JIM: LURE OF OLD FIRM TOO GREAT FOR EDINBURGH STARS

EDINBURGH’S two clubs lost their top midfield players to the Old Firm this week. So what’s new?

A look at the rosters of Rangers and Celtic will show NINE former Hibs and Hearts players plying their trade at Parkhead or Ibrox.

And if Scott Brown joins one of them in the summer, as is predicted, you could get an entire outfield team of ex-Edinburgh stars turning out for the Glasgow giants.

Leaving aside a goalkeeper, you would have a line-up comprising a back four of David Weir, Andy Webster, Steven Pressley and Ian Murray.

A midfield of Kevin Thomson, Gary Caldwell, Paul Hartley, and Brown could supply ammunition for Kenny Miller and Derek Riordan. That’s a line-up that could bring tears to the eyes of managers John Collins and Valdas Ivanauskas, who didn’t want Thomson and Hartley heading along the M8 this week.

But they havediscovered – as many Edinburgh bosses have before them – that when the Old Firm call they usually get what they want.

Jim Jefferies sympathises with them because as a former Hearts manager he was stung more often
than he would have liked.

In fact, just when he was building a team capable of challenging the Glasgow powerbase in 1998, he saw it dismantled.

And it didn’t stop when Jefferies left Hearts. Now at Kilmarnock, he had to watch helplessly as Rangers took goal machine Kris Boyd off his hands for £400,000 a year ago. The SPL’s longest-serving boss said: “I know how John and Valdas will be feeling because I’ve been there.

“I lost Neil McCann and Paul Ritchie to Rangers after winning the Scottish Cup in 1998. Then Allan Johnston went to Ibrox after a spell at Sunderland, so I know how John Collins will be feeling at having lost Thomson and Valdas at having to sell Hartley.

“But it is a fact of life that if the Old Firm come in for a player, he will almost certainly want to go.

“They are two massive clubs and it is impossible to persuade a player to stay with you if Rangers and Celtic come knocking on the door.

“The stature and size of the clubs are only the start of it. They can guarantee a player European football every year and wages are the bottom line. They can earn so much more money by going there.

“As soon as you hear from the Old Firm, you think it’s over.”

Jefferies still feels a sense of frustration at the manner in which his Hearts side of ’98 was filleted because he believes Tynecastle was about to mount a serious challenge to the Old Firm.

He said: “You are trying to build a side, particularly at a big club like Hearts and we had challenged the Old Firm that season and won the Cup.

“The worry was always that we had done so well that people would want to take our players and that’s how it worked out.

“Neil McCann was first to go but it didn’t take long for David Weir and gary Naismith to sign for Everton and Colin Cameron to head for Wolves, so over the summer the Hearts team was dismantled.

“Unless you have the financial resources to keep them happy, you have no chance and there was no way Hearts could compete with Rangers and the others in that regard.”

Nothing much has changed over the years, it seems, as Jefferies has watched Rangers try to snatch Alan Gow from Falkirk in the same manner as they did with Boyd 12 months ago.

The Bairns resisted, though, and will get nothing for the player in the summer.

Jefferies admitted it is a massive dilemma for clubs the stature of Falkirk and Killie.

He said: “It’s a tough decision to make when a player’s contract expires six months down the line.

“We had that decision to make with Boydy last year and we decided to take the transfer fee.

“But it doesn’t always work like that. Falkirk decided to keep Alan Gow because they thought he was worth more to them than the money they were being offered by Rangers.

“If Gow gets them into the top six, that will be worth at least an extra £150,000 to Falkirk – which is roughly what Rangers were offering.

“It was Yogi’s right to keep him and fair play to him.

“But what you have to weigh up is how the player will react to the disappointment of not being allowed to go.

“It depends on the relationship between the player and the manager and I think Yogi and Gow get on well.

“I feel sorry for Falkirk, though. They gave a young lad like Anthony Stokes a platform to display his talents while on loan from Arsenal and it is his performances for Falkirk that earn him a transfer that gets Arsenal £2million.

“Would they have got £2m for him if he hadn’t gone to Falkirk? I doubt it but despite that, Falkirk don’t get a penny for him.

“Rangers and other big clubs know teams like ourselves and Falkirk are not flush so they offer
under the odds.

“That’s just the way it is. They play poker with you and if you don’t back down they’ll take the player they want for nothing at the end of the season if he is out of contract.

“The manager won’t want to sell but in almost every boardroom there will be splits because some directors will want to take the money and others will be saying that they want as strong a team as possible on the park.

“They all want the best for their club but are divided on how to achieve that.”

Not that the Killie boss blames the players for taking their chance when the call comes.

He said: “They have to be able to handle playing for Rangers or Celtic and that’s why the rewards are so high. It’s not as simple as just pulling on the jersey – it’s a whole different ball game on and off the park.

“I heard George Graham on TV the other day when someone was asking him why a certain player would go to Rangers. He said: ‘You’ve got to be joking – Rangers are one of the biggest clubs in the world’.

“That’s exactly right and so are Celtic. They are known all over the planet.”

Jefferies believe Hibs will recover from the loss of Thomson because of the quality Collins has at his disposal in midfield.

He said: “Hibs still have excellent midfield players such as Beuzelin, Stewart and Brown. That’s not a bad trio and they’ll have others coming through.”

But Brown will be next to go in the summer. Money talks. It’s just that sometimes it takes longer to be heard.

Taken from the Daily Record