Paul Ritchie, like John Souttar, left Hearts to join Rangers on a Bosman in the summer after the Edinburgh club had rejected earlier bids for the players.
Ritchie was 24 when he travelled to the opposite end of the M8, Souttar was 25 and they each had six caps for Scotland when they quit Tynecastle.
Souttar signed a four-year contract last month and Ritchie also signed a four-year agreement in June, 2000. That, though, is where the similarities end.
While Souttar is expected to go straight into Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s starting XI, Ritchie - part of the Hearts team which had beaten Rangers in the 1998 Scottish Cup final - was shown the door by then manager Dick Advocaat after just 75 days at Ibrox, sold to Manchester City for £500,000 at a time before Abu Dhabi’s oil money had transformed the fortunes of the Lancashire club, who had just returned to England’s top tier but would be relegated again that season.
“John won’t have similar problems: apart from anything else, he’s a better player than I was!” he said. “The only disappointing aspect for me is that Hearts didn’t get a fee for him after sticking by him during his serious injuries.
“He’ll fit into the Rangers team the way I thought I would when I went there. John is ahead of where I was in terms of Scotland caps and the level of play he produces.
“The way he plays, he could be a midfielder. His use of the ball is excellent and that wasn’t me at all but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t get a game because back then centre-backs stuck to defending.
“I’ve no doubts that John will be a tremendous signing for Rangers and he’ll be a success there. It says a lot about him that his last game for Hearts was in the Scottish Cup final against his new club and he was Robbie Neilson’s best player. He was a credit to himself.
“He reminds me a lot of Alan McLaren and Craig Levein. I played with both at Hearts and they were ahead of their time because they also liked to bring the ball out from the back.
“John will also pick up more appearances for Scotland now because his profile will be raised and he’ll be playing in European ties on a regular basis.”
For Ritchie, the possibility of what might have been if he had only been given a chance by Advocaat remains a source of frustration.
“It was a difficult time,” he said. “The problem, I think, was that I was a chairman’s signing rather than a manager’s signing. Rangers had been criticised in some quarters for not buying Scottish players and I believe that David Murray was responsible for me arriving rather than Dick Advocaat.
“He wanted to put his own stamp on it and bring in homegrown talent but I don’t think the manager was ever copied in on that memo. My old Hearts team-mate Allan Johnston had been signed earlier that year, didn’t get too many games and was sold to Middlesbrough a year later.
“Kenny Miller joined from Hibs at the same time as me and he was also sold to Wolves in 2001. When I look back, with the quality Rangers had at the time, I was always going to be way down the pecking order but I was okay with that because I always knew I’d have to fight to earn my chance.
“I got the impression very quickly on our pre-season tour of Holland that Advocaat just didn’t fancy me. I made one or two mistakes during those friendlies and scoring an own goal in one of them didn’t help.
“The turning point for me was when Advocaat took 19 players to Denmark for a Champions League qualifier at the start of August. I was left behind, Scott Wilson went in my place and I was actively told I had no future at the club.
“When I went to see Dick he told me I could stay if I wanted to but that I could also leave. I found that strange after such a short time but two days later I was called [and told] that the gaffer had accepted an offer for me.”
