Surely no-one in their right mind can begrudge Rangers making an effort to buy Scott Allan from Hibs?
Since time immemorial it is what football clubs do. They try to better themselves. The big clubs, especially, prey on smaller clubs, attempting to poach their best players. It is the law of the jungle.
In this current saga over Allan, I can’t see Rangers attempting anything that I haven’t seen many times before in a lifetime of attending, enjoying and writing about Scottish football.
Bigger clubs in England – even Brentford - prey on Rangers. Rangers prey on lesser Scottish clubs. So do Hibs, who are about to lure the talented John McGinn away from St Mirren.
There is no etiquette in the game about not “recruiting” from other clubs – that would be absurd. It is a bruising market place, with players, agents, club managers and CEOs all seeking to defend their patch.
Equally, what dunce out there can possibly think that Alan Stubbs and Leeann Dempster, in seeking to keep Allan out of the clutches of their main promotion rival, are somehow in the wrong in not selling to Rangers?
Hibs’ position over Allan and Rangers represents a plain and simple common sense. It is what any responsible person in their position would do.
As Rangers fans start to simper over somehow not being handed Scott Allan on a plate, they would do well to consider this.
Is there any irate Rangers fan out there, indignantly demanding that Hibs sell Allan to their club, who would act any differently were they in either Stubbs’ or Dempster’s shoes? Of course there isn’t.
The folly of selling your best player to your chief rival for promotion needs little more explaining. It would be preposterous.
In this teething saga I suspect everyone is going to come out a loser.
Hibs will lose out because they have an unsettled player who, if he stays despite now officially asking to leave, will be a dispirited, diminished force.
Rangers will lose out, because they won’t get the player they seemingly crave; or at least, not until next summer.
And Scott Allan himself will lose out – because he potentially faces a disrupted year in football, and possibly even one in which he writes himself out of contention at Hibs, depending on further twists and turns.
I actually don’t believe anyone is in the wrong in this tormented story. Both Rangers and Hibs are simply trying to look after themselves. Allan, equally, has his own career ambitions, and is a Rangers fan.
None of the three parties, to my mind, looks particularly guilty. There is simply no equitable solution to it all.
The predictable sideshow has emerged, fuelled as ever by posturing and idiocy on social media.
Twitter has lent its usual lunatic fringe to the case, with Allan coming in for appalling abuse from a seam of disgruntled Hibs fans.
Meanwhile, some Rangers fans, ever feeling victimised, have seized on this stuff - not with dismay, but with relish - expressing a faux outrage at some sectarian bile directed at Allan.
The rest of Scottish football is left sighing at this pantomime that is dutifully unfolding.
Interestingly, behind the scenes, Scott Allan’s relationship with his club manager remains good.
Stubbs and Allan get on well and respect each other. Stubbs holds no grudges against his player – and why should he? A 23 year old talented footballer with ambitions to go to a bigger club is a scenario Stubbs himself knew perfectly well as a young player at Bolton Wanderers.
Rangers must be kicking themselves at the right royal fist they have made of getting Allan on their books.
Last summer they had the perfect chance to do so – Allan came to Ibrox as a free agent, with a keenness to join – but Rangers turned him away. It is something the club now – evidently – bitterly regrets.
The key to it all now lies with Allan himself. He wants to leave Hibs – but would he go elsewhere other than Rangers? He might.
Or, in time, with the impasse seeming unbroken, might he withdraw his transfer request and knuckle-down for the season at Hibs? He might.
In whatever scenario occurs, I feel most for the player. Scott Allan is a decent lad, and a fine footballer, who has already had years of disruption in his career, even at his tender years.
He should try to spare himself any more of it.
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