Hearts bow to inevitable with move to administration

Ewing Grahame

Such are the debts of the 139-year-old institution that there are fears liquidation may now follow.

Hearts confirmed on their official website that notice had been served at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

A club spokesman said: “We are not in administration yet but we have served our intention to appoint administrators.”

Ian Murray, Labour MP for Edinburgh South and the chairman for supporters’ consortium Foundation of Hearts, had spoken optimistically several hours earlier about the prospect of the club being saved by the end of the month.

As it was, they entered administration after being unable to meet tax bills or pay staff salaries.

It is understood that accountancy giants KPMG will handle the administration and that is likely to mean immediate job losses as costs are cut.

Even then, there is not a great deal of scope for downsizing: Scotland’s third-biggest club has only 30 non-football employees and there are just 18 senior players on the books at Tynecastle.

Yet Murray is convinced that Lithuanian liquidators working on behalf of UBIG (who owned a 50 per cent shareholding in the club) and Ukio Bankas (29 per cent) are desperate to wash their hands of the club as soon as possible.

That, though, will have been ­complicated by yesterday’s announcement and it will also depend on how much FoH can raise in pledges from fans and how much the liquidators are demanding.

“They’re not giving that away,” said Murray. “They’re not prepared to tell us what they are prepared to accept in any fashion. However, they have given us an indication that they want to get something done quickly, to do a deal that gets them completely out of the picture.

“I think, reading between the lines, that they might want a deal done before the end of this month.”

Murray also appealed to sceptical supporters who have yet to make a donation to FoH because they fear their money will go to discredited former owner Vladimir Romanov.

“I can guarantee that, unless we are handed the keys to the door of the main stand, that every single penny that has been pledged to us will be refunded,” he said.

Six top-flight clubs have endured administration and there have also been two liquidations in the 15 years of the Scottish Premier League’s existence, which must call into question the competence of the ruling body as it prepares to annex the 30 Scottish Football League clubs next week.

Meanwhile, Dundee manager John Brown, whose club would have been spared relegation if Hearts had gone into administration a month earlier, accused his rivals of cheating by delaying the announcement.

Hearts finished in 10th place, 14 points ahead of Dundee but the automatic 15-point deduction which will now be applied in 2013/14 would have seen them demoted if their plight had been confirmed before the end of last season.

Unlike other Scottish clubs who have gone into administration and have then had their automatic points deduction applied with immediate effect, Hearts will have their penalty applied prospectively to next season.

There have been dark murmurings on Tayside about the potential damage to the SPL’s TV deals if they had had to consign Edinburgh derbies alongside Old Firm games as fixtures they were no longer able to supply broadcasters.

“It doesn’t surprise me that this has happened,” he said. “We’ve known all along how serious the problems were at Tynecastle. What really annoys me is that they have totally used and abused the system by leaving it until now to avoid relegation and it’s been allowed to happen.

“They’re probably laughing at us now but what has gone on is scandalous. They’ve taken the Mickey out of everyone and the whole thing stinks.”

Taken from telegraph.co.uk