Hearts lay down gauntlet to Old Firm

The names of Martin Petras and Ludek Straceny might not roll off the tongue the way Tam The Gun did, but the Czech pair are already rivalling the former army sergeant, whose role as official timekeeper in the capital made him a celebrity for punctuality before his death last year. At exactly 11.58pm on Tuesday night, the pair’s moves to Heart of Midlothian were processed by the SFA to allow them to beat the deadline by two minutes.

They took Hearts’ dealings on deadline day to seven. In all, Vladimir Romanov has provided Graham Rix with 11 new players during the window, at an estimated cost of £2million. A complete team. Whether the new faces are the “A Team” is down to Rix, and his new assistant, Jim Duffy, over the next five months.

Duffy admitted on BBC Radio Scotland’s excellent production, Through The Window, which kept pace with all the breaking developments from Derek Riordan’s on-off move to Rangers from Hibernian to the conclusion of Petras and Straceny’s signings, that it will be tough to keep everyone in the Tynecastle dressing-room happy. It is just as well the club moved to its modern and spacious training academy at Riccarton last season.

It certainly kept the fans happy. Hearts supporters could not contain their delight at Romanov’s bulk buying. Certainly, the Lithuanian millionaire’s very public investment in Rix’s squad is a mission statement. Not just for the Premierleague title race with Celtic, and the fight for a Champions League place with Rangers, which will be the reward for this season, but for seasons to come.

The irony was probably not lost on Rangers fans. They had been the ones who entered the transfer window full of optimism after the promise from David Murray, the chairman, that significant funds would be available to Alex McLeish to strengthen his squad. As the closure of the window loomed, Rangers failed to secure three players, which perhaps told its own story about the shift in fortunes, both football and financial.

A £350,000 offer for Riordan was, not surprisingly, resisted by the Easter Road club. Such a sum would barely get a decent semi-detached across the road from Rangers £14 million training ground at Milngavie, never mind a vibrant young striker who has netted almost 40 goals in the last season and a half. An attempt to lure Nigel Quashie from Southampton failed because the Scotland midfield player revealed yesterday that he was not prepared to go on loan to Ibrox and chose a £1.4 million move to West Bromwich Albion instead. Joey Barton, Manchester City’s unsettled midfield player, also revealed yesterday that Rangers had asked to get him on loan.

Dealing with the failure to increase the offer for Riordan, Murray said on the club’s official website that the day of Rangers being held to ransom in the transfer market were over. That is a laudable ideal, given the improved financial picture at Ibrox which has driven down the club’s debt. However, the £84 million-worth of spending under Dick Advocaat’s excessive era was not all a result of arm twisting, notably the record £12.2 million spent on Tore Andre Flo.

The new, leaner Rangers have to pitch their offers somewhere between largesse and larceny. Sadly, the offer for Riordan was closer to the latter. It was also difficult to understand why McLeish would want another striker, when he has just completed an excellent bargain buy by bringing in Kris Boyd for £400,000 from Kilmarnock, and has Dado Prso and Nacho Novo sitting on the bench because of the impressive Boyd-Peter Lovenkrands partnership.

The fact that McLeish was not given the funds that had been promised to him in January has prompted several schools of thought. The first being that Rangers feel confident that McLeish can cut back the seven-point deficit on Hearts to secure at least a Champions League place without any reinforcements. The second being that whatever revenue is accrued from reaching the Champions League qualifying round, it is not worth the gamble of additional salary costs. The third is that the injection of capital will materialise but is being kept until the summer, casting doubts over whether McLeish will get to use it and hinting at his replacement.

Equally, only time will tell if Romanov’s shopping spree has brought the sort of quality to Tynecastle that can make the club a perennial contender to the Old Firm. Their parading of Mirsad Beslija, Juho Makela, Chris Hackett, Bruno Aguiar and José Goncalves as deadline-day signings, plus the conclusion late in the night of deals for Rais M’Bolhi, Petras and Straceny was impressive work.

Beslija cost a record £850,000 fee from Racing Genk, of Belgium, while Makela came from HJK Helsinki for a reported fee of £500,000. Each signed directly for the club, as did M’Bolhi, a young goalkeeper from Marseilles. Petras and Straceny signed to Romanov’s other club, FBK Kaunas, before being loaned to Tynecastle until the end of the season.

Aguiar and Goncalves also tied themselves to Kaunas for 3½ years and have also been instantly loaned to the title push in Edinburgh. And Lee Johnson, Neil McCann and Nerijus Barasa arrived earlier in January.

“This has been the busiest month of my life,” Rix said. “But getting all these players shows it’s been worth it. Since I’ve been here Vladimir Romanov has only ever been 100 per cent behind me. He gets stick but he has put his money where his mouth is.”

Hearts’ debt remains over £20 million, one reason perhaps that Romanov bought Petras and Co via his Kaunas connection. Yet, all the new recruits seem convinced they have signed on for potential champions. Aguiar, 24, tasted title success at Benfica and feels the same about Tynecastle. “Benfica helped me to win the Portuguese title last year and I will never forget that,” he said. “Now I am here to win another title. I have watched Hearts, I have been training with the players and there is good quality here. We can work together to make this happen.”

Goncalves said he ignored interest from Rangers in favour of Hearts. “I had clubs in England who made me offers too,” the defender said. “I have played in the Champions League with FC Thun but I liked Hearts’ mentality and ambition. I think both clubs are similar. I watched Hearts beat FC Basle two years ago. Hearts gave me the best proposition.

I didn’t come here for money, I came to realise ambitions. That is my motivation.”

Celtic fans also used the BBC Radio forum to gripe about inactivity. Roy Keane and Mark Wilson, a £500,000 purchase from Dundee United, were the arrivals before Dion Dublin on Monday. Gordon Strachan is also working with a more limited budget. However, Celtic’s biggest deal of the transfer window was to persuade Stilian Petrov, the midfield player, to sign a new contract extension that will keep him at the club until 2009.

The SFA said that this was a busier transfer window than last January, processing more than 300 registrations for Premierleague clubs. The next four months will reveal whether burning the midnight oil was worth it.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk