Some Rangers fans were today completely fooled by a wide-ranging Billy Gilmour rumour which grew legs and ran the distance after a fake Twitter account pretended to be Sky Sports and claimed the Brighton man was going to loan to Hearts.

The ridiculous story, believed by a shocking number of normally-credible Rangers sources and forwarded by them, was created by a Hearts fan account, imitating Sky Sports News and growing a completely fake news story that the former Rangers man was switching on loan to Tynecastle.

Can we just be the first to say this is fake news. This is not true. This was a parody account making up a bit of drama, and the story absolutely spread like a butterfly and ran like wildfire – it got a tonne of Rangers shares and likes and plenty lacked the discretion to actually double check the story.

Billy Gilmour may well move on loan in the window, and he may even want that to be to Rangers, but the last thing a player of his quality is doing is going to Hearts or indeed any Scottish Premiership side that isn’t Rangers.

Hearts is where you go when your previously-credible career is now over, and you’re playing your twilight years – in fairness, they’re a generally fairly honourable club, Scotland’s third team these days, give or take, and of course Barrie McKay and Andy Halliday are there, very much being Rangers men, not to mention Lee McCulloch.

It is not, however, where a young player at his peak goes – the closest they got to that was the disaster of Ben Woodburn, whose Liverpool career was sinking fast at just 21 and he was absolutely desperate to find somewhere to take him.

It didn’t work out and he ended up at Preston, where he still is.

We can’t see that fate for Billy Gilmour, he’s just too good. But he needs the right move to get his career going again.

We hope that will be Ibrox and Rangers but it might not – but it will not be Hearts, as excited as they might have been about it.