Shankland the best player in Scotland? That’s just more anti-Celtic player rubbish.

Steven Naismith saying Lawrence Shankland is the best player in the league is honestly one of the funniest bits of football comedy I’ve heard in a long while. What a load of absolute pish. Best player in the league? Don’t even start me.

I sit there listening to that nonsense and wonder if some people actually watch Scottish football, or if they just invent narratives because it suits them.

Because if Shankland is supposedly the best player in the league, how come the actual season belonged to Celtic players?

Daizen Maeda exists. Arne Engels exists. Cameron Carter-Vickers exists. Kieran Tierney has returned to Scottish football, and his quality is visible from every second he touches the ball. Even Benjamin Nygren already looks technically cleaner and sharper than Shankland. Yet somehow, we are expected to nod along politely and pretend Lawrence Shankland is sitting on the throne of Scottish football?

Away and bile yer heid.

The thing about truly elite players is this: they drag games by the throat. They define seasons. They terrify opponents. Celtic players did that repeatedly. Maeda runs defenders into psychological collapse. Carter-Vickers dominates strikers like a king guarding his castle gates. Engels has class, composure and technical intelligence. Tierney carries the entire weight of Celtic emotion in the way he drives forward.

Those are footballers who leave marks on seasons. What exactly did Shankland leave behind apart from noise? He scored a lot of goals … but in the end he’s run out of the club where he was captain, he’s left a broken dressing room behind him and he didn’t even do it with the big prize. He is not a winner. He never has been.

Before anybody starts greeting about goals, football is more than stat-padding against cannon fodder. A real top player elevates the people around him. A real captain becomes the heartbeat of a club. A real leader stands tall when things turn ugly.

I never saw that from Shankland at Hearts.

What I saw was someone wearing the armband without carrying the soul that is supposed to come with it. Leadership is not about pointing and shouting. It is not about acting the hard man. It certainly is not about behaving like some raging vandal towards Celtic supporters. A captain should represent dignity, standards and responsibility.

Instead, too often Shankland carried himself with bitterness boiling under the surface.

Then came the biggest proof of all. When Hearts needed stability, when supporters wanted commitment, when they believed their captain would stand by them, what happened? The second a certain opportunity appeared, off he went towards Ibrox without looking back. That tells me everything I need to know.

Hearts were left standing there like somebody abandoned in the rain while their leader chased another badge. So, forgive me if I don’t buy this heroic mythology surrounding him.

The best players leave legacies. The best captains leave standards. The best leaders leave loyalty stitched into the memory of supporters. What exactly is Shankland leaving behind apart from arguments on radio shows and desperate overhyping from old pals in the media?

Naismith can say whatever he likes, but Scottish football supporters are not blind. We watched Celtic dominate. We watched Celtic players rise above the league again and again. We watched champions behave like champions.

That is the difference. Because there is a massive gulf between being a decent striker in Scotland and being the best player in Scotland. Massive. One belongs in conversation. The other belongs in fantasy.

This constant obsession some people have with trying to force non-Celtic players onto pedestals is honestly exhausting.

Every season there is this desperate scramble to invent somebody who is supposedly better than Celtic’s elite. Then reality arrives. Trophies arrive. Pressure arrives. Celtic stand tallest while the noise collapses into silence. Always.

That is why these claims never age well.

The Scottish game has seen real giants, most of them at Celtic. Henrik Larsson. Lubo Moravcik. Shunsuke Nakamura. Virgil van Dijk. Proper football royalty. Men who could bend matches and bend hearts in the same breath. Men whose presence alone shifted stadium atmospheres.

Lawrence Shankland is not remotely in that conversation.

I’ll say this as well: the obsession with glorifying mediocrity is one of the reasons Scottish football sometimes struggles to grow. Standards matter. Excellence matters. We should be demanding more, expecting more and recognising genuine brilliance instead of manufacturing heroes because they play outside Celtic.

If somebody wants to argue Shankland is a good striker in this league, fine. Fair enough. That is a conversation. But the best player? No chance.

Not while Maeda is tearing across pitches like a storm from the North Sea. Not while Carter-Vickers defends like a granite fortress. Not while Engels shows a level of technical quality Scottish football rarely sees. Not while Callum McGregor stands by Celtic no matter what. Not while Celtic continue setting the standard everybody else spends their life trying to reach. So, aye, Steven Naismith can keep his opinion. I’ll keep mine.

But here’s what he won’t get around; Shankland wasn’t even the best player in his own club. Almost everyone agrees that was Claudio Braga; those handing out the gongs for player of the year certainly did. So this is just utter rubbish.

Calling Lawrence Shankland the best player in Scotland is not analysis. It is delusion, reeking of pro-Ibrox punditry pish.

This Ginger Witch instinct of mine can smell that nonsense from miles away.

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