Je Ne Regrette Rien

08 November 2012 21:21
Delayed wages may be something Hearts are used to but it can't be a sustainable model.

Hearts are in real financial difficulty and manager John McGlynn says he is willing to delay receiving his wages this helped the club survive and he hinted his players may follow suit. The Scottish Cup holders may not be able to make it to the end of the month after being issued with a winding up order by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs over a tax bill of almost £450,000. The board urged supporters to find the money to help them come through a critical period. McGlynn left Raith Rovers to take over the Tynecastle hotseat in June but does not believe it was the wrong decision in light of the club's problems. He said: "Not at all. I could not turn the job down. If I pop my clogs tomorrow, then I will go as someone who has managed Heart of Midlothian Football Club. There's not many people who can say that. I'm very proud to manage Hearts. I wish it wasn't in this situation but I would never regret taking the job." There have been signs that all has not been well regarding cash flow at the club for some time. The have struggled to meet wage bills in the last 12 months and had a transfer embargo imposed by the SPL following consecutive late monthly payments to some players and coaches. McGlynn appears willing to do anything for the club, including delaying his wages. He said: "It's not been mentioned yet. We are basically taking it a day at a time and seeing how things go. If it did come to that, it has happened recently anyway, and I don't see that being a massive problem to be honest. Certainly I would be in favour of delaying if that was going to help. I think the players would do anything that is going to help for the long-term benefit of the club. It can't be easy on the players if they're finding out that possibly, after the game against St Mirren, they might not have a job. It's not easy and it's more critical than other situations when they've not been getting paid. But we are employees of the football club, everyone is under contract, and we have to be professional. At this minute in time, all the players are paid up to date. No-one is behind on any payments so we've got to give the football club time to get that money in and pay it and hope we can get through this and bring in as much money as possible." Hearts are talking to HMRC about restructuring payments of the money owed and have asked fans to buy tickets for forthcoming home games and invest in a recently-launched share issue. Those pleas were today repeated by the Jambos manager, who said: "There is a £450,000 HMRC tax bill to be paid and the club is struggling to pay it. If we don't get that money in, in that period of time - which is obviously quite difficult - then possibly it could be curtains. You have to be realistic. The club understands it has to do this to get everyone to try to save the football club. There are many Hearts fans out there - and perhaps football fans as well - who might just go and buy a couple of tickets for the St Mirren game just to try to make sure that those 4,700 seats that we've got available can be taken up. That would certainly help at least in the short term." While such investment by fans may help in the short term, some hard decisions will need to be made for the club to continue in the longer term. Administration may be the only option facing the club if the hope to continue to remain in business. On the prospect of administration, he added: "I've not had any discussions with the board. That's not really my brief to be honest. I'm really just concentrating on the Inverness game on Saturday. We've got a difficult game and we've been preparing the players this morning with a view to playing in that game and trying to win the game."

Source: ScottishFitba

Source: FOOTYMAD