He came. He shushed. He left. The only surprise is that the news of Todd Cantwell handing in a transfer request at Rangers was delivered by manager Philippe Clement, rather than on his social media feed.
He still has to find another club, of course, and it is debatable whether Clement revealing to the world that he is desperate to move on is the best starting point in negotiating his transfer, but that is now by the by.
The real question here is how a player who is clearly among the most technically gifted at the club, and who would profess his undying love for Rangers and kiss the badge at every turn, has reached the point where he wants out.
“From the moment I arrived to this moment now, I feel as if I’ve been a Rangers fan my whole life,” Cantwell said last October.
“I promise you, however long I play here – and as a footballer that is definitely out of your control – I will always follow Rangers, 100 percent.
“Because the club, to me, has been immensely powerful, and it has made me fall in love with [football] again.
“There is a big expectation, a big pressure…I love it. I love it. Because I know that me going out there and giving 100 percent, and me going out there and playing the way I want to play with a little flick here and a little trick there, they love it, because they love football and they love people that care.”
Leaving aside the ironic comment about his Rangers future being out of his own hands, it seems that pressure finally got to him.
“It’s a love story,” Cantwell once said about his relationship with the Ibrox support. But to paraphrase the song Rangers supporters used to sing about him, they found a love, but it didn’t last.
Cantwell is a paradox. On the one hand, he worked hard when he was on the field, and seemed, at least at first, to know what it was to represent Rangers. To ‘get it’. And in person, he came across as affable and even - at times - humble.
On the other, his social media output – most infamously, his ‘shushburger’ post after a draw with Hearts on the final day – angered fans, and he often seemed to spectacularly misjudge the mood among the supporters and fail to live up to the standards they expect from their players off the field as well as on it.
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There's nothing wrong with a bit of arrogance in a footballer, but as gifted a player as Cantwell is, his often looked misplaced. In fact, shutting him up became a motivational tool the Celtic players used in the end, revelling in their league and cup double by mocking him on the very social media platforms that caused him so much grief.
I don’t want to be too harsh on Cantwell, because I have never played for Rangers, and so have no idea what it is actually like to deal with the level of scrutiny he was subjected to. He said before, after yet another ill-judged post, that he is swamped with abuse every single day, and a lot of that came from Rangers supporters.
Such is life at a big club. While understanding that it can’t have been easy to handle that level of vitriol, you can’t on the one hand court the supporters and promise them the world, and then recoil in horror if they react badly when you fail to deliver.
This was a man who photoshopped ‘56’ onto his shorts in a picture and will leave Ibrox with a solitary League Cup medal, after all.
It is interesting that Clement chose to return to his press conference after the dismal friendly defeat to Birmingham City on Wednesday night to deliver this news unprompted.
It may have been deflection, but for all his talk of the ‘good relationship’ he and Cantwell enjoyed, it backed up the suspicion that the Rangers manager has never really taken to the former Norwich City man, a seed that was planted when he hooked him in the first half of a Europa League tie against Aris last November.
There were also big matches where he was left out, suggesting Clement still didn’t fully trust him to follow his instructions. Most notably, he watched on from the bench for the entirety of Rangers’ defeat to Celtic in May that ended their title hopes, with Clement saying ‘it wasn’t the game to put him on’ after Rangers were reduced to 10 men.
He was recalled for the Scottish Cup Final against the same opposition, where he was hooked with 20 minutes to go and was shoved away by his manager after the match as he remonstrated with the officials.
As was the case for much of his time at Rangers, the headlines that day regarding Cantwell were focused on what he did outside of the game, rather than the influence he had within it, and that rather neatly summed up his Ibrox experience. In the end, it is clear that is what he will be remembered for more than his contribution as a player.
A gifted footballer, no doubt, but who perhaps wasn’t half as good as he thought he was. The love story is over, and I doubt too many of the club's fans are heartbroken about it. In the end, his Rangers career added up to one great nothingburger.
