The speculation has swirled around his head, the transfer bids have been made and the back pages have roared in anticipation. So where is Steven Naismith planning to spend his long-term future? Stewarton, Ayrshire, since you ask.
The Rangers forward has been placed at the centre of a club in turmoil, but he retains a certainty that testifies strongly to the strength he has drawn from the trials of a once debilitating shyness and from enduring and surviving two serious knee injuries. The damage to his cruciate ligaments was traumatic, but has been repaired. His first steps into the football world were faltering. The lessons stay with him.
Naismith's career as a top-class sportsman was almost stunted by a silence that confused and disturbed him. "When I went away with the Scotland under-17s, I did not know anybody. It was the worst trip I ever had. I could not talk to anybody. I came home and said, 'That's it. I never want to go back'."
His first stint at Rangers was similarly uneasy. "It was when I was at 10 or 11 and I was the only boy at the club from Ayrshire, I felt like an outcast," recalls the 25-year old.
There is little silent about Naismith's world now. He now can chat to Sir Sean Connery and Sir Jackie Stewart with the same facility with which he deals with the apprentices at Murray Park.
The most pressing question asked of him from every side is whether he will be at Rangers next season. He answers this with a gentle assurance. "I do not agree with statements about me being in a state of uncertainty," he says. "I have certainty. I have a three-year contract. That's it. I know there is stuff happening all around me but I have no say in that and I have a contract."
Naismith has come a long way from the lad who delivered the newspapers in his home town of Stewarton and then raced off to play football. He is now an internationalist, a substantial presence at Rangers and a personality who has added his time and prominence to good causes, most notably Dyslexia Scotland.
However, in many ways he has not strayed too far from his roots and has no intention of doing so. "Now, I am not daft and things can change and I may have decisions to make, but I will always come back to where I grew up," he says. "I have a house at the moment I can not see myself selling. My football career might keep me at Rangers or I might be moved on, but that would only be for a period of time. But at the end of everything I would always come back to Stewarton."
This attachment to home brings Naismith back to a discussion about his shyness and how he has overcome it. The first experience of Rangers was followed by the welcoming embrace of Kilmarnock and that eventually made him stronger when he stepped up to Scotland under-18s.
"When I joined that squad I was a first-team player, so I was then one of the so-called bigger players and I decided to speak to everybody. From then on I have made a point of starting a conversation with anyone who comes to the club, or into an international squad. I know a lot of the young boys at Rangers and I chat to them about how they are doing. They might have been released, they might be about to be released, they might be on the step of breaking though, but they all need that bit of advice to help them."
Naismith concedes this outgoing nature did not come naturally to him. "It is something I have had to work on, but if there is somebody new in the changing room then I will think of something to say to him, something to welcome him. It is the worst thing ever to be sitting there not enjoying it."
He added: "It is good to hear that people think I have good social skills, but it is not something that came naturally."
The footballer now speaks to knights of the realm. The story disclosing his dyslexia was brought to the attention of Sir Sean Connery by Sir David Murray, thus beginning a chain of events that brings a smile to Naismith. "Unbelievable. When I had the voicemail from Sir Sean I was thinking, 'Is this true?"'
Naismith, wary of the humour of the dressing room, ignored the threat of a 'wind-up' to phone back. He then spoke to Connery and later to Sir Jackie Stewart, president of Dyslexia Scotland. "Sir Sean just asked how I was doing with my injury. He still watches games in Scotland and he just chatted away about football, life. He then talked about dyslexia and passed on Sir Jackie's number; he just reeled it off.
"I gave Sir Jackie a call and chatted away with him for an hour-and-a-half. He asked how badly dyslexia affected me growing up and how it was now. But it became very clear we had different things in common."
People with dyslexia have an enhanced peripheral vision, a heightened awareness of what might happen next. Both attributes have served Naismith well in a career that has drawn more than admiring glances from the Barclays Premier League. But it is Naismith's unrelenting drive that marks him as a competitor and singles him out for both praise and abuse.
"I do not pang for the fame or the compliments," he says of playing football. "I know it will all come to an end and I am not a fan of all the hype that surrounds the game. It is nice when someone comes up and shakes your hand, but I know that some footballers from the past still strive for fame. That will not be me. It just doesn't appeal to me. I will be happy to go home and live my life with the mates I grew up with and to be near my family."
The footballer confirmed that he and his partner, a dentist, plan to keep their roots in Ayrshire even though both careers have some way to run. Naismith, though, is happy where he is, both geographically and emotionally.
"I only play football to win. I do not care if everybody hates me if I am winning. If I am winning some people are going to be happy and supporters of other teams are not, but that is just the way it is," he says.
"I have grown up, lived my life in a world where you can not please everybody. People might see me on a park and they can hate me, but I can't worry about it. But if I came home to the mates I have grown up with since I was four and they suddenly didn't like me, then I have a problem. I would have to address that."
This a home truth that will anchor him to Stewarton and reality, wherever his career takes him.
