Two options open to Hearts as relegation looms

Hearts officials will take time to decide their next move after league reconstruction talks were abandoned, leaving the Edinburgh club facing imminent relegation from Scotland’s Premiership.

Owner Ann Budge and her board of directors will ponder their options overnight and possibly longer to carefully plan their response to the situation.

Premiership clubs decided after a meeting on Friday that restructuring talks should stop until the coronavirus crisis ends.

That leaves Hearts, Partick Thistle and Stranraer starting at relegation with the Scottish Professional Football League able to officially end this season’s top flight at any time.

Budge and Hamilton’s Les Gray led a task force to look into expanding the top flight. However, that has now been shelved despite the efforts of all concerned.

Hearts appear to have two options: Accept a demotion – which Budge estimates would cost her club £3million – or take legal action. They sit four points adrift at the foot of the Premiership with eight games of the campaign still to play.

At the moment the Premiership is suspended but an official halt is expected to be announced before the end of the month. When that happens, Hearts’ drop into the Championship will be confirmed.

Legal action remains an avenue open to Budge in that instance, however she has cooled on that idea slightly having initially threatened to go to court.

“It’s not clear-cut because we are waiting to find out if there is going to be a finish to the campaign,” said Gary Mackay, the former Tynecastle Park captain.

“Somewhere along the line, there has to be a decision made. If that means we are relegated as a club, we either take our punishment and try to rebuild better than we have previously, or we look at legal action.

“I’ve spoken to two or three people who were involved with me in the Save Our Hearts campaign years ago. They are saying: ‘Would we get together and help the club try to fund a legal action?’

“Obviously Hearts would need to decide if that was something they were going to do. We don't know if they would do it independently or look for supporters’ help, but we do know there would be a groundswell of support to help with it.

“It’s all ifs and buts for now. What is certain right now is that Scottish football is a laughing stock, especially regarding the Premiership.”

The debacle surrounding the vote to end this season following football’s shutdown, and the subsequent fallout from it, have been well-documented.

Even by Scottish football’s standards, the very public squabbling has been on a different level altogether.

“People are praising the Scottish Government’s leadership through this terrible crisis. Well, the lack of leadership and the nonsense going on within Scottish football just now is an actual embarrassment to our society,” stated Mackay.

The former midfielder is convinced Budge was correct to join the 15-person league reconstruction task force. However, he doubted from the outset if enough Premiership clubs would be invested in the idea.

“I think Ann made the right decision to try and work from the inside on reconstruction, rather than be on the outside looking in,” continued Mackay.

“When you saw Ann and Les Gray were involved, with both their clubs, Hearts and Hamilton, down at the bottom of the table, that was a warning sign for me.

“If there was someone from one of the top six clubs in the reconstruction group, it would have given me more hope. I just didn’t hold out much hope regarding league reconstruction.

“People make decisions to safeguard their football club. Hearts are where they are. You would like to think we would have improved our position if we had got to play the last eight games, but who knows?

“We have bounced back from many a crisis over the years so we need to deal with what is thrown at us now. There have been times when we’ve been relegated and bounced back before.

“We did that in the 1980s, we did it recently under Robbie Neilson, but we allowed things to slip. Now we need to address things within the football department to make sure this situation never arises again.”

Restructuring talks may return once coronavirus dissipates, but that will be too late to save Hearts, Thistle and Stranraer as they contemplate relegation from their respective divisions.

The choice to end league reconstruction discussions for now was announced in a statement by the Aberdeen chairman, Dave Cormack. It followed a conference call between Premiership officials on Friday afternoon.

“The strong feeling of the group was that we must focus all of our energies on emerging from the crisis we face, due to the pandemic, on getting back to playing football safely and getting fans back into grounds as soon as practicably possible,” said Cormack.

“Whilst the group sympathises with the plight of the situation the relegated teams are faced with, it concluded that this is not the right time to consider immediate reconstruction in the midst of a crisis.

“But the group is willing to engage in and pick up on these discussions once we are through COVID-19.”