Hearts have announced that they have agreed a transfer fee with Hungarian side Debrecan for the services of goalkeeper Janos Balogh.
An initial bid of £75,000 was rejected by Debrecan last week as it was only around half of what was initially agreed when Balogh’s loan move started back at the end of the summer, and there were some fears that the ‘keeper may have played his last game for Hearts with the deal being on ice.
However the two clubs have now reached an agreement and the move comes down to personal terms, which are due to be concluded over the next few days. The length of the contract being offered to Balogh is said to be around three years, which makes sense for a 26 year-old who has gradually improved during his few months with the club.
Positive news.
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Positive news yes, but do you think Jamie did enough against Killie to keep his place? He really hasn’t put a foot wrong for Hearts, and should be number one. My opinion, of course…
Didn’t see his performance so can’t really comment. See where you’re coming from if he did well, but then Balogh hasn’t really done much wrong either has he when you think about it? Tough call for Csaba but he’s going to plump for his signing if pushed I’d imagine – only natural.
It will be interesting to see that happens to Kello in the summer – he is on a 1 year loan, so I guess we’ll probably honour that. Does anyone think Csaba will be “allowed” to start next season with all 3 of them ?
Given all of that, I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens to MacDonald in the summer if he is still playing second fiddle to Csaba’s signing. I understand the wisdom on paper of having three goalkeepers of good quality in the squad, but when there’s only one position to go for then sooner or later one or both of the non-picked ones will get fed up and leave. That is why we were so lucky to have someone like Steve Banks as understudy to Gordon. He didn’t mind playing the backup, and could always be relied upon. Jamie Mac is an ambitious player… and I don’t think he’s one the club can afford to lose. But we’ll see…
If MacDonald is as good as some are saying, then he’ll surely get his chance at some point over the next couple of seasons.
With the signing of Balogh I rather suspect that either Kello or MacDonald will be off at some point (perhaps not immediately). I’m not so sure it’s sustainable to have 3 folk vying for 1 place.
I don’t think it is either, but if both of them end up staying for a while then it perhaps says a lot about their abilities.
The Hootsmon report mentions 200k euros (£181k)… including the “loan fee”. Call me naive or just plain ignorant, but I had no idea that money changed hands when a loan was arranged. Or is this simply recompense for Debrecen still paying his wages while he’s at Tynecastle ? Anywho, the papers were mentioning £150k as the pre-arranged fee at the end of the loan period…. so does this mean that the “loan fee” amounted to more than £31 ? If anyone can explain all this stuff, I’d be grateful.
It was 200,000 Euros at the start of the loan. It was still 200,000 Euros at the end of the loan. In the meantime, Sterling has crashed and the Euro has got stronger. Simple, really. 🙂
Cheers SJ – so in other words, the £150K was a newspaper approximation. Oh well, for a decent goalie, its a pretty good bit of business by Hearts – no doubt Vladimir reckons he can be sold back to Europe in a couple of years time for a 7 figure sum.