Kris Boyd reveals why Celtic should be worried

Kris Boyd feels that Celtic should be worried by talks that Brighton owner Tony Bloom is looking at investing in Hearts with a specific interest in recruitment.

Over the last few seasons Brighton have evolved into the most successful club in England in terms of buying, developing and selling players on for huge fees.

Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool are among the clubs that have spent big on Brighton players in recent years with many Celtic fans upset to see Matt O’Riley being sold to what is regarded as a smaller club in many ways.

The reality is that a move to Brighton is viewed as a stepping stone to the real top clubs, if Hearts could implement a similar scaled down version it could make them serious players in the Scottish game rather than hoping for third and being 30 or so points behind the SPFL champions.

Hibs already have a link up with Bournemouth, Dundee take players on loan from Burnley but a Brighton link up with serious investment could make Hearts a far stronger prospect than the club sitting in bottom place in the SPFL with one point from five matches.

It’s an interesting one for Scottish football. A lot of people will look to Tony Bloom and straight away go to Brighton and look at the recruitment there.

Listen, you can’t look at Hearts and say they’re going to be on the same page in terms of recruitment with Brighton.

But where you can look is Union St-Gilloise in Belgium and their rise under Tony Bloom and other people connected with the football club there, they’ve come up and caused problems to the big ones. If I was Rangers or Celtic I would be worried about this appointment.

It’s easy to turn around and a lot of people just say: ‘Oh we’ll go and throw loads of money at it’, but Tony Bloom is a shrewd, shrewd man.

You look at the job he’s doing at Brighton, you look at the influence he’s obviously had at Union St-Gilloise and if I’m Hearts, I’m biting their hand off for this.

The recruitment side of it could be a lot better, but Hearts are an attractive club, they can get in players that can go and challenge Rangers or Celtic.

There’s potential at Hearts to go and challenge Rangers or Celtic, you only need to look at the recruitment from the two clubs that Tony Bloom is already involved in. This could be a big thing for Scottish football

It is perhaps wishful thinking on Boyd’s part that Hearts could soon be worrying Celtic but they should certainly be doing better than at present which is 14 points behind Aberdeen in what is viewed as the battle for third place.