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Steven Naismith was available to be signed by Rangers this window. He was not. We signed Jason Cummings instead, and our former hero/traitor will ply his trade at Tynecastle for the remainder of the season. Thank christ that saga’s over, then.
Except, as one noted celebrity Jambo once said, the dream will never die. You wouldn’t expect there to be too many Rangers fans who are firm believers in getting the band back together AND who are prepared to forgive Naismith his crimes (yes, we’re talking about yer da here), but apparently there are. And they couldn’t understand why he wasn’t brought back to the club this winter and will make the case again this summer.
Among those, unsurprisingly, is Barry Ferguson, who has a back page story on today’s Record with “Why isn’t my pal at Rangers?” No, we’re not even joking, that is the actual headline.
We obviously haven’t read it because we’re not giving the Mhainstream Mhedia the benefit of the Blue Click and so on, but we can imagine the usual arguments being lined out beyond him just being a pal. This is a guy who moved for £8.5m two years ago! This is a guy with a huge amount of experience! This is a guy who scored goals for fun up here! This is a full Scotland international!
To which we have and will continue to say: He moved for £8.5m two years ago, aye, but he moved for hee haw two days ago. Two days ago is closer to now than two years ago is and hee haw is less than £8.5m. He has plenty of experience, yes, but most of that has been in the treatment room of late. He scored goals for fun up here, but his pace is gone and he’s never been hugely prolific for an extended period in his career. A Scotland international too, but not one who’s exactly been a stellar performer, with the national team looking far more dangerous once he as replaced by Leigh Griffiths, who is someone who plays for a team it might be suggested we should be looking to compete with.
And then there’s that press conference. We really don’t need a signing policy which is dividing the support after the last two years. Really. But we can expect all of this to surface again at the end of the season, particularly if he does very well at Tynecastle, since Hearts are very unlikely to sign him permanently and certainly have no chance if it’s a contest between them and us.
The solution is simple, then. Let’s all hope Steven Naismith is absolutely mince for Hearts so that even his most fervent supporters won’t want us to go near him in summer. We really can’t take another window where we have to go through this tedious saga over and over again.
Let it die.