Hearts players’ pay dispute: Hearts say wages have been paid but SPL waiting for clarification

By Stephen Halliday
Published on Monday 16 January 2012 20:14

THE SPL will seek confirmation from Hearts this morning that all of their players received their salaries on time yesterday in accordance with the formal order made to the Tynecastle club earlier this month.

Hearts sources insisted that the January wages had been processed by owner Vladimir Romanov’s Ukio bank in Lithuania and were “on their way” to the players’ accounts. To avoid possible SPL sanctions, the salaries were required to be paid before midnight.

“We will wait until Tuesday morning and then seek clarification from Hearts that all of the wages have been paid by the midnight deadline we set,” said SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster last night. “If they have, then that will be the end of the matter as far as the SPL is concerned. If they have not, then it will be brought to the attention of our board again to see what the next step should be.”

Hearts players’ wages are due on the 16th of each month but they were not paid on time in the last three months of 2011. They did not receive their October salaries until 4 November, with an official complaint from the first-team squad averted on that occasion by manager Paulo Sergio, who persuaded his players to postpone any action.

But their November salaries were not paid until 15 December, following a part-payment of £1,000 each at the start of the month. When the December wages did not appear in their bank accounts, 14 Hearts players finally gave their PFA Scotland union the go-ahead to lodge a formal complaint against the club with the SPL.

Until that complaint was received, the SPL were now empowered to get involved in the issue. It was first addressed by the SPL’s board of directors at their meeting on 19 December. Doncaster, chairman Ralph Topping and fellow board members Eric Riley (Celtic), Stephen Thompson (Dundee United), Steven Brown (St Johnstone) and Derek Weir (Motherwell) announced that a sub-committee would adjudicate on the complaint on 4 January. On the day of the adjudication, the SPL ordered Hearts to stump up the overdue December wages within a week. They also stipulated that Hearts must pay interest on each of the three months in which salaries were late. In addition, Hearts were told to stump up for the legal fees of the players and the costs of holding the Hampden hearing.

Within a few hours of the SPL announcement, Hearts paid the outstanding December wages but insisted it was not as a direct response to the governing body’s intervention. Money received from the sale of Icelandic international Eggert Jonsson to Wolves was understood to have funded the payment.

Hearts subsequently satisfied the SPL they had complied with other aspects of the sub-committee’s ruling, including interest on late payments, leaving prompt payment of the January salaries as the final demand which required to be met.

The SPL have a wide range of disciplinary measures available to them if they find Hearts have breached the order. They include docking points, cancelling the registrations of the players concerned and barring Hearts from signing any new players for a specific period of time.

The financial turmoil at Tynecastle has already cost manager Sergio the services of one first-team player with attacking midfielder Ryan Stevenson requesting his contract be terminated and stating he would not train or play for the club again in protest at the stress his family had been placed under.

But Sergio has managed the situation impressively on the field in recent weeks, guiding Hearts to five wins and a draw in their last six matches to move into third place in the SPL and the fifth round of the Scottish Cup.

Taken from the Scotsman