Lawrence Shankland to Rangers transfer hype reaches fever pitch as squirming Steven Naismith digs hole - Keith Jackson

They could hear the alarm bells clattering from three and a half miles away at lunchtime on Saturday.

Because when skipper Lawrence Shankland failed to make the short journey from Tynecastle to Ainslie Park for Hearts’ Scottish Cup tie with near neighbours Spartans, a sense of deep suspicion stretched the length of Gorgie Road. Of course, it’s not always necessary to be overly cynical where such matters are concerned. But, experience dictates, it’s often the wisest policy.

If Shankland had an upset tummy or a dose of the sniffles then, how could he reasonably have been expected to put himself in the line of duty? And yet the absolute truth of the matter is the player himself will have known exactly how his absence was likely to go down in terms of perception alone. Locked in contract talks with the club one day. Too ill to get out of bed the next, without a pen being put to paper.

And with speculation raging all around that Rangers might be about to weigh in with an offer in a bid to smuggle him across the M8 to Ibrox before the transfer window closes at the start of next week. If Shankland didn’t realise that kind of coded message he was sending out then, at the age of 28, he should be old enough to know better.

HIs club’s supporters are neither stupid nor naive. On the contrary, they have seen this movie plenty of times before over the years and they know it doesn’t come with a happy ending. So even if he was struggling to pull back the duvet, Shankland really ought to have made the effort if he is in the slightest bit interested in keeping himself in the good books with his club’s supporters or even his manager, Steven Naismith.

Naismith could not have looked any more uncomfortable in front of the cameras shortly