Originally Posted by The Sun
He’s also bang on when he expresses his dismay that Scottish football hasn’t been able to sort itself out despite its problems not meaning a toss compared to what’s going on in the wider world.
Without wishing to pick an argument with one of the game’s good guys, though, I have to say that, if he’s searching for a reason why it’s all gone so pear-shaped, it’s right under his nose; right there in his boyhood club’s boardroom.
Hearts are the ones who finished bottom of the table despite spending top-three money on players.
Hearts are the ones who panicked and demanded those players take pay cuts before the government even had the chance to introduce the furlough scheme.
Hearts backed the wrong horse in the vote on ending the season early, then again on the vote calling for an independent probe into how that decision was reached.
A reconstruction plan that would have saved their bacon fell on its backside, even though their own sugar-mummy Ann Budge chaired the committee who came up with it.
They dragged United, Raith Rovers and Cove Rangers into their legal fight to have the final tables declared void, a situation that has left Raith fearing they’ll be unable to risk a six-figure legal bill and will simply be crossing their fingers that the decision goes their way.
As if this wasn’t heavy-handed enough, Budge then nicked Robbie Neilson from Tannadice as her new manager — a hefty investment which, along with the deal to bring Gordon in from Celtic, is an almighty boot in the stones for every employee forced into a drop in wages when Budge pleaded poverty.
I know Jambos fans will be sick of reading this, maybe even as sick as I am of writing it, but it has to be put on record that, despite dominating the headlines for pretty much all of these 115 locked-down days, their club have produced not one positive, winning idea.
Good God, even when the hugely-generous James Anderson offered a donation of millions to make sure no clubs went down the pan, all Budge had to do was introduce him to Neil Doncaster and let them shake hands, but even then she managed to turn it into a fight.
Like Rangers chairman Douglas Park before her, she’s read the room wrong time and again. She’s been fighting shadows, punching smoke.
Plus, when she and her lawyers were throwing their weight around by plunging the plans of the three lower league winners into disarray, why didn’t they have the courage to claim that Celtic shouldn’t have been named Premiership champions?
After all, if they’re actually saying relegation shouldn’t have counted, how can the title stand?
Sorry, but there are more holes in Budge’s defence than . . . well, there were in her back four all last season, which really is saying something. And, for the umpteenth time, let me also say without fear of contradiction that, if they’d come off the bottom by winning at Paisley in the last, pivotal match before the shutters came down, we’d never have heard a peep from them.
So, sure, there will be bad blood whatever happens now. But it’s Hearts who spilled it.
Sure, it’ll forever be a crying shame that they, Partick Thistle and Stranraer were condemned to the drop when they still had enough games left to save themselves.
But there are also countless businesses who might never open their doors again, tens of thousands of workers sweating over when they’ll earn a crust again.
All Hearts were asked to do was suck up some rank bad luck and agree to kick a ball around in a different division come August — a division they’d be odds-on favourites to win.
Whatever happens next in this sorry, sordid saga, the fact that they preferred to cause chaos for everyone else around them will stain those famous maroon shirts for a long time to come.