Surprise Surprise – Hearts Players’ Old Firm Link!

As if no-one predicted that this morning several Hearts players would be linked with moves to Old Firm clubs, eh? Deary dear these guys are predictable, and the scariest thing is that the majority of fans who buy rags like the Ranger and the Currant Bun will probably believe it all!

Today it’s Hearts captain Christophe Berra and team-mate Andy Driver, both of whom have played a big part in the recent good performances against both Old Firm clubs, who are being linked with a
move to, surprise surprise, Rangers. Yes Rangers, the only club in the country who would appear to be even worse off than our own in terms of finance. They’re talking about £4million for the two of them, and even if that would sound pretty typical of the paltry amounts that tend to be offered by these clubs to their SPL counterparts when approaching promising young players, just where are Rangers even going to find cash like that to spend on two relatively untested talents? They just aren’t going to are they? In fact, the stories I’ve read on this subject practically admit as such when you get a few paragraphs down, but because half of their readers only ever get as far as the headlines, it hardly matters!

We’ve been discussing here over the past few days why it is that the press always seem to do their utmost to unsettle non-Old Firm clubs when they’re on a decent run of form, but so far we haven’t really been able to establish what the main motive is. Is it simply the fact that the vast majority in this country who buy these illiterate comics tend to support Rangers or Celtic, and hence every single story published there has to focus on them? Possibly, but if that really is the case then these editors can’t be the sharpest tools in the box can they? (although they are certainly tools of some description). Can’t they see that having a more competitive league would actually benefit their favourite teams due to the consistent tests they would face in order to win trophies domestically?

As one of our regular posters from Vital Celtic pointed out yesterday, the last time that Scotland’s clubs were a force to be reckoned with in Europe was back in a time when the SPL was as competitive as it has probably ever been, back in the early to mid 1980s. Then we had the era of the so-called ‘New Firm’ (Aberdeen and Dundee United), who were able to regularly win trophies and do extremely well in European competition too. We also had Hearts doing reasonably well back then for a spell too, and that only gave our league greater strength in depth, even if it did ultimately mean that the Old Firm clubs weren’t getting their hands on the big money that Europe’s top competition had to offer every year. Then when Graeme Souness and David Murray arrived at Ibrox everything changed – the competition gradually died down and minus a few one-off challenges from the likes of Aberdeen and Hearts over the years, it’s remained like that pretty much ever since. Scotland’s clubs have only very occasionally put runs together in Europe that we could be proud of, but nothing in comparison to what was achieved in the 80s and before. If we get back to anything like those days then Scottish football would be given a new lease of life – fans of all clubs really should be able to see that.

So….Berra and Driver to Rangers today. What will it be tomorrow I wonder? Kingston to Celtic? Romanov’s bank to go bust again perhaps? Personally I’d love it if clubs like Hearts and Dundee United started turning the tables a little and put a few derisory offers in for some of Rangers and Celtic’s better players. How about a £350K offer for Barry Ferguson and a direct swap deal proposal to Celtic -Scott Brown + £1million for Cesnauskis – now that would be worth reading about!