Hearts owner laments ‘disrespect’ of her task force

LONDON: Scottish football descended into fresh acrimony Saturday when Hearts owner Ann Budge accused her Premiership counterparts of “appalling disrespect” in rejecting her task force’s plan to restructure the league set-up.

After the Scottish 2019/20 campaign at all levels below the Premiership was cancelled because of the coronavirus, a task force was established to look at creating a new three-division system.

But the plan failed to attract sufficient support at a meeting of Premiership clubs on Friday. Had proposals for the top two leagues to increase to 14 teams each been passed, Hearts, bottom of the Premiership,

would have been spared relegation.

Budge, the co-chair of the task force, issued a lengthy statement decrying Premiership clubs who voted against expansion before reading a paper on the topic she had prepared for them.

“This is so appallingly disrespectful to everyone on the task force,” said Budge. Meanwhile she insisted her plan was not simply a response to Edinburgh club Hearts’ plight, saying no club should be “unfairly penalised by exceptional decisions” taken in response to COVID-19.

“I would stand by that view, regardless of Hearts’ own position. “If something is wrong, it is wrong... To pour more financial hardship on specific clubs, given what we are all going through both now and for the foreseeable future, is both outrageous and shameful.”

Earlier, Partick Thistle — who stand to be relegated from the second-tier Championship now the reconstruction plan has been rejected — criticised the Scottish Professional Football League, with the Jags insisting they had been subjected to “unprecedented”

treatment.

On Friday, Rangers managing director Stewart Robertson was accused of making “baseless, damaging and self-serving attacks” by his fellow SPFL board members. They added they had “complete confidence” in chief executive Neil Doncaster and legal advisor Rod McKenzie, both of whom Rangers want suspended.

The board members again urged clubs to reject Rangers’ call for an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the vote that ended the lower-league season and handed the SPFL board the authority to do the same for the Premiership.

The 12 Premiership clubs and Championship winners Dundee United are due to meet on Tuesday. Rangers were 13 points adrift of leaders Celtic when the Premiership season was suspended in March due to the pandemic.

Celtic would be awarded a record-equalling ninth consecutive title if the SPFL board deemed no more games could be played. — AFP