Rangers Bid For Hearts Captain?

Some news reports are tonight linking Rangers with a move for Hearts captain Christophe Berra.

Berra, now a full Scotland international defender, was the subject of a £1.5 million bid from Wolves recently which Hearts turned down. It’s believed that the club are looking for at least £2 million.

The reports I heard tonight were indicating that Rangers were ‘ready to bid in excess of £1 million’ for Berra, which to be honest would be standard fare as far as they are concerned i.e. offer much less that they know the club is looking for, unsettle the player to the point where he wants to leave and end up getting him for a knock-down fee.

This may sound a tad on the bitter side (and it probably is(!) – too many talented young Scots have flushed their careers down the toilet by signing for Rangers or Celtic at too early a stage), but I actually think that it would be a good move for Hearts to let go of Berra, even if that meant he signed for a rival.

Why? Well for a start I don’t rate the guy all that highly – he’s so far been an average central defender at best, and nowhere near as good a player as Andy Webster (who has just made his move to Ibrox permanent) was at his age. There’s every chance that Berra would therefore be yet another bench-warmer at Ibrox in the shadow of the centre-backs already there, and perhaps not likely to ‘come back and haunt us’.

The other reason I think this would be of benefit to Hearts is the situation with Berra being the club captain. Giving him this honour was a ludicrous move at Berra’s stage of career development – far too big a burden for a young man barely established in the first team, and this has shown in the past year or so in his performances.

The problem Hearts have now though, is that it’s going to be very difficult to take the captaincy away from Berra to give it to a more worthy, experienced player (whom we don’t have at the moment it must be noted!). Even if he acknowledged the reasons for doing so, he’s not going to be happy about it is he, so the club have put themselves in a ‘no-win’ situation with regards to this in my view.

So if Rangers were to end up coming in with a bid similar to the one that was knocked back from Wolves, then I think that Hearts should seriously consider it. On one hand they can obtain decent money for an average player, and on the other they eradicate another potential dressing-room split situation by not having to appoint another captain whilst Berra is still at the club.

Oh…and here’s the best bit….Rangers sign another player who will not make them any stronger at the same time as paying Hearts more than £1 million….so it’s all good….or is it?!