Yesterday I wrote of how Craig Levein’s comments in relation to Brendan Rodgers over the weekend clearly demonstrate that it is no longer a matter of our manager saying things that Levein finds distasteful, but that there’s obviously a personal element to it and reading the full transcript of what the Hearts manager said at a press conference yesterday that conviction has hardened to certainty. There is no longer any question about it.
Levein’s rant went well beyond one that was focussed on defending his own club and became a concentrated character attack on Brendan himself. The spite was clear in every word. Brendan at no point has made this personal; Levein has.
And that’s the level of the Hearts boss right there.
What I find extraordinary about his bitter remarks is that in seeking to criticise Celtic for, amongst other things, not playing enough youngsters – take a look at the average age of the team which lined up for that game; three of them were products of our own youth academy – and seeking to take us to task for being a club that has grown its financial base entirely legitimately, he has cast a light, a savage light, on his club’s own inaction to relation to sides who are trying to win things in a fashion that is not consonant with fair play.
It’s funny that when his team was beaten – well beaten – by Sevco recently he didn’t find any cause to whinge the way he does when he’s on the end of a defeat at our hands. But far worse is the stance of Hearts over Financial Fair Play and other regulations. Today stories are everywhere which suggest Sevco has either been rejected for a European license or that they are on the verge of that; I will write about that later.
But the clubs themselves have done precisely nothing about that situation and in fact Levein’s club are amongst a handful at risk of losing out on European football income because the Ibrox operation has decided to violate FFP; their stance in both public and private has been pitiful and weak. Levein’s criticism glib suggestion that we are somehow to blame for falling standards in the Scottish game is disgusting when one considers how many players we contribute to the national team … but I am glad for them nonetheless, as I am glad for the general thrust of his argument because it shows how personal he has made this and how hypocritical he and his club are.
Look, Ann Budge allows this guy to run his mouth like this. She has let him make this into a thing between him and our manager; Brendan, I suspect, will choose not to respond but the point is, Levein has opened a discussion about what he perceives as the unfairness of us having run our club right when neither he nor his club has bothered to even protect its own interests in light of another team violating UEFA regulations with abandon.
When Ann Budge was asked about this recently she said two things I found unbelievable; she said that her club was not concerned because FFP was about “clubs being able to pay their debts” when, in fact, that’s not what those rules are for at all, and she said that UEFA decides on eligibility and not the SFA, which I believe is disingenuous at best. It is either a colossal misunderstanding of the regulations or a wilfully dishonest statement.
It is the SFA who grants a license in the initial stages; they certify clubs and send the list of clubs who meet the criteria to UEFA, who then conduct their own audit.
If Levein wanted to have a serious discussion about Scottish football and fairness, and if he actually cared about his own club rather than his own ego, there are issues other than Brendan Rodgers that he could raise in front of the media. Casting aspersions on our club and how it is run is despicable; we are the model for how every club in this country should be run and his spitting fury of the other day was pathetic but illuminating at the same time.
Hearts refuses to take up a leadership position in our game. Its manager (or is he the director of football this week?) would rather engage in little vendettas and throw baseless accusations around than confront genuine threats to his club and its ability to grow itself.
That’s for Ann Budge to concern herself with. That she hasn’t, that she doesn’t, shows exactly how much she cares about these issues. The stance of her club over all this is disgraceful. It is an insult to every Hearts fan who fought to save them from the fate that swallowed Rangers. That Sevco, run in a manner that threatens sporting integrity further, might yet take a European spot that Hearts could have had themselves, in spite of being in clear violation of the regulations, should trouble those fans. It should trouble their club.
Levein has made it clear where their real priorities lie.
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