As Stewart Regan chases an unlikely audience with Mike Ashley the SFA chief really should show some interest in a club that has spectacularly changed it’s ways.
Eighteen months ago Hearts were a basket case of football economics showing all the traits that had taken Scottish football to it’s knees.
A decade of overspending or ‘chasing the dream’ as it’s romanticised had brought relative success at the expense of other clubs with the Edinburgh side getting by month by month on the whim of Lithuanian banking authorities.
Wages regularly went unpaid, HMRC would issue winding up orders and an SFA registration ban were the regular diet of headlines coming out of Tynecastle.
Administration and the real threat of liquidation has been a sobering experience for the club with new owner Anne Budge insisting that they get their act together rather than attempt to keep up with the Jones’ or the reckless spending of other Championship clubs chasing the promotion dream.
Wise management and sensible spending may not be headline grabbing but if Regan and friends want to ensure that a club from Ibrox survives some discussions with Budge would be more beneficial than chasing moonbeams.
“There is a fundamental business rule that says you shouldn’t be spending more than you bring in – it’s not rocket science,” Budge told the BBC.
“If you do that, you’re going to end up with debts. Borrowing money for a particular capital programme you can understand, but running up debts that are prevalent in football is beyond my understanding really.
“That will not happen here – certainly not while I’m in charge and I would love to think we could actually have a philosophy in place that says this is the way this club runs: we don’t run up lots of debts.”
During the summer Hearts lost out on the signings of Kris Boyd and Marius Zaliuska- it seems that Budge has spent that £13,000-a-week better than her distressed promotion rival along the M8.
