Panic setting in?
Hearts could be pushed towards financial collapse as Championship rivals set to deliver devastating message to SPFL
A group of second-tier sides are preparing to tell the league's governing body they can't afford to start next season behind closed doors.
Hearts could be pushed to the brink of another financial collapse next week.
The shock news comes as a group of cash-strapped Championship rivals prepare to tell the
SPFL they can’t afford to start next season behind closed doors.
All 10 clubs from the second tier of the Scottish game will hold a crunch conference call on Monday to discuss plans to get the 2020-21 campaign up and running.
And at least three of them are already resigned to mothballing the division until fans are allowed to return to their grounds – with one proposal already on the table to freeze football until January and then stage a truncated 18-game season.
That will be the catalyst for
Hearts to submit their reconstruction plan to the SPFL in the desperate hope Premiership clubs will agree to let the Jambos stay in an expanded top flight.
If the Hearts bid fails, they face up to seven months sitting idle in a mothballed Championship.
On Friday, Dunfermline announced a total of 17 players have been freed as they slash costs in an attempt to survive without matchday revenue until 2021.
And that’s a nightmare scenario for the relegated Tynecastle club and owner
Ann Budge, who is now facing a fight to save her club from a second insolvency event – six years after hauling the Edinburgh giants out of administration.
Budge is still working on a plan for league reconstruction which she hopes will throw Hearts a lifeline back into the Premiership.
And she has received support from a number of sympathetic top flight clubs who understand the catastrophic consequences of being dumped into a division which can’t return to action.
One top flight club told
Record Sport: “There is a growing realisation of the immense pressure which Ann and Hearts are now under.
“To have been relegated during the coronavirus lockdown before all remaining fixtures had been played was bad enough. But if Hearts can’t play games next season then it’s impossible to see how the club could survive.
“There is a willingness to help them out of this hole. Scottish football can’t afford to sit back and do nothing if it means losing a club of this size.”
A Tynecastle source revealed on Friday night that Budge’s paper will go to clubs on Monday.
The source said: “Excellent progress has been made on the paper that is proposing an amended structure to help Scottish football through the challenges of the Covid pandemic.
“Ann has been consulting with clubs across all leagues, to understand their individual circumstances and continues to do so.
“These conversations take time but are vital in understanding the issues and challenges clubs face and refine the content of the paper.
“As such nothing will be issued until Monday, at the earliest.”
The Championship clubs expressed huge sympathy for Budge’s plight during an online meeting on Wednesday but see an expanded
Premiership as their only hope.
One club chairman said: “We have to move into survival mode now. Playing the Championship behind closed doors is not viable and that is the majority view. The Premiership might be working towards a re-start in August but it simply doesn’t work for us.”