Swansea City bagged £2m and so much more from £25k bargain | OneFootball

Swansea City signing unheralded St Johnstone striker Jason Scotland will go down as one of the club's best bits of business

Swansea City have had their fair share of quality strikers over the last couple of years, but perhaps none represented better value for money than Jason Scotland, who joined the club in 2007.

Scotland wasn't a household name when he joined the Swans from Scottish club St Johnstone for a nominal fee of £25,000, but the Trinidad & Tobago international played a huge role in helping kickstart Swansea's rise to the Premier League.

The striker only spent two seasons in South Wales before sealing a deserved move to the Premier League with Wigan Athletic, but his legacy at the Swansea.com Stadium was felt in more ways than one, thanks to his goalscoring exploits.

£25k Jason Scotland proved an absolute bargain for Swansea City

After club legend Lee Trundle sealed a move from Swansea City to Bristol City in the summer of 2007, Roberto Martinez was left searching for a replacement and got his man when he signed Scotland from then-Scottish Championship outfit St Johnstone.

It's fair to say that Scotland's CV wouldn't have impressed too many Swansea supporters, with spells in his homeland at San Juan Jabloteh and Defence United followed by spells in Scotland with Dundee United and St Johnstone, meaning few people would have tipped him to fill the void left by Trundle's departure.

However, the striker burst onto the scene in South Wales, and he immediately became Martinez's main man during the 2007/08 campaign, scoring 29 goals in all competitions, which included 24 in the league, as he fired Swansea to the title and took home the League One Golden Boot award.

Scotland's performances also saw him named Swansea City's Player of the Season, and he was named in the League One PFA Team of the Year, representing incredible value for a player who had cost just £25,000.

The Championship represented a big step-up in quality, particularly playing for a newly-promoted team, but Scotland replicated his League One form in the Championship, scoring 23 goals in all competitions, which included 21 in the league, as Swansea finished in a very respectable eighth place.

While Scotland missed out on the Golden Boot award by three goals to Wolves' Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, he was named in the PFA Team of the Year for a second consecutive season, and his tally of 52 goals in 105 Swansea appearances meant that he was always going to attract transfer interest.

Just two years after joining Swansea for a fee of £25,000 from the Scottish Championship, Scotland sealed a move to the Premier League when he was reunited with former Swans boss Martinez at Wigan Athletic for a fee of £2million, making Swansea a sizeable profit.

Jason Scotland wasn't able to replicate his Swansea form in the Premier League

After two seasons of prolific goalscoring in League One and the Championship, Martinez hoped that Scotland could take that form into the Premier League, but it wasn't to be.

The striker scored just one goal in his 32 top-flight appearances for the Latics and was subsequently allowed to leave the club after just one season, returning to the Championship with Ipswich Town.

While Scotland had a decent record at Portman Road, it was nothing like what he'd been able to do at Swansea, and perhaps in hindsight the ex-St Johnstone man regretted his decision to leave South Wales, particularly as the Swans were destined for the top-flight themselves.

The Trinidad & Tobago international would leave Ipswich after three seasons in 2013, joining fellow Championship outfit Barnsley before a return north of the border with Hamilton Academical and Stenhousemuir to see out his playing days.

In his prime, Scotland was a deadly striker at Championship level, and while he wasn't quite able to cut it at Premier League level, his best days in British football undoubtedly came at Swansea.

His £25,000 arrival from St Johnstone may have gone under the radar in the summer of 2007, but Swansea struck gold with Scotland's arrival and his goals helped to make him a cult-hero in South Wales.