERE have been a few former Celtic players who have done well in England in recent years having left the club.

Fraser Forster and Wanyama have been stars for Southampton, Joe Ledley a revelation at Crystal Palace, while, going back a few years now, Stiliyan Petrov moved successfully to Aston Villa where he is as much a hero as he is in Glasgow.

When players have faltered, Gary Hooper (Norwich City), Georgios Samaras (West Brom and now on loan in Saudi Arabia with Al-Hilal) and Kelvin Wilson (Nottingham Forest), it’s because they have moved to teams who are likely to struggle, or, in Wilson’s case, outside of the top tier.

Moving from Celtic, where you win just about all the time and have plenty of the ball, to a team who will lose more than they win, and who might have 35 per cent possession in a match, is far from easy.

If, for example, Tottenham Hotspur came in for Van Dijk with the right kind of bid, it would be difficult to talk him out of it and, to be fair, that kind of deal could be the making of him.

But, and this cannot be stressed enough, the Dutch national coach, Guus Hiddink, who knows a thing or two about football, is not going to be overly impressed if this possible squad member was part of a back four that leaked goals every weeks.

Unless serious investment is made at Newcastle and Sunderland, then their respective defences would not be a place for the faint-hearted – or for any defender who thinks keeping clean sheets is a good thing.

Another Dutchman who knows his football is De Boer, and his words of advice should be heeded by Van Dijk.

He will get his move one day ... so best to make it the right one.