Two days after the season has ended Ann Budge won’t have to factor in European football into her budget preparations for next season.
Perhaps if she’d put the club £17m in debt to a couple of shadowy figures she could prepare Hearts for Europa League qualifiers and a potential £4m jackpot from reaching the group phase of the competition.
Something that would make next summer’s recruitment programme much easier.
For reasons best known to themselves it appears that Hearts will keep quiet despite effectively being robbed of Europa League qualifiers for next season.
While they have kept their club solvent across the country at Sevco it’s a very different story.
Not content with breaking the 5m euro debt limit set by UEFA the Ibrox club’s finances are in such bad shape that they haven’t produced audited accounts since June last year.
In a bid to ensure Financial Fair Play UEFA require clubs to have no more than 5m euro of debt over the past three years backed up by audited accounts produced over the last six months.
In their last audited accounts, to June 2016, Sevco had £11.9m of debt owed in so called soft loans.
Put simply Sevco have paid around £8m to deny Hearts a chance to play in Europe.
Ann Budge was supposedly a breath of fresh air on the football scene but her silence on this matter is telling.
Maybe once a club that plays Sevco lodge an official complaint and UEFA investigate the SFA for their self certification over the licence the ‘Queen of Hearts’ may show an interest.
