The Scotsman is currently running a ‘best paid SPL players’ article of those players who aren’t Rangers or Celtic players, and it appears to confirm that Hearts striker Lawrence Shankland currently ‘only’ earns around £3000 a week and he didn’t even make the top 10 of current SPL players.

The supposedly top-paid was Hibs’ Adam Le Fondre who is said to be on a Rangers-level salary of £18,000 which, frankly, is a steaming pile of nonsense. There is no way anyone outside the Old Firm is paid anything close to even £10,000 a week, so to suggest Hibs are chucking double that on a 37-year-old striker is absolutely laughable.

That said, the rest of the results, relatively speaking, made some sort of sense, but it was the non-presence of Lawrence Shankland which was most notable, and explains why Gorgie bosses are desperate to tie him down on a new deal.

See, as things stand, ludicrously, Scotland and the SPL’s best outright striker could, in theory, be still on a ‘miserly’ £3000 a week come summer 2025, meaning he’s played the best years of his career and been painfully underpaid for it.

Of course, lest we forget in the real world most folks would give their arm to get that in a month, never mind in a week, so there is a sense of perspective to be had here.

But the real world never applied to football, and the going rate to play the beautiful game is a completely different planet than the wage of a real person, so based on that criteria, what Shankland gets is miles below his value.

And yet he isn’t complaining about it.

Shankland’s next contract needs to pay the level he’s playing at, the goals he’s scoring, what he’s offering – he would realistically be at the £20,000 a week level himself, if not more.

And yet he ‘languishes’ at £3000 and is bleeding his value as a result of that.

He’s 28, hitting his peak, and getting tuppence for it in terms of what his quality should be earning.

It’s no wonder he’d kill for the big move to Rangers and a massive wage hike.