Cutting the Wage Bill
Turns out Vlad has still been using his clout, but the Russian has been in stealth mode for the past few months. Apparently Hearts (well…Vlad,) have been slicing and dicing the wage budget quietly getting rid of useless players (I’m not arguing with this one actually, there are a few players who are taking up space).
The Scotsman printed figures showing that in the past couple of years, Heart’s player wages have seriously outstripped the clubs turnover by a couple of million £’s which may explain why there were two moments when Hearts players weren’t payed…perhaps…I hope not…Anyway, the Scotsman has given us a clue as to what Vlad’s plans for the future. Apparently, the only person that can authorise transfers and loans of players in or out is our very own Tsar Vlad, not Laszlo as we (or at least I) was led to believe. This may explain why the only price-tags created in the Hearts squad are those who have a bright future: Berra and Driver to name but two. With this in mind, we can see where Vlad is going with Hearts. He intends to bring in and improve young players from across Britain and from Riccarton, give them a good dose of First Team experience and sell them off to the highest bidder a few years later.
We can only hope this is one step in some grand scheme to make Hearts a great team, by eliminating the debt the best way Hearts can. The way Vlad acted in his first couple of years as Tsar of Tynecastle suggests he does care a little bit for the Gorgie outfit, I mean if he didn’t care or if he was willing to let the club fall apart, he wouldn’t have hired Csaba Laszlo or he might have kept up the insanity of last season.
So, we might have to wait a few years to see where this devious little scheme is going and we can only hope that Heart of Midlothian isn’t another one of Vlad’s money making schemes such as bootleg Beatles LP’s or the K-19 Nuclear Submarine…maybe some of the radiation has gotten to him.
