Break gives Burley chance to fly out on spy mission

MARK BONTHRONE

HEARTS boss George Burley will use this weekend's international break to jet off on a secret spying mission as he continues to scour the Continent for players to add to his Tynecastle revolution.

Although the Jambos currently top the SPL table, Burley has never hidden his desire to bolster his squad when the January transfer window re-opens.

The Gorgie boss has been consistent in his view that his current group of players lack the strength in depth to challenge the Old Firm over the course of the season.

Both himself and his chief scout, Simon Hunt, have taken in a number of matches since their appointment at the Capital club and they are keen to cast their net as wide as possible.

They have compiled a long list of potential targets which were discussed at a strategy meeting with the board two weeks ago and they will continue to work on assessing players right up until the window closes again.

"I'll take in a game abroad at the weekend," Burley confirmed.

"I'm hoping to look at a specific player but other than that I don't really want to say any more at the moment."

It will be a strange couple of weeks for Burley and his coaching staff with 12 players currently away with their respective international teams.

They will not return until a week on Friday, just a day before the Jambos' top-of-the-table clash with Celtic in Glasgow, and Burley admitted it is far from ideal preparation.

"It's one of the weeks when, because we have so many internationals, particularly guys travelling abroad, we can't do anything. We have 12 players away," he revealed.

"It will be next Friday before the Celtic match before we can start to do anything. Preparation is always important especially for such a big game, but we're not going to have any time.

"We've given the players that are here a couple of days off this week and we'll mix it up a bit and combine the first team guys that are left and the younger guys.

"We will just try to keep things ticking over as best we can."

Meanwhile, Hearts' major shareholder, Vladimir Romanov, could be poised to extend his influence on the game in this country after talks with Inverness Caley Thistle. Both clubs have confirmed that a meeting took place before Hearts' recent league match at the Caledonian stadium during which Romanov offered to help find Inverness players from Eastern Europe.

Any link-up with Inverness would, however, raise a potential conflict of interest for Romanov.

Hearts director Sergejus Fedotovas revealed: "The possibility of bringing young Eastern European players to Scotland to allow them to develop was discussed.

"It was raised that teams like Inverness could get quality players from Eastern Europe into their squad.

"We are considering organising this but at the moment there is no final understanding."

Inverness director of football Graeme Bennet added: "One of the issues we discussed was players and his [Romanov's] contacts in the Baltic countries.

"It was suggested that we have a look at some with the help of his contacts."

Staying in the Highlands, Hearts' reserve side were beaten 3-2 by Caley Thistle at the Caledonian Stadium last night. David Armstrong and Jamie Mole got the goals for the wee Jambos.

However, Czech frontman Michal Pospisil did not play any part in the match.

The striker has been recovering from a hamstring injury and played almost half an hour against Falkirk at the weekend before being substituted.

But Burley decided he did not want to risk the player in a reserve fixture with Roman Bednar already on the sidelines.

"Michel needs more training. It will be like a mini pre-season for him," said Burley.

Taken from the Scotsman