There’s been a bit made in the media of David Edgar (Heart & Hand) responding to a question of Lawrence Shankland costing £5M, and the Rangers’ media partner suggesting this wasn’t happening.

To be clear, Edgar wasn’t saying Rangers aren’t signing the Hearts captain, he was saying the club does not have £5M to spend in January.

Ibrox Noise has already explained £5M/£6M isn’t happening next month, Michael Beale blew almost our entire season’s budget in the summer when normally it would be around £10M-£11M tops.

So next month any spend will be very, very modest – it would be absolutely pushing it to even spend as much as £3M – which is why any deal for Shankland would certainly include a player makeweight in there, because the Tynecastle side are unlikely to accept just £3M for their talisman.

Shankland is critical to Hearts, he’s absolutely on fire and scoring higher than anyone else in the Scottish Premiership – they have basically accepted he will leave if a feasible bid comes in, and they don’t want to lose him for nothing next summer year.

But Rangers aren’t spending £5M on him or anyone else for that matter.

Last January, under Michael Beale, Rangers were able to invest £3.2M in Todd Cantwell and Nico Raskin – that was absolutely the upper limit of what we can do in that window.

This one will be the same, while Giovanni got basically nothing to spent in January 22 but still got four new players – James Sands, Aaron Ramsey, Amad Diallo and £300,000 man Mateusz Żukowski.

Rangers will not spend the £5M-£6M region, but a healthy half of that is very possible, and while last January saw that being splashed on two players (decent value for money in fairness) this January may see it all going on Shankland.

But it’s clear, finances are not strong to shell out healthy cash, and thrifty and canny deals will need to be done to bring in the calibre of player Philippe Clement needs.

We’ll see if Shankland is to be among them.