BLAME GAME
Budge has major questions to answer, says MP
AS Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Murray takes no pleasure in reporting that the administration of our national sport is considered ‘a laughing stock’ by the watching world.
As a Hearts supporter, former director and key figure behind the fans’ foundation due to take control, he is also fairly furious about his team’s imminent demotion to the Championship — an unfair and avoidable consequence, he feels, of the coronavirus lockdown.
Yet the MP for Edinburgh South is not blind to his club’s role in their own downfall.
Ann Budge, he insists, must answer difficult questions about ‘wasted money’ that left Hearts entirely without cash reserves.
Pointing to her awful record of managerial appointments and a £10million overspend on stadium redevelopment, Murray says the owner cannot escape responsibility for a spectacular collapse.
Since Robbie Neilson’s Tynecastle exit three-and-a-half years ago, just months on from sampling the Europa League, Hearts have been heading in just one direction.
Under managers Ian Cathro, Craig Levein and then Daniel Stendel, busloads of players were signed — yet results have ranged from the poor to the abysmal.
When play was suspended, Hearts were four points adrift at the foot of the Premiership table, having won four games all season.
So, while chair Budge is currently rallying troops against rivals for voting down reconstruction — with legal action possibly in the offing — Murray feels that a little introspection wouldn’t go amiss.
‘When Robbie Neilson left, we were sitting very well in the Premiership, we got back into Europe and the finances were looking great, the proposal to complete the stadium was all there,’ he said.
‘Then it’s all gone dreadfully on the basis of some decisions. Some decisions have been made with the best intentions, of course.
‘But the amount of money that seems to have been wasted on reshaping the club time after time with changes of manager and personnel — the amount of money that’s been put into the stand was, well, well above what was initially proposed. Where are the reserves?
‘Nobody could have foreseen that this crisis was going to come, that this pandemic was going to come. But some massive questions have to be asked about succession planning, about where the club was going.
‘We’re back, potentially, in the Championship, trying to come out of a major financial crisis because of this pandemic — and the future is not looking very bright now.
‘Whereas, a few years ago, the future was looking the brightest potentially of any club in the Scottish Premiership.
‘There is a real problem at Hearts, there are real big questions to be asked.
‘All we’re trying to do at the moment as supporters is support the club, as we always have done, in any possible way we can to make sure they can get through this crisis and rebuild.’
That rebuilding work will take place in the Championship, a show of hands by Premiership clubs last Friday effectively killing any hopes of an expanded top flight.
It was one more farce, according to Murray, in an ever-lengthening list of fiascos surrounding the Scottish game.
‘Everyone is looking at Scottish football and they’re laughing at us because again the authorities, who are supposed to be custodians of the game, have created this laughing-stock scenario,’ Murray told Sky Sports.
‘Whether it be about the voting with Dundee, whether it be about league reconstruction, nobody has any confidence at all that the management and running of Scottish football is done for the interests of its member clubs and the supporters who put their money in every week.
‘That’s the key thing that has to come through this process.
‘The bottom line is, when we come out of this crisis, let’s get Scottish football into a state that Scottish football can be proud of — every association elsewhere is now laughing at us and thinking about another mess that we’ve made of our game.
‘Every single person must be looking and asking: “How do we make sure that no club, out of the 42 members that we have, are disadvantaged?”.
‘The best way of doing that would have been to reconstruct the leagues, finish this league season now, so people could plan properly for when football kicks off again — hopefully very soon.’
Budge has been forced to delay transfer of ownership of the club to the Foundation of Hearts.
Despite his criticism of the woman who stepped in and pulled the club from administration back in 2014, Murray feels there is no rush.
‘I think handing over ownership of the club at this stage might not be the best thing to do both in practical and in legal terms,’ he said. ‘Everything has been satisfied, the Foundation of Hearts and the supporters will own the club to the tune of 70 per cent.
‘So they are now the owners of the club. But they are owners of the club going into a crisis.
‘The biggest problem we always had when dealing with governance and fan ownership, the big issue around supporters being involved in the running and management of a football club is, when they took that ownership on and a crisis hit, what do you then do?
‘There are a lot of questions that are a reality — questions we posed six or seven years ago when we were putting this project together.
‘I do think these are the big questions that the board of Hearts and the Foundation of Hearts are going to have to think about before they take on the club.
‘I think a fresh approach is needed. But all of that can only be done when the uncertainty of this crisis is lifted.
‘That uncertainty could have been partially lifted by a temporary or permanent reconstruction of leagues that would have helped every club.’