Time for Glass to show his hand.

Lull in storm doing Hearts no favours

JAMES ROBERTSON

28 Jun 1995

Edinburgh journalist JAMES ROBERTSON charts the progress businessman Jim Glass is making in his attempt to wrestle control of Heart of Midlothian football club from the hands of the present incumbents, Chris Robinson and Leslie Deans, and the influence that former chairman Wallace Mercer may or may not be exerting on affairs.

THE phoney war over the future ownership of Heart of Midlothian FC is about to develop into real confrontation if Edinburgh property developer Jim Glass lives up to his declared intention to translate his recent sabre-rattling into action.

Glass has said that he will back up his verbal interest in taking over the Tynecastle club with a formal, written offer, to be delivered this week.

The comments over the four weeks since he revealed his desire to unhand the reins from Chris Robinson and Leslie Deans, who have held them for a year, have remained muted, restrained and, some might say, very Edinburgh.

Perhaps the expectation of more acidic exchanges lies in the perception of the audience, yet to become accustomed to the fact that Wallace Mercer no longer rules at Tynecastle.

The script so far would have been more trenchant were he still principal.

The absence of drama, however, could prove a mere lull.

After all, Glass has only started his run-up to the ball.

And Robinson and Deans are not types to dive before the striker has connected.

It will only be once Robinson and Deans know the power of his shot, with the arrival of an offer document, that their script can be expected to liven up.

"It certainly won't happen before the middle of the week, not before Wednesday," said Glass last week.

At 62 he professes to be occupying a back seat in his property development business, Glassedin Commercial Ltd, based in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, and delegating more and more to his two sons.

He was not showing his hand and was unwilling to clarify the verbal proposal he outlined to Robinson on June 1.

That, reportedly, involved an initial investment of £2m, to be ploughed immediately into new playing talent, a matching sum soon afterwards, and, eventually, a new shares issue.

The closest to a progress report he would give was that there was "a lot going on behind the scenes."

Since then, he has been silent.

But a source very close to Glass said that there was no indication that the developer's timing had changed.

So the incumbents at Tynecastle do not have long to wait to gauge the strength of the threat.

Glass is no novice at attracting investment.

He was joint developer for a giant edge-of-town retail complex east of Edinburgh and is currently involved in a £20m extension.

"It's a good scheme and it will be open for Christmas 1996," he enthused.

Hearts fans are more concerned with the state of the club a Christmas sooner than then.

Glass' success as a property developer does not endear him to cynics among the Tynecastle support, who have an in-built suspicion of the breed and their possible designs on the ground.

Some harbour further suspicions about Glass' previous connections.

They recall Wallace Mercer's property interests and his theory that Hearts could be transported from Gorgie to a greenfield site.

Those fields of dreams were conceived by Mercer in the early nineties.

There was the Millerhill plan to flit to the eastern outskirts of Edinburgh, too close for many to Hibbie badlands, in which Glass would have been the developer.

And there was the vision of a new Tynecastle at Hermiston, on the opposite extremity, but no more acceptable to tradition-hugging punters.

Those grand designs -- like Mercer's bid for city rivals Hibernian FC, which proved a disastrous personal public relations -- petered out.

There was opposition from planners to the scale of the non-football commercial elements, the costs -- and the thumbs-down from the turnstile-users.

Glass scoffs at the suggestion that a buck could be made from an alternative use for the hallowed ground.

"Tynecastle has little or no value for property development," he insisted.

He is dismissive of the suggestion that he cannot be considered a dyed-in-maroon Jambo because of an apparent allegiance to Hibs in the sixties when he was at Easter Road and Tynecastle on alternate Saturdays.

"If Hearts were playing Hibs in those days, I did have a slight preference for Hibs," he conceded.

He said, however, that he has long since been more inclined towards Tynecastle.

Glass brushed off fearful speculation among fans that Mercer figures in his aspirations and that success would involve the former chairman, who retains a 25% holding in the club and left a £1m guarantee with its bankers, as a major influence again.

He has been adamant that Mercer is not in the plan.

Mercer himself has reiterated his lack of ambition to make anything resembling a comeback.

Hearts' Shareholders' Association dread the resumption, even in a watered-down form, of the former supremo's 13-year reign.

When Glass came into the frame, they stated that minority shareholders would want to be free to sell if Mercer was to return from self-imposed exile in the South of France.

Mercer was welcomed with open arms 14 years ago as a white knight come to rescue Hearts from the verge of bankruptcy by buying it for £350,000.

Robinson, managing-director of Wheatsheaf Catering, who with solicitor Deans made an initial £1.27m payment to allow Mercer to bow out this time last year, takes the attitude that the board will believe Glass' offer when they see it.

Meantime, he is concentrating on the job in hand.

Despite close to £4m debt, he speaks confidently of the club being in "good heart" and progressing with the development of the stadium to meet Taylor Report requirements.

"The board are united and we have our plans to get some fresh investment into the club," he said.

"That will be done quietly.

Our policy will be judged by our actions rather than our words.

There will be no great announcements.

We will go out and do it."

Robinson has no intention of becoming prematurely involved in a slagging match.

He prefers to talk about how well season-ticket sales are going and about progress in the building programme, on schedule to provide 3600 more seats for the new season.

"It will eventually be one of the best stadiums in Scotland," he said.

He does have other things on his mind -- such as the recent flurry of litigation involving himself and Deans on the one hand and Mercer on the other.

Last June, as Mercer handed over the reins to the pair, he was lauding them as "suitable incumbents in a financial and personal sense."

The pleasantries are past.

Robinson and Deans have raised an action for £1.2m against Mercer through his company, Cosmopolitan, over alleged breaches of warranties involved in the sale to their New Hearts company, through which they bought control.

And Cosmopolitan have launched an action against New Hearts, Robinson and Deans, complaining at their failure to pay a £125,000 instalment of the deferred price for control.

A courtroom tussle is not what really concerns Hearts fans.

Their interest lies in the outcome of any bid for Hearts and its effect on the club.

Most would share the views of prominent Hearts fan Eric Milligan, convener of Lothian region and convener of the new authority that takes charge of Edinburgh next year.

He, naturally, wants Hearts to enjoy the benefit of a management that can afford to splash out on the playing side and make the trophy room appear better dressed and worthy of its long history, which began in 1874.

"If there are people in the streets with more money to give than the people running the club at present, I would like to think that they would get sympathetic consideration," he said.

Milligan worries about the club's ability to trade itself out of its indebtedness and continue to meet the challenges of recreating the stadium and, simultaneously, boosting the playing strength.

He is delighted with the progress on the stadium and only hopes that Robinson and Deans can continue the momentum.

Like other Jambos, he is awaiting to see Glass' hand with interest, but is concerned that uncertainty and perhaps a change of ownership might mean an unsettled period for manager Tommy McLean and his squad.

As far as he and others who follow Hearts through thick and thin are concerned, the sooner the takeover business is settled, one way or the other, the better.

They want no major distraction from efforts to re-establish Hearts as a force on the field.

And who would deny that the Gorgie faithful deserve to be spared a long, hot summer that might take the edge off the club's determination to live less dangerously next season.

Taken from the Herald