Former Jambo Velicka To Rangers?

This morning’s press are linking former Hearts striker Andrius Velicka with a move to Rangers in the summer.

Velicka, who was Hearts’ top scorer for the past couple of years, was strangely sold to Norwegian club Viking Stavanger midway through last season in a deal that netted the club just over £1 million.

At that time the player was finally beginning to demonstrate that he was a decent asset to the club, as despite scoring a few goals for Hearts he had rarely impressed as a footballer. In fact, even though he did play well for Hearts in the latter six months of his time there, it’s doubtful just how good a player that Velicka is to be honest, as the mediocrity around him could easily have made him look an awful lot better than he was!

That said though, when you compare him to those at Rangers already, it probably does make sense that they’re interested in taking him on – he’s a bit like Kris Boyd but with a bit of industry and ability bolted on! He’d probably score a similar number of goals to Boyd at Ibrox too, especially given the relatively lenient treatment from referees that he’s bound to receive for his theatrics in and around the penalty area.

If this does happen it will also be interesting to compare and contrast the press’s reporting on Velicka. Whilst at Hearts he was given quite a few slaggings over his diving and injury-feigning (rightly so in my view), so I wonder if the same sort of behaviour will all of a sudden become ‘professionalism’ and ‘using his experience’! One would have to assume that ‘yes’ would be the answer to that question.

The good thing from the rest of the SPL’s point of view here is that this would appear to be the level that Rangers are at. I was thinking that they might be looking to seriously take a step up for next season and attempt to get back to where they were in the ’90s, but if the likes of Velicka represents the standard of player that they’re after, then next season should once again present a great opportunity for the other clubs in the league to finish above them. Let’s just hope that someone has the bottle to do just that for a change……..