Hearts ‘can’t force’ Lawrence Shankland stay amid Rangers links as deals snubbed.
Following transfer rumors to Rangers, Lawrence Shankland has turned down all contract offers from Hearts, and the club’s
CEO has acknowledged that he cannot be pressured to stay.
At the club’s new hotel launch on February 5, Andrew McKinlay told the Scottish Sun that he believes everyone is “drawing a
line under this,” therefore nothing is being discussed at this time. He stated that the 28-year-old was given until February 5 to put pen to paper.
With Ibrox links having been ongoing for a few weeks, the Jambos executive maintains that no offer was made during the
January transfer window and that a domestic Scottish record fee of more than £4.5 million would have been required for the striker to move.
McKinlay stated that “the player is where they sit because we were informed that any contract we put on the table wouldn’t be acceptable to them.” The deadline has passed, therefore nothing is on the table right now.
Does that imply that conversations won’t continue? There undoubtedly will be, but who can say? We are happy that we made it through this time. We felt that the offers we made were excellent.
“Someone cannot be made to stay by force. If they so want, players are able to terminate their contracts. I think we are all putting a line under this right now.
Regarding the asking price, McKinlay stated that there were some figures but no bids. Without getting too specific, those
figures were based on the scenario in which we sell Lawrence and fail to secure group-stage football in Europe.
It has to be in that range or above since we know exactly how much that is worth. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make sense.
Not that we wouldn’t have finished in third place without Lawrence, but it would have been a very big gamble.
People tend to forget that Scott Brown was a good few years ago, and the Scottish transfer record stands at £4.5 million between Scottish clubs. It would have to be more than that or something similar.
“Were we expecting the Scottish transfer record to be broken? I don’t think so. There was never any real hint that it was going to be.”
Rangers had to break record to sign Shankland in January
Even if Shankland seems content enough to stay at his current club, there are basically only two reasons a player would turn down repeated offers of a new deal.
Unless Hearts put even more money on the table, it appears that the current state of affairs will persist for the time being. Either they dislike the terms or they intend to leave.
From the perspective of the Rangers, it makes some sense that a player who appears to be precisely what the organization needs and has always stood by them may be hoping for one last major trade to become available to him in the summer.
Hearts would find it difficult to demand a record amount at that point, given there were only 12 months remaining, unless they were absolutely certain they would keep him for the entire year, regardless of if he ended up leaving for nothing in the end.
That might just be wishful thinking in Glasgow, since Philippe Clement seems happy to proceed with Fabio Silva as a replacement for Cyriel Dessers, indicating that the club didn’t think he was worth anywhere like that amount of money through January.
Although it turned out that such funds were available, they were instead used to sign Mohamed Diomande from FC Nordsjaelland.
There will undoubtedly be movement at the end of the season, as the squad currently has three forwards on loan—Sam
Lammers, Abdallah Sima, and Silva—and one forward’s contract expiring (Kemar Roofe). Until Shankland accepts a new deal
with Hearts by then, he will undoubtedly continue to be linked to Rangers for the foreseeable future—just as he has for the previous few.
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