Laszlo pays no heed to wage woes

Csaba Laszlo, the Hearts manager, last night played down the Tynecastle wages wrangle, revealing he waited three years to be paid his final year's salary at former club Ferencvaros.

The embarrassing episode of unpaid wages was finally brought to an end yesterday after worried players and staff received their salaries in full. The news signalled the end of a week-long saga, which led many to question the club's overall financial health, with their debt at £36.25m, according to last audited accounts.

Weekly-paid players had gone without wages since last Friday, while non-footballing staff did not receive their monthly wages as normal on the 24th of the month.
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But all payments have now been deposited into bank accounts, with the club last weekend stressing a technical' fault had been to blame for the problems.

If the sorry affair has cast a shadow over third-placed Hearts' solid start to the new season under Romanian-born Hungarian Laszlo, he wasn't showing it yesterday.

Given his experiences with financially troubled Ferencvaros, a fallen giant of Hungarian football, Laszlo has taken this week with a pinch of salt. He said: "I don't think this week is a big problem, today everybody is paid.

"The players and myself, we have the money in the accounts and now we concentrate on the football. I hope it doesn't happen again, but my job is to concentrate on the football and to bring results. I don't like to talk now about the money, we would like to go out and to show that we have a unity in the dressing room.

"The team is together, can smile and is concentrating on it's work. You always have difficult times but you must be positive. Look, I got my money from Ferencvaros after three years, my one-year's salary. Ferencvaros had a financial collapse. We played in the UEFA Cup, Champions League but the club had a lot of debt. We didn't get the money.

"I got my last one year's salary four months ago and I left Ferencvaros three years ago. Sometimes you have this situation. But at Ferencvaros I concentrated only on my job."

Laszlo, seemingly relaxed about the situation despite fears over Vladimir Romanov's ownership, turned his attentions to the game at Dundee United today. "For me, it's important to have headlines about the sport and this is my intention. For example, we can go to the top six or maybe to the UEFA Cup. That is for me the real headline for football, the rest is not my job," he said.

Laszlo is set to hand a debut to Mike Tullberg, the Danish forward, at Tannadice. The 22-year-old, who will wear the No.9 shirt, may start on the bench but should feature after recovering from the torn thigh muscle that has sidelined him since his loan move from Reggina of Italy.

Victory over Craig Levein's men would be a welcome relief from all the negative press but Lukasz Zaluska, the Dundee United goalkeeper, has other ideas.

His side drew criticism from all quarters after a five-game winless streak left them rooted to the foot of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League table. But Zaluska insists it has only made them stronger and, after last weekend's victory over Aberdeen then the defeat of Airdrie in the Co-operative Cup on Tuesday night - which saw the club record their first back-to-back wins since January - the Pole is confident of making it a hat-trick today.

"After the first few games of the season people were writing us off," said Zaluska. "But that was fine by us because the players here are confident in our ability and don't care what other people say. The criticism might turn out to be a good thing because it made everyone even more determined to turn it around.

"There was pressure on us, it was a case of we must win', we must win' but I think the boys coped with it well. We did it against Aberdeen last weekend and built on the result in the cup on Tuesday. Now we have Hearts and want to make it three wins in a row.

"I even heard people say we were struggling for the top six but if we beat Hearts we will be right back on track and I still expect the team to finish in a very high position this season. Qualifying for Europe was our aim at the start of the season and it still is - that's where I think we'll be at the end of the year."

Taken from the Herald