Harold Wilson once said that a week was a long time in politics. He should have tried enduring the last seven days as a supporter of Hearts.
Rangers signing Lawrence Shankland nails the tin lid on the week from hell for the Tynecastle side. Kicked in the nether regions one weekend, they climbed back to their feet and found that their dinner money was gone the next.
Shankland was never just another player in a maroon jersey. The captain, the leader, the top goal scorer was unfortunate to be pipped to the major player of the year awards by the excellent Claudio Braga.
Rangers fans are delighted by news of a sensible, low-risk act of grand larceny and little wonder. A signing they really should have made last summer, when he was up for grabs on a free, they got there in the end. Better late than never .
Last week, Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh spoke of targeting more Scots in the starting XI, players who knew the landscape and understood the unique pressures of playing for 50,000 demanding and impatient fans.
It is quite the turnaround, as Rangers – like Celtic – have spent recent times eyeing the domestic market with something close to withering contempt. Where overseas jobbers are routinely welcomed with open arms, sniffy derision has always been reserved for those born and raised as one of Jock Tamson’s bairns. If they are lucky they are met with a slow hand clap.
The likes of Kenny McLean, Lewis Ferguson and Ross Stewart were allowed to leave the country for knockdown prices while the people in charge snapped up inferior players for over-priced transfer fees from abroad.
After years of turning their nose up at “SPFL players” – the term was never a compliment – Cavenagh says there will now be a pro-Scottish bias.
While no club can restrict themselves to signings from the native market, a choice between two players of equal ability will now prioritise the Scot with experience and know-how of the local landscape.
Short of screaming, “Shankland”, Cavenagh could hardly have spelled out more loudly who he had in mind. Returning from holiday to sign for his childhood favourites, the first Rangers signing of the summer is symbolic. It is evidence of a club changing strategy and moving player recruitment in a different direction.
Exploiting a contract clause to secure the captain of Hearts for next to nothing is only a starting point. Luke Graham of Dundee and AEK Athens left-back James Penrice look likely to follow suit and, while Lewis Ferguson might represent a bridge too far in financial terms, the direction of travel is now clear.
Mental frailty has been cast at Rangers teams in the form of an accusation in recent years and while a Scottish birth certificate offers no certainty of a strong, resolute character, it might increase the likelihood of a player having some idea of what they are getting themselves into. The demands, the expectation, the temple-thumping pressure.
The departure of James Tavernier has carved a vacancy for a new club captain and Shankland’s record at Hearts shows that he has both the character and the CV to fill the void. He is officer material.
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His numbers stand up to close scrutiny as well. Since joining Hearts in 2022, the forward has nabbed 88 goals in 171 appearances. The fourth-highest tally of goals in the William Hill Premiership since 2013, his 77 strikes put him one behind former Rangers forward Alfredo Morelos. His 236 goals in 494 club appearances represent a hit rate close to a goal every couple of games.
Handily for a Rangers player, Shankland has developed a habit of scoring against Celtic. In October 2022 he came off the bench to score all three of the Hearts goals in a 4-3 defeat to the champions at Tynecastle. And the first domestic hat-trick scored by an opposition player against Celtic in 37 years was no one-off.
Nothing in football comes with a guarantee. Rangers have purchased players with plenty of hype and hoopla in recent times and wished, six months later, they had clung to the receipt. It is always wise, with these things, to hold fire on the hubris and reserve judgment for later.
Rangers fans might be excited by the prospect of a Shankland pairing with Youssef Chermiti. For the likes of Bojan Miovski, Danilo and Derek McInnes, it is as welcome as a pleasure cruise through the Strait of Hormuz.
The manager of Hearts won’t be the only one who feels it. For fans, Shankland’s departure represents yet another savage punch in the guts at the end of a brutal week.
Losing their on-field leader is one thing. Losing him for pennies thanks to a clause inserted in a three-year contract signed last summer adds insult to injury.
Those asking if Hearts messed up by signing off an agreement which allows Shankland to walk out the door after 12 months can almost be forgiven for peering through a glass half empty.
The alternative was their skipper walking out the door for nothing last summer, leaving new manager McInnes to start the season with one hand tied behind his back.
Signing that deal tied up a striker whose 20 goals almost delivered the campaign of their dreams. The opening strike in the league decider at Parkhead so nearly delivered the point – the single, precious point – which would have gift wrapped their first top-flight title since 1960.
While Shankland’s exit is a clear and obvious loss to Hearts, it doesn’t have to be calamitous. The Gorgie club signed a data tie-up with Jamestown Analytics to mitigate for situations like this one. They always planned to move on the legacy signings, slim down the squad and build a squad of players identified at low cost by data analytics.
What Hearts fans have witnessed so far is Jamestown lite. With Cammy Devlin and Beni Baningime out of contract, Craig Halkett sidelined by an achilles injury, the future of Marc Leonard up in the air and the club captain telling them on Saturday afternoon that he planned to exercise his right to leave the club, the time has come for the full-fat version.
French midfielder Tom Renaud has agreed to move to Edinburgh from French third-tier side Versailles on a free transfer. And no one doubts that the policy of one in and one out will gather pace this summer. In an ideal world, they will land another Braga and Shankland won’t be missed. In the real world, he will be a hell of a hard act to follow.
Hearts are the football Icarus who spent this season flying too close to the sun. Every time that happens, Rangers and Celtic do their best to clip the wings of the upstarts by throwing their money around and pinching their best players. The Bloom model, you sense, now faces its biggest test.
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