Joe Savage has taunted the Ibrox board that they couldn’t afford to buy Lawrence Shankland.
The Hearts Sporting Director was on Radio Scotland last night where host Kenny Macintyre was doing his usual job of banging the drum for anything red, white and blue.
Over the last fortnight Micky Beale has been open about his wish to bring in a new ‘number 9’ with the usual messengers starting to speculate over a move for Shankland who scored his 20th goal of the season in the Scottish Cup win away to Hibs.
Ross Wilson managed to conjure up deals to sign Todd Cantwell and Nicolas Raskin during the January window with both players miles out of the picture at their previous clubs.
Beale, Wilson and the Ibrox board can have a close look at Shankland tonight when they take their Tribute Act to Tynecastle, they’ll find out if the Scotland striker has been unsettled or motivated by the January campaign from Ibrox.
Picking up on Savage’s comments on Radio Scotland, Edinburgh News reports him saying:
They wouldn’t be able to afford him, I can tell you that right now. Not a chance. No price, not for sale.
Shankland’s not going anywhere, he’s going to get 30 odd goals for us this season and become an absolute Hearts legend. That’s the plan.
Nobody came to us with any sort of offer. We’d have passed on the message that they were wasting their time. We want him to fire us to win the Scottish Cup and finish third.
Hearts signed Shankland from Beershot in Belgium for £500,000 last summer while Ross Wilson was splashing out £11m on Ridvan Yilmaz, Rabbi Matondo and Ben Davies.
What a fckn surprise. The day these cnts are playing the Jams, a story comes out to try and unsettle the lad. Fckn never changes. All the wee dirty tricks in the book from these rats. Hatrick for shanks tonight.