Ryan Stevenson in sizzling 7-pronged Hearts takedown as he gets stuck in about the club he loves
It is time for the Queen of Hearts to abdicate and leave Tynecastle as the club is going back the way and she is rapidly tarnishing her reputation.
Ann Budge has got to take responsibility as head of the club for what has happened this season. OK, so it can never be forgotten what she’s done for the Hearts. She came into Tynecastle in 2014 when they were in administration, when I was there. Then we enjoyed a hugely successful time last season when we qualified for Europe and comfortably finished third in the Premiership.
Hearts were a incredibly successful club the last couple of years but the reality is now they are a massively depreciating commodity. If anything we’ve gone back two or three years in my opinion and I don’t see that changing until heads roll at board level. Ultimately, there needs to be change because things can’t go on as they are. The board needs to step aside or employ somebody who’s completely football-minded and football-equipped to deal with things or we aren’t going to see change.
The board’s arrogance is just beyond belief, the fact that they keep thinking they’re going to get things right and this master computer programme (Jamestown Analytics) is just going to start spitting out players this month and everything will be okay and we’ll finish top six. It’s just been a disastrous season all round and we won’t have Europe next year, which has been really really good for the club over the last couple of seasons.
I know personally people who pump a lot of money into the club, who are now questioning things. People are now saying that if they go down or even if they stay where they are, they will not be putting any more money in. My concern is that Ann is starting to tarnish all the good she has done for the club.
You know what football’s like and she only has herself to blame because ultimately she’s the chairwoman. Then you work your way down to the chief executive Andrew McKinlay. Some of the decisions he’s made have been outrageous. His arrogance as well as the fact that he thinks he knows all and he’s doing everything he does is 100% right. The fact that they let the situation get to where it has got to with Lawrence Shankland, the fact that we never recruited any extra strikers and the fact that Joe Savage (head of recruitment) left when he left in the middle of a window.
We’ve then appointed somebody in place of Savage who’s a sports scientist (Graeme Jones) and has very little to do with recruiting players. We now go into a January window, where every single person and every single player knows Hearts are in a horrendous situation. So if you are a club and Hearts contact you looking for a player, you’ve got them over a barrel straight away.
It’s already an over-inflated window and a horrible window to do business in and Hearts have left themselves no option but to try and go and sign five to seven players just to carry them into the top six and to give the club a jolt.
That’s more money out the door, wasted, and it’s wasted through negligence mate and that then falls down to Budge, McKinlay and the other decision makers at the club. At what stage are these people in positions of power held responsible? It infuriates me because they sit behind the scenes, earning massive salries and they just hide when things go wrong.
The fact is they know the fans are so loyal and amazing to the club that they know they will keep digging into their pockets. It is criminal. It really is.
