Ian Cathro has won his first game as manager of Hearts, keeping the pressure on Aberdeen and Sevco and dishing out some much needed payback in the process. Because his side have routed Kilmarnock, club of the mouthy Kris Boyd.
The 4-0 scoreline didn’t flatter Hearts, and when Boyd was subbed after a wholly ineffective – some might say useless – performance he was roundly mocked by jubilant Jambos fans. Their derision was earned. It’s high time Kilmarnock fans started asking just what they are getting for their money employing this guy, when he turns in displays that are even shoddier than his “journalism.”
Since returning to the club for a third spell, he’s scored 8 goals in 43 games. Whatever they are paying him, it’s too much.
I said in an earlier piece that it was clear what Boyd is trying to be in his columns; the poor man’s Joey Barton. I also said that’s not a good thing. Quite what his manager and chairman are thinking, allowing one of their players to pursue a crap part time media career, slagging all and sundry and giving teams a greater incentive to beat them I do not know but it was a matter of time before it came back to haunt them like Barton’s media remarks haunted Sevco.
Kilmarnock deserve everything they get for standing by this eejit whilst he does this. Like Warburton before him, Lee Clark dismissed Boyd’s media comments as a matter of little consequence, even when they were attacking a fellow SPL boss. The stupidity of this is manifest.
“”I’ve not seen the article but Kris is an experienced man who is doing a lot of work in the media. If he has an opinion on something, he is well within his rights to put that opinion forward … “I don’t see it changing the mentality of the Hearts management team and their players when we go to Tynecastle,” he said earlier this month, when asked for a comment on Boyd’s ridiculous, OTT article on the new Hearts boss.
Last night, those words were rammed down their throats.
Clark has much in common with the Sevco boss who allowed Barton’s mouth to run away with him, even waving aside that clown’s criticism of the Celtic boss. The two come from the same school of team building; although the club is on the bones of its arse and only narrowly avoided relegation last year, Clark was allowed to bring 17 players to the club. Yes, a large number of players also left, but one would imagine he thinks he’s replaced them with better quality, which their league position reflects.
Better quality costs money. Do they have the money?
Sides like Inverness, Hamilton, Partick and Motherwell must wonder what the Hell is going on when the SFA sanctions stuff like that. One look at their last published accounts should answer the important question; they lost £750,000 last year with operating expenses of £4 million … sheer insanity for a club their size.
Which, of course, was before this summer’s signing splurge.
As I write this, there are reports that Sevco is contemplating spending money it doesn’t have in handing one last pay-day to Leon Osman, a 35 year old who hasn’t kicked a ball in anger for a year.
The media loves to focus on fluff, and today a lot of the journalists, who must look at sharing column space with Boyd and ponder how it reflects the decline of their trade, are just as gleeful as the Hearts fans were last night. But as usual, they’ve missed the big picture. By allowing Boyd to attack other clubs and their operations in the way Kilmarnock has, they’ve opened themselves up to scrutiny for how they do business.
And when you look it’s appalling what you find.
They are just as guilty of financial doping as Sevco, and their fans know this and are furious about it because they realise that it imperils the existence of the club itself. There is turmoil at Rugby Park this season, with directorship resignations, sponsors threatening to walk away and a buy-out being rejected by Michael Johnson the chairman. Rumours that the club may be on the verge of administration are rife.
The SFA allows it all to go on, both at Kilmarnock and Sevco, and it’s difficult not to conclude that the other clubs are just as bad for allowing themselves to become victims because no-one wants to step up and pass the kind of rules that would stop nonsense like this in its tracks.
Scottish football really does need to sort this stuff out before another major club goes to the wall. Let’s not forget, Hearts themselves were in serious trouble until not that long ago, before the right people took over there, stablised the club and determined that they would run it right. Not everyone has embraced sanity.
You cannot look at what’s happening at Rugby Park and Ibrox and doubt that another crash is going to come.