Hearts end of season – and beyond

Despite a 2-1 defeat, Jim Jefferies was satisfied at the performances of several youngsters against Dundee Utd. Jason Holt, David Smith and Scott Robinson joined David Templeton, Craig Thomson and Ryan McGowan as active players. With Denis Prychynenko, Arvydas Novikovas and Gordon Smith also likely to feature in next season’s squad, Hearts will be looking to offload a large number of players over the next 12 months – starting with Ruben Palazuelos, Ismael Bouzid, Janos Balogh and Dawid Kucharski I suspect.

Rumours suggest that a contract has been offered to Aberdeen`s Zander Diamond, with a host of other possible targets being mentioned – Mehdi Taouil, Craig Bryson, John Sutton and Kevin McDonald.

Looking back at the thug who leapt over the enclosure wall to aim a kick at Neil Lennon, much has been written about the new depths being plumbed by some extreme nutters who have unfortunately attached themselves to Hearts. I`m all in favour of a stricter regime being imposed on match days, if that`s what it takes to either weed these people out or get them to calm down. However, I also hope that Hearts make it clear to the stewarding company and the police that the poor standard of service they provided last Wednesday was a significant factor in how that idiot managed to get close to the Celtic manager. With all the publicity about death threats and internet hate campaigns aimed at the guy standing in the Celtic technical area, surely the sensible thing would have been to have a strong presence of stewards and/or police on either side of the technical area throughout the match ? Sadly, it seems they didn`t consider the possibility of a nutter jumping the wall and making a run towards Lennon.

By the way, good on Pat Nevin for speaking out on Sportscene at the weekend about the insane nonsense being sung by BOTH sets of fans at Tynecastle last week. If the SFA and SPL are serious about improving crowd behaviour, then eventually the focus will fall on the antics of some of Celtic’s own fans.

As if the bad publicity about some of our fans’ recent behaviour wasn’t bad enough, it seems that Ian Black and Rob Ogleby celebrated the end of the season by getting caught in posession of a class A drug in a trendy Edinburgh bar at the weekend. Silly boys – especially Black, who should definitely have known better. It says a lot about his self-esteem and character that he sees nothing wrong in a professional athlete risking his future perfomance capability, never mind the legality situation.

On a positive note, Hearts accounts for the year ending July 2010 showed a small but welcome profit of £39,000. However this would have been a £8m loss if UBIG had not written that off so as not to fall foul of new UEFA financial guidelines regarding debt-to-income (although I’m not convinced it truly has been written off !!). The period saw big wages still being paid out to Messrs Kingston, Nade, Goncalves and Stewart – and it will be another year before these savings kick in, along with the debt-for-equity swap made late in 2010. In addition, the departures of Campbell Ogilvie, Lawrence Brodie and goalkeeping coach Arturas Ramoska will have reduced staff wages further – although this begs the question of just how our keepers are being challenged properly in their development.

A place in the 2nd or 3rd qualifying round of the Europa Cup means an early return to training in mid-June for Hearts – so JJ will have to make the most of the next few weeks, assuming he has been given a decent budget by Vladimir. Fingers crossed !!