Hearts fans urged to raise £2m by summer to save club

By Geoff WebsterBBC Scotland

Last updated on .From the section Footballcomments275

Hearts supporters examine share issue plans

Hearts supporters have been urged to find £2m to help the Edinburgh club survive until the summer.

Financial problems at the club and a tax demand for almost £450,000 has put the club under threat.

Steve Kilgour, of the Federation of Hearts Supporters' Clubs, said fans should seize the chance to safeguard their future.

"We have to stand on our own two feet and it's imperative the supporters back the share issue," he told BBC Scotland.

Hearts hope to raise £1.79m with a share offer that will give supporters a 10% stake in the Edinburgh club.

"Vladimir Romanov is no longer financing the club or bankrolling it," Kilgour said.

"We need £2m to carry us through to the summer. Each season, there's a £2m deficit and we have to find that.

"That may come and go a bit if we manage to move players on in January."

Kilgour said it was time for the Hearts fans to stand up and be counted and he appealed to those supporters who bought tickets for glamour ties against Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool to come forward.

Ticket sales for the Scottish Premier League game against St Mirren - on Saturday 17 November - are "going well", with Kilgour hoping for a sell-out.

"Most of the people we represent are the hardcore support and they will get behind the club," Kilgour added.

"It's the people who were phoning me up leading up to the Scottish Cup final - that's the people who need to stand up and be counted now.

"The guys who were fighting for tickets for Spurs last year and for the Liverpool game this year. They need to now fight for the survivial of the club."

Manager John McGlynn has said that he would be willing to delay the payment of his wages if it meant Hearts could overcome their financial difficulties.

"I would be in favour of delaying if that was going to help," said McGlynn.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is demanding the money from Hearts for unpaid PAYE and VAT.

The club are also contesting a tax bill of £1.75m, revealed recently in Hearts' documentation for its share offer.

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  • Don't we (ie. The fans) already pay money to the clubs we support every time we go through the turnstiles ?

  • Looking at the finances of the club, this would be only a short term solution. You would be better off pooling all the fans cash, let the club go into administration and then using the fans cash to buy the club from the administrators. At least that way Vlad wont get his hands on your cash and squander it all away.

  • 10% of the club for £2m. Daylight robbery! This is the equivalent of one of those schemes where you could buy a piece of the moon for £20. I agree with @30 that a 51% stake would be the minimum required for any fan to put up their hard earnt money. PLEASE DON'T WAIST YOUR MONEY!

  • You can tell Vlad is a banker. Won't put his hand in HIS pockets, but he's happy to put them in the fans' pockets

  • Let me assure you as one of the 'hardcore support' this fool claims to represent i am not giving a penny to hearts at the moment and nobody else should either. Not one penny. He is utterly wrong in his assertions on almost every level. He represents no one and does himself no favours whatsoever. I am sure he probably means well but he must be ignored at the very least.

  • It is spectacularly unfair to ruin a football club with such financial imprudence and then try to shift the responsibility onto the fans. I'm a Swindon Town fan and if they did the same thing, I wouldn't give them a penny. It's nothing but emotional blackmail.

  • Ok so lets get this straight. The hearts fans have been buying tickets for years, in the hope the club has been run properly and now the bosses have the cheek to ask the fans for 2m quid over and above what they have paid in? Sorry but that's the height of bad management.

  • Vlad should be banned from football for life. Am I right in thinking this is the third club hes sent under (Kaunas and some other team)? No team should be allowed to have a 45 man squad in the SPL its just stupid.

  • The share offer values the club at £17.9 million. The long term debt stands somewhere between £20 and £23 million. HMRC are after £450,000 and there is still the outstanding matter of £1.5 million unpaid tax under dispute. Rumours have all the big revenue payments being syphoned off by the owner. This is not an investment opportunity that I would buy into.

  • Absolutely no sympathy with Hearts,Rangers,Portsmouth or any other club facing winding up orders or liquidation. For to long ALL football clubs have lived above and beyond their financial ceilings.
    Aptly aided by Greedy players, Chairman and an Old boys network run by a bunch of fuddy duddies who say they are for the good of the club whilst most just line their own pockets off the back of the club

  • the financial mismanagement at rangers and hearts is now coming home to roost,look at celtic who are run very well from the top and are now raking in serious money from champions league etc and will totally dominate scottish football for several years,murray and romanov are a couple of conmen

  • There is no point in Hearts fans putting money into the club now out of misguided loyalty. It will all simply go to Vlad when he cuts and runs as he has secured his debts and will be the only person to get anything when the club folds. Keep your money to invest in whatever rises from the ashes.

  • This is really sad. As @24 says, football clubs are more than just businesses. But the share issue is a Band Aid on a disease. A 10% stake is worthless in terms of having any say and the monies raised will just delay the inevitable anyway. Get Vlad the monetary Inhaler out first, then they may stand a chance.

  • 173.Football_understand "if hearts went to division 3, they would struggle big time to get out" Rangers may be in the 3rd division but can still afford to pay thier players 5k+ which has attracted decent players. They can do this due to their huge following and revenue. Hearts do not have a huge revenue so will not attract any decent players and so could be in the abyss for a long time

  • This is vastly different from the Rangers case in that HMRC will not be the major creditor if administration goes ahead and will not be able to block a CVA agreement.

    The major creditor(s) here, as I understand it, is Vlad and his bank that lent money to Hearts.

    They will asset strip (sell players & ground) to get Vlad et al their money back.

    Hearts could be in a bad way for a long time.

  • He's been bailing them out for years until he lost interest. They should have sorted it then, rather than to go begging to the Jambo fans to bail out their poor management.

    While he remains at the helm it's just throwing good money down the toilet.

  • Good money after bad - buying shares in a company that is near insolvency.

    Surely the FSA should step in to punish Hearts for encouraging "supporters" in what can only be described as a "pig in a poke" investment.

  • Midas_child. Agree with you. Say you put £110 into the club then what? Where the money going to be used? Against a re-occurring revenue expense? What is the Board's plan to avoid that? We must know before any further cash injection.

  • @#3

    Sounds rather like a recent banking crisis to me!

    I don't know the situation here but Hearts have been in a crisis for almost a decade it seems. What is going on and where are the SFA?

  • If supporters do stump up they MUST get at least one seat on the Board.

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