£15 million? That’s what Dembele’s left toe is worth

● Celtic manager Rodgers insists he won’t cash in quickly on exciting young French striker whose value is soaring

IT wasn’t just Moussa Dembele’s increasingly impressive goals return which ratcheted up a couple of notches as he helped Celtic go toe-totoe with Manchester City in Wednesday night’s epic Champions League encounter.

As far as Brendan Rodgers is concerned, you can already add a couple of noughts to the value of a player the Celtic manager shrewdly sourced from Fulham for a fee of just £500,000 in the summer.

Not that Rodgers is in any hurry to see Dembele featuring in what many already believe will inevitably be a Scottish transfer record move away from the Scottish champions.

In fact, he insists there is “no chance” of the 20-year-old being sold before he has plied his trade with Celtic for at least the bulk of the four-year deal he signed when he arrived from Fulham.

Rodgers is equally certain that talk of Dembele already being worth around £15 million on the back of his eyecatching performances in high-profile matches for Celtic is seriously undervaluing the exciting French striker.

“Are you saying £15 million?,” said Rodgers. “That’s for his left toe. His value is what someone will pay for him.

“If he can show up like that in the big games, that’s your value. There’s no chance [of him moving in the next two or three years].

“The reinforcement of what he is doing now is why he came to Celtic, which is about development.

“He could have gone to other big clubs in England or Europe but he came here because he is happy to work and learn. He is loving life at Celtic.”

Rodgers sees similarities between Dembele and former Chelsea striker Didier Drogba and is certain the new hero of the Celtic support can go on to enjoy every bit as successful a career as the Ivorian legend.

“There’s no doubt about it. I worked with Didier at Chelsea and I think Moussa is of that ilk. Didier came into Chelsea at 24 or something like that. This boy’s just turned 20. He’s still a baby. But he’s tough. You can see on nights such as Wednesday that he is a big reference for the team.

“What I see in Moussa is that he’s a big-game player. He really comes alive in the big games. He has a belief. On the day he signed for Celtic, he said at his media conference that he wanted to be the world’s best player. So we shall see. He is making nice strides, isn’t he? There is still a way to go for him. I think he is a boy who can get to the top but there are some things to work upon yet.

“If I look at my history as a coach – without being arrogant – I develop players who naturally move on, but the focus is always on the collective.

“The great thing about Moussa’s situation is that there was a strategy behind him coming here in the beginning and that was through the cleverness of his agent and the responsibility and maturity of the player.

“As a boy just turned 20 to perform like that against a top team like Manchester City shows you the potential that is there. But he knows that to maximise his potential he needs to learn, he needs to develop, he needs to develop his runs, his set-up play and tactical idea of the game. And can he do that then at a huge club? That was the start point for him.

“He knows his journey. He knows where he’s at and he knows that, in two or three years’ time, if he develops how he can, or how we think he can, the market is there.”

Amid the justified plaudits Celtic received for the level of their performance against Manchester City, a return of just one point from their first two games in Group C has hardly enhanced their prospects of a top-two finish and qualification for the last 16 of the Champions League.

Beating Borussia Monchengladbach, whom they now face home and away in the next two rounds of fixtures, to third place in the group and the not insignificant consolation prize of Europa League football after Christmas remains the most realistic ambition for Rodgers’ side.

But the manager is deter-