Hearts To Sell Nade To Palace?

Local reports are linking Crystal Palace with a summer move for Hearts striker Christian Nade.

Until very lately, for most of Nade’s time at Tynecastle since his £400,000 move from Sheffield United last season, opinion amongst the Hearts support had been reasonably well split on the value he offered to the team. There were those who believed that the guy had genuine ability, and that with some decent coaching, a balanced diet (!) and a regular strike partner, he could become a real asset to the club. But on the other hand there were also those who felt that he was an overweight, disinterested waste of space – these people were always in the majority and after his last few appearances of the season, I would say that this majority has most certainly grown.

Personally I was always willing to give this guy a chance. Despite his undoubted weight and attitude problems, for me he has shown much more potential to be a dangerous striker than most of the other forwards at Tynecastle, who tended to get many more chances to impress than Nade did.

The League Cup semi-final against Rangers at Hampden perfectly illustrated the good and bad of this French striker – he had an electric first half in that game, tormenting the Gers defence in the sort of way that Ricardo Fuller used to do on a weekly basis. But then after his initial burst of form, he drifted out of the game badly, probably because he wasn’t in the best of condition as he should have been. But this is the sort of problem that can be worked upon, particularly with an esteemed manager at the helm…sadly as we all know though, this is THE main problem at Tynecastle and has been for far too long.

Whether or not Hearts decide to retain Nade remains to be seen, but if he does indeed head elsewhere, I can’t imagine there will be many fans who’ll be too upset about it. That said though, just like Roman Bednar before him, he could be yet another player that we’ll forever wonder what might have been had he been here under a different management regime.