The box office Scottish Premiership swap deal that needs to happen in the January window

Micky Mellon and Lawrence Shankland both have the shared desire of Dundee United doing well on the park, but their individual motivations differ somewhat.

Dundee United striker Lawrence Shankland. Picture: SNS

Shankland is a goalscorer who struck the back of the net so consistently in the Scottish second tier that a little thing like strength of competition didn’t dissuade Steve Clarke from putting him in the Scotland squad. It’s a position he retained into the last international break and watched on as his team-mates hoisted this proud footballing nation into an international tournament for the first time in 22 barren years. It’s a position he’ll want to keep for the upcoming European Championships, but to do that he’ll need to fend off strong competition from free-scoring Hibs striker Kevin Nisbet.

Mellon, on the other hand, doesn’t care as much if Shankland is on the bus to Hampden or not. Sure, the United manager would take immense pride at seeing one of his players involved in such an occasion, not to mention the value it’d add to any future transfer fee for the Tannadice club, but it’s not his priority. His aim is to keep Dundee United in the top flight and to do so with as little trepidation as possible. And in order to do this he has devised a hugely disciplined system for his team, something which has proven adept at digging out results but not laying chances on a plate for his main goal threat to gobble up.

Sixty-five miles north, another striker could be forgiven for being a little disillusioned with his current role in the team. Sam Cosgrove was once the centre of gravity within the Aberdeen starting XI. The game-plan was get the ball up to towering striker, who rapidly matured from a lanky ‘bambi-on-ice’ type to one of the most effective target-man goalscorers in the country. However, a lengthy injury lay-off at the beginning of this season prompted Dons boss Derek McInnes to draw up a fresh blueprint.

This saw a change from the typically favoured 4-2-3-1 to a visibly more fluid 3-4-3. Instead of relying on a focal point, it put the onus on the front three to all move effectively in and out of possession, swapping positions and typically being a nightmare to defend against. An injury to Marley Watkins, the tip of the attack, occurred around the same time of Cosgrove’s return, so it only made sense for him to return to the starting XI. As a quick aside, it would have been interesting to see what McInnes would’ve done if Watkins wasn’t ruled out.

Since then returns have been underwhelming. He’s netted three times in 15 appearances. That’s not dreadful, which is what you could also say about his general level of play, but it isn’t what we’ve been used to seeing from the 24-year-old who was linked with seven-figure moves away from Pittodrie just last year.

The Aberdeen attack, meanwhile, hasn’t quite replicated the menace of earlier in the campaign. It’s not the worst fit – after all, a traditional target man working with nippy supporting attackers is a recipe for success we’ve seen in football countless times throughout the years – but it isn’t happening for Cosgrove. He appears to have lost his mojo, as illustrated by the two late chances he spurned towards the end of Saturday’s 2-0 win over Motherwell.

Player swap deals are largely a thing of the past. The Bosman ruling and the beginning of player empowerment across football pretty much put paid to them. Often players would agree to move just so it got them out of a bad situation with one club. These days they don’t have to be told when and where to go. They can wait for their contracts to run down and freely talk to any club interested in having them. That said, swaps do still happen from time to time, typically in instances of loan deals where players are more inclined to agree knowing it’ll be a short-term thing. There's even a famous case involving these two clubs as Billy Dodds was used as a makeweight in the transfer that brought Robbie Winters from Tannadice to Pittodrie in 1998.

So what I’m proposing is this: Aberdeen and Dundee United swap Sam Cosgrove and Lawrence Shankland for the remainder of the 2020/21 season.

It may sound nuts (OK, it is nuts) but if this move could happen it would improve the form of both players and improve the quality of both teams.

United would get themselves someone who could relieve the pressure on the defence and make them a more intimidating attacking force. Though they have three good Scottish Premiership attackers already in Shankland, Marc McNulty and Nicky Clark, one of the most impressive players this campaign, none of them can be relied upon to take long balls out of the air and drag their team up the park. Cosgrove would go back to being the talismanic figure he was in the north east for two seasons, which should help him recover his confidence.

Shankland, meanwhile, would be presented with a dream scenario at his former club Aberdeen. He’d have Ryan Hedges, Scott Wright, Matty Kennedy and Jonny Hayes playing alongside him; creative talent at a level significantly above anyone in a tangerine jersey at present. His movement around the final third would be more dynamic than Cosgrove and he would get the opportunity to rack up the goals before the end of the season, thereby ending any doubt in the mind of the national team boss as to whether he should be included in the squad for this summer’s Euros.

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