Hearts are about to get another shocking reminder about how few friends they have.

In the aftermath of Lawrence Shankland’s decision to move to Ibrox, I told Hearts supporters that they should take it as a lesson. They should regard it as a neat little summary of exactly where their club sits in the Scottish football pecking order, particularly in relation to where the Scottish media believes it belongs.

Nobody shed any tears on their behalf when their captain and leading goalscorer walked out of Tynecastle to join the club from Ibrox. Nobody will shed any tears on their behalf now if their manager becomes the next person to make the same journey.

Over the next few months, one bubble or another is going to burst spectacularly.

A lot of Ibrox supporters believe Derek McInnes is the right man for them. Plenty of people in the Scottish media believe the same thing. There are obviously people inside Ibrox who think appointing McInnes, bringing in half the Hearts team and converting their collective sense of grievance into a desire to win titles is some kind of positive plan for the future.

I think it might be the most negative idea I have ever heard. It is certainly one of the most backward-looking ways imaginable to prepare a football club for what comes next.

Ibrox is already a sufficiently crazy environment without importing a collection of people carrying grievances of their own. These are people who appear convinced that Scottish football is controlled by Celtic, that every decision goes against them and that the entire game is designed to keep them down.

One of the few advantages of appointing foreign managers such as Danny Röhl is that they do not arrive carrying that baggage. They may acquire it; in fact, we’ve written about that phenomenon often enough.

But they do not automatically believe every conspiracy theory that has been allowed to take root around that club. They have not spent decades marinating in the idea that Scottish football is one vast anti-Ibrox operation.

Put a manager in that dugout who does believe it, surround him with players who believe it, then add a support already primed to believe it, and you have created a potentially combustible scenario. It will certainly be explosive. Whether it benefits the club in question is another matter entirely.

I personally think that Ibrox is on the brink of a colossal mistake.

That will come as no consolation whatsoever to Hearts supporters, who should by now have worked out exactly what their second-place finish in the league was worth. Absolutely nothing.

It was not enough to convince their captain and top scorer to stay. It may not be enough to convince their manager to stay either.

The Tony Bloom project has been talked up by all sorts of people who should know better. Hearts supporters are now about to discover how much genuine buy-in those people ever had for it. The answer is not much.

McInnes will know that too. He will understand that the Hearts opportunity has already gone. Last season was a one-off. It was a perfect storm which they failed to exploit fully, and it is highly unlikely to come around again.

Hearts had their moment. They did not win the league. They did not win a trophy. They finished second, and now the team responsible for doing it is being dismantled.

McInnes will look at that and conclude that the great Hearts opportunity has passed. If he gets the offer he wants from Ibrox, he will go where he always wanted to be. Meanwhile, Hearts are busily assembling a team for a future that no longer exists.

They are making signings designed to fit McInnes’ style of play, while McInnes may not even be there to manage them. If that is not a sobering moment for a football club, somebody will have to explain to me what is.

Hearts were powerless to stop Shankland leaving. Now it appears that they may roll over and let their manager go as well, in return for what the newspapers are hilariously describing as a “high six-figure sum”.

A high six-figure sum. That does not even buy you an adequate replacement from the Scottish Premiership these days.

The problems at Hearts have only just begun, yet their great revolution already looks as though it is unravelling completely.

The Scottish media is loving every minute of it.

That was the central point I made in the last article I wrote about Hearts. The media does not care what happens to that club. It never did.

This entire Hearts story was valuable only because it offered the possibility of Celtic being knocked off the perch. The media obviously had a preferred candidate to do that, and it was never Hearts.

We know where most of these people’s loyalties lie. Many of them are practically card-carrying members of the Ibrox fan club. Hearts were simply the backup option last season when it briefly appeared that somebody else might be capable of stopping us.

Hearts were never the preference.

Their title challenge was merely a means to an end.

Now that the club from Ibrox is looking at their manager and players, the same media figures who built Hearts up are enthusiastically discussing how quickly the whole project can be pulled apart.

There is no concern for Hearts. There is no outrage on their behalf.

Instead, the press is treating the potential dismantling of Hearts as an exciting Ibrox rebuilding strategy.

That tells Hearts supporters everything they need to know.

By the time next season starts, I would not be surprised if Hearts had lost another two or three important figures to the club across the city. Their manager may be gone. Their best striker has already left. Other players will undoubtedly attract attention.

When the season begins, virtually nobody in the media will care about Hearts’ games. Everyone who supposedly mattered during their title challenge will be watching Ibrox. Everyone will be examining McInnes. Everyone will be crossing their fingers and hoping his collection of former Hearts players can finally stop Celtic.

Hearts will become an afterthought, assuming the Scottish media can even muster that much interest. They will instead be turned into a cautionary tale about what happens when a club gets too big for its boots and starts believing it is going somewhere.

That is how this media ecosystem works.

It built Hearts up because doing so served a purpose. Now tearing Hearts down serves another purpose, and there will be no hesitation whatsoever.

Hearts supporters need to get a grip. I know many of them resented the articles I wrote about Shankland. I said his decision showed them exactly where they stand in the Scottish football hierarchy.

They did not like hearing it.

Well, wake up and smell the coffee. This is it.

The media cheerled their number-one player out of the door. It is now cheerleading their manager towards the same exit. It is doing so because of the club involved.

Hearts never had genuine friends among the Scottish football press. They never had some broad national constituency rooting for their success. There was no great movement of neutral football supporters who desperately wanted to see Hearts win the league for the sake of Hearts.

What they had was a constituency of people who wanted Hearts to win because they did not want Celtic to win. That made up the bulk of the non-Hearts support for their title challenge.

It was never about them. It was always about us. So is this. Ibrox is now indulging its one and true great obsession; catch Celtic whatever the cost. Hearts are not even considered a minor obstacle in the road in spite of a higher league finish.

Hearts supporters should stop hoping for allies and stop searching for friends who were never there.

Their little stunt at the end of the season received a great deal of favourable coverage, but only because it was directed against Celtic. Had they pulled something similar involving the club from Ibrox, the Scottish media would have pinned them to the wall.

The tone would have been completely different. The outrage would have been immediate. The demands for punishment would have been deafening.

Hearts were indulged because their actions were useful in a wider anti-Celtic narrative. Some of their supporters mistook that indulgence for respect.

It was not respect. It was convenience.

Now that their usefulness has expired, the same people who praised them are ready to pick the bones clean.

That is the lesson Hearts should take from all of this.

Their second-place finish did not transform the Scottish football order. It did not make them a genuine power. It did not force the press to treat them as equals.

It made them briefly useful. That is all.

As far as the Scottish media is concerned, the natural order is now reasserting itself. The club from Ibrox is preparing for another supposed revolution, the usual cheerleaders are assembling around it, and Hearts are expected to surrender whatever players or staff might help make that revolution possible.

There will be no sympathy.

There will be no campaign to protect the great Tony Bloom project.

There will be no concern about the consequences for Hearts.

The media has moved on because Hearts were never the story.

The story was always Celtic against Ibrox.

As far as these people are concerned, that is the only contest that matters.

Hearts do not factor into it at all.

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