AS a former Rangers player, a one-time central midfielder of no little ability and a footballers’ representative, Charlie Miller is pretty well placed to offer an opinion on how the ongoing Scott Allan transfer saga will pan out.
The speculation surrounding the Championship Player of the Year has, despite Hibs manager Alan Stubbs stressing once again over the weekend that Allan is not for sale, not dissipated in the slightest.
If anything, in fact, the talk about the 23-year-old, who was last week the subject of two failed bids of £175,000 and £225,000 from the Glasgow club, moving to Ibrox has steadily escalated in recent days.
The former Dundee United and West Bromwich Albion man is reported to be aggrieved that Hibs are preventing him moving on to a bigger club as he believed they had agreed not to stand in his way if there was interest.
A photo of the Hibs player on a night out in Glasgow with his Rangers rivals which appeared on social media site Twitter at the weekend has, despite being taken several weeks ago, done nothing to calm the situation.
Miller, who was on hand to help out with the draw for the second round of the Petrofac Training Cup at Hampden yesterday, has seen it all before in a long and varied professional career.
He was on the books at Rangers during an altogether different era back in the 1990s when expensive foreign imports arrived from overseas – and often grew disillusioned and left – on a regular basis.
And he believes Allan, whose current deal with Hibs expires at the end of the season and who is allowed to sign a pre-contract agreement with Rangers in January, will be able to push through a move to the club he grew up supporting as a boy.
“It’s a difficult situation,” he said. “The boy wants to leave, obviously, Rangers want him, but Hibs want to keep him. In the end, money talks. I think that’s what will happen in the end. Hibs will want £1.5 million, they won’t get that, but they’ll get something for him.
“I believe someone like Scott will come through it all stronger, whatever happens. He had a rough time down at West Brom, he made a bold decision to come back and get back on track with Hibs. Let’s hope he kicks on. It will definitely have a detrimental effect on Hibs, all of this.
“You just hope the boy is professional, plays as well as he can for Hibs and earns his move. He can sign a pre-contract with Rangers in January, if he doesn’t go this window, and maybe he’ll move then. But he might play well enough to get back to England again. You never know.
“I think the balance of power now lies with players. If a player wants to leave, he can just go, effectively. Look at Raheem Sterling. Okay, he went for £49 million, but it shows that players hold all the aces now.
“I think it’s inevitable that Scott will end up at Ibrox. It looks like it. It’s up to him to keep playing and show that he’s professional enough if he doesn’t get the chance. But I think he’ll be there at some point, yeah."
Miller believes trying to retain the services of Allan will actually have an adverse affect on Hibs, who will be trying to win promotion back to the top flight in the coming months, due to the player’s desire to join Rangers.
‘I’ve been in a dressing room with players who wanted to leave and it’s not the ideal situation, obviously. At Rangers, there were a few changing rooms with a lot of very good players who wanted away, because they couldn’t get a game. It doesn’t help. It will definitely have a detrimental effect on Hibs.”
Miller was impressed with Rangers in their 6-2 win over Hibs at the weekend and believes that English manager Mark Warburton having a nucleus of Scottish players will be important to the Ibrox club’s prospects of success in the 2015/16 campaign.
“It’s important that there are Scots at the heart of what the manager is doing,” he said. “There are a few good English boys but, if they get Scott Allan in, he’s joining a team with Danny Wilson, Jason Holt, Nicky Clark, Kenny Miller and others.
“There have been some good signings. But you need your identity. You don’t want to lose your Scottish identity as a club. We had a fair few Scottish boys in my day. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a game because of all the bloody foreigners!
“Seriously, though, we had a great captain in Richard Gough and guys like Ally McCoist, Ian Durrant – brilliant Scottish players. And it was still a Scottish dressing room when we were there. We ran the dressing room!”
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