Hearts smash through Old Firm wage barrier

EXCLUSIVE: By Roddy Thomson and Michael Grant

VLADIMIR ROMANOV is paying 2004 European Cup winner Edgaras Jankauskas a breathtaking £10,000 per week to spearhead Hearts’ dash for a lucrative Champions League berth, the Sunday Herald has learned.

The full weight of the Lithuania-based banker’s complex investment is only just beginning to emerge, with Czech trio Rudi Skacel, already capped by his country, Roman Bednar and Michal Pospisil, plus Julien Brellien of Inter Milan, also understood to be on high wages.

Jankauskas’ earnings outstrip many Old Firm players for the first time in a generation.

“These are top quality footballers, and they’re clearly not coming here for the love of their little local club,” chief executive Phil Anderton said after the first-team squad, in another display of new-found affluence, were kitted out in Hugo Boss suits.

Outwith the most senior Old Firm figures such as Chris Sutton or Dado Prso, few can expect to command five-figure weekly wage packets even on crowds three or four times that which Hearts can accommodate ahead of Tynecastle reconstruction.

Anderton has secured a record 10,000 season-ticket holders to witness the dawn of the first considered challenge to the Glasgow duopoly since TV rights and Bosman combined to drive a depressing wedge through an already imbalanced Scottish club game, and victory in today’s Edinburgh derby would bring a massive confidence boost with five “provincial” fixtures still to be played before hosting champions Rangers on September 24.

The symbolic closing of the wages gap will be put to its first significant on-field test today when last season’s third force, Hibs, cross Edinburgh – with former Tynecastle midfielder Michael Stewart out to prove his worth after his move in what is expected to prove a super-charged first derby of the season.

Visiting manager Tony Mowbray spoke in the lead-up to the game of how agents now offer Hearts the same players put in front of the Glasgow teams.

However, Hearts may yet encounter significant internal hurdles due to the scale of George Burley’s team-building enterprise – with totemic Scotland midfielder and Celtic target Paul Hartley leading a clutch of home-grown players seeking wage parity over the coming years.

Hartley has yet to agree a new contract after two bids by Martin O’Neill were turned down. Defender Andy Webster, the object of a failed offer from Rangers earlier this summer, is another who could agitate for pegged increases having sat out the pre-season tour of Ireland after being similarly refused permission to speak to Ibrox manager Alex McLeish.

Mowbray has been eager to highlight the financial discrepancy between the two capital clubs in the run-up to this game, making some pointed observations about what Hearts would be expected to achieve for Romanov’s investment – with a further three signings anticipated before the transfer window shuts at the end of the month.

“Can we finish in front of Hearts with the budget we’ve got and the money they’re spending?” asked Mowbray, whose side finished 11 points clear of their city rivals last season. “What sort of achievement will it be if we do? I don’t know the implications of Hearts’ spending. Are they making a profit or loss? What debt do they carry? Who carries that debt? Where will they be in three years’ time? I don’t know. Maybe short-term Hearts will prosper. Long-term, I don’t know what’s good or bad for that club.”

As far as the Hibs manager was concerned, the signing of Jankauskas, who was in the Porto squad who won the 2004 Champions League, demonstrated the gulf between the clubs’ resources. “Agents only put players to football clubs when they know they can afford to pay them. The players who get put to Celtic or Rangers don’t get put to us, because what’s the point? That’s the way the business works so at this moment players with real pedigree are arriving at Hearts. I don’t know their wage structure, but I would suggest it is more than we can pay.”

Hibs managing director Rod Petrie maintains a tight grip on the wages-to-income ratio at Easter Road, with Mowbray expected to fill almost an entire team for the money being thrown at Jankauskas alone. However, Burley’s former youth coach at Ipswich retains the conviction that the group of young players he is leading have the ability to make their own names in the game.

He continued: “I don’t know what the worth of our team is. If we were here five or six years ago what price would you have put on Derek Riordan if you had to buy him in the open market? Could you put a realistic price on him, on Garry O’Connor, on Kevin Thomson or Steven Whittaker? To me they are all good footballers with a worth. Is that worth greater than spending £350,000 on a Czech or whatever?”

While Hearts are beginning to flex their financial muscle, Mowbray has resigned himself to the inevitable departure of Riordan, the 22-year-old whose Easter Road contract runs out in September next year. “I said from day one that Derek will undoubtedly outgrow this football club because of the financial restraints this club is run on. I don’t ever envisage the chains being unleashed and us having a £10 million budget to pay players x thousand pounds a week. It’s not going to happen.

“When the day comes when he becomes a commodity that clubs realise they need, we won’t stand in his way. But at this moment, for me, the best option for him is to forget about contracts, about moving, and just get on with his football.”

07 August 2005

Taken from the Sunday Herald