Lawrence Shankland gets personal Rangers transfer lesson from Steven Naismith ahead of Hearts return

Steven Naismith has offered Lawrence Shankland the benefit of the transfer lessons he learned when being linked with Rangers.

The Hearts striker is back in training ahead of their Premiership clash against Dundee at Tynecastle on Tuesday. That's after he missed Saturday's Scottish Cup fourth round win over Spartans due to illness. Speculation ran wild wild that Shankland didn't want to be cup tied amidst links to Rangers, but he's returned to Riccarton and will likely lead the line against the Dark Blues.

Naismith was at the centre of an Ibrox transfer storm during his time as a player while he was at Kilmarnock. His move to Ibrox from Rugby Park was eventually rubber stamped with one minute to go of the 2007 summer transfer window. That was after four failed bids, Celtic being given permission to speak to the player and a withdrawn transfer request. As far as the Jambos boss is concerned, Shankland is handling the attention better than most players Naismith has seen over the years, and remains relaxed over his top scorer's future as contract talks continue.

"I speak to the players most days and Lawrence is the same. I've tried to just pass on my experience from when I've been a player in these situations. If I'm honest he's dealt with it better than I've seen most deal with it and that's it. The rest of it, as an experienced player and a leader, you have the conversations you need to have. Around the ways we're going to win games of football as a team and as a squad rather than anything else.

"You can't control anything. All you can control is what you do on the pitch. That's the biggest lesson I've learned from it. What will be will be. if something's to happen it will happen and if it doesn't, then there's loads of