'It's not a Scottish problem, it's happening everywhere'

Chris Tait

Tynecastle shouldn't have seemed such an odd place to be offered a sense of perspective.

The stadium has had to weather a few crises in recent years but has still been able to recover, usually just in time for the next one. Hearts have enjoyed a more peripheral role du ring the latest financial drama to afflict Scottish football, though, with the club likely finding it something of a novelty that they have not been directly affected by it at all. Well, other than the £800,000 they are owed by Rangers for Lee Wallace.

Yet if the problems facing the Ibrox club, and by extension Dunfermline Athletic who were unable to pay their squad fully this month, have felt uncomfortably familiar to Hearts, then they have yet to show it. That the Edinburgh club are able to distance themselves from events somewhat has likely had something to do with that, although they have also become adept at functioning during adversity. That is particularly true of Paulo Sergio; a dip in form, players going without their wages, the smoking ban, the Portuguese has faced them all. As a relatively new arrival to Scottish football – he only took over as Hearts manager in August – he has also been able to view our game in a wider context.

There is a tendency to restrict one's view of the fitba', and the Hearts manager seems bemused by the intensity of the concern that is being placed on the future of the Scottish game. Sergio is not one to get ruffled unduly by matters outwith his control and it was that austerity which enabled Hearts to generate a commendable run of form despite his squad's discontent at being repeatedly paid late.

The former Sporting Lisbon manager has a habit of sounding au courant when addressing various issues, his assured manner adding weight to his comments. His sensibilities didn't allow him to phrase it in such a way but his sentiment yesterday was clear: the ba' is not burst. Not yet, anyway.

"It is not just in Scotland that this is happening. I believe the crisis that is happening all over the world and in the football clubs is not because of what people are doing in the present but the mistakes people made in the past. Now it is very hard to carry on from the past and get people paid in the present," said Sergio, whose side face Rangers at Ibrox tomorrow.

"This is not [a crisis point], this is happening all over the world, it is just that some leagues are financially stronger than the Scottish and Portuguese leagues and can go on. They are not feeling these problems in as strong a way as we are here."

Craig Whyte's takeover of Rangers has brought into focus once more the perceived need for the Scottish Football Association to be more stringent in ensuring that clubs do not fall into the hands of an individual or consortium that is not 'fit and proper' to run it. The terminology is in vogue as the number of foreign owners in modern football increases, but Sergio – whose own club know a thing or two about foreign owners – is unmoved.

"You can say things like that [that a fit and proper persons test is needed] but first of all you should know how to run your own [club]," he said. "I don't want anybody to control my bank account, I should. There are rules and what people should do is make the rules work. You should know how to run your life, how to do your things."

The sentiment will do little to appease those at Ibrox, who would likely have been shaking down Whyte for a few bob this week had he not been holed up in Monaco. Sergio will take his side to Glasgow tomorrow intent on arresting his own problems, with Hearts having nurtured a run of just one win in their last seven matches in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League, and having scored just one goal in their last four. Not surprisingly, he was reluctant to be drawn on the drama enveloping Ibrox.

His message of support to Ally McCoist was perhaps taking his sanguine approach to the matter a little too far – "I will say to him 'let's drink a beer' " – but there was an indication that the Hearts manager is discontented that coaches now need to possess a shrewd understanding of a club's balance sheet. "I believe we are learning with everything, but I would prefer to learn about football than finances," he said.

The two are not mutally exclusive, though. The monetary problems that led the Tynecastle squad to go without receiving their wages on time on four consecutive months this season appeared to galvanise the players, the squad united by shared woe. An auspicious 4-1 win away to Inverness Caledonian Thistle last weekend suggests that McCoist may endeavour to harness the ignominy around Rangers to similar effect, although the suggestion that the Ibrox side might be inspired in some way by their plight earned a rebuke from Sergio.

"Don't talk like that," he said. "Because if people are going to believe that then everybody is going to stop doing their professions . . . and maybe your boss is going to think the same. The problem doesn't make you stronger, what makes you stronger is the way you deal with the problem."

How Sergio chooses to deal with the issues at Hearts in the long run will be interesting. His contract expires at the end of the season and there have been suggestions from within the Edinburgh club that the offer of an extension depends on the coach coming to share their views on the future. "If my board comes to me and says 'no, Paulo, you are not going to work here next season' then I will accept that," he said. "But that will not stop me from working my hardest until the last minute of my last day on the job. That is the sort of person I am; I am not a lazy person, I am proud to be here. I love my job.

"We started talking two, three weeks ago about the way we should manage the club to make sure it is has a great future for the next 100 years at least. The only thing I have to say just now is that I love the club, I love the city and I am very proud to be here."

It was a composed answer to a potentially discomfiting question. It was to be expected, really.

Taken from the Herald