Why aren't Hearts a bigger club?

A Magician Named Gob

Well-Known Member
Watching them struggle against Dundee Utd tonight in a pretty much empty stadium has made me wonder again why Edinburgh has failed to have one decent team for the last 30 years or so at least. Rangers and Celtic have obviously dominated Scottish football and there was the brief period in the 80s when Dundee Utd/Aberdeen became the best clubs in the country. It's nearly 60 years since they won the top league in Scotland.

Too many people in Edinburgh who aren't interested in football?

Rangers and Celtic holding far too much influence over most football supporting people in the Central Belt?

Hibs and Hearts splitting the city in a way that it can't cope with in the same way Glasgow has?
 
They’re a small time diddy club.

That’s really all there is to it.

You're right in that they are. The question I'm asking is why our second biggest city can't produce a club capable of challenging the biggest one here. England has Manchester and London, Germany has Munich and generally speaking the Ruhr area. Holland has Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Portugal has Porto and Lisbon. I don't see why Edinburgh has failed as much as it has to produce a club that challenges for the national league.
 
You're right in that they are. The question I'm asking is why our second biggest city can't produce a club capable of challenging the biggest one here. England has Manchester and London, Germany has Munich and generally speaking the Ruhr area. Holland has Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Portugal has Porto and Lisbon. I don't see why Edinburgh has failed as much as it has to produce a club that challenges for the national league.

Ourselves and Pacific Shelf are both freakishly large clubs for a country the size of Scotland. We absorb a lot of the football supporters in this country.

If you take a country like England, their two biggest clubs are Liverpool and Man United. But that doesn’t make the rest of the league minnows in comparison. There are plenty of other huge clubs with huge fanbases too.

But up here it’s extremely difficult for the other clubs to compete with us and them. Whilst you could say that Man Utd have two or three times as many fans as Arsenal (just for argument’s sake), for every supporter Hearts have, we probably have about ten.
 
They’d rather watch grown men manhandling each other using a square ball.

I think that's maybe a part of it but there should still be enough people in Edinburgh that aren't interested in rugby to fill a 40,000 stadium. I think the problem they've got is that Hibs/Hearts split that between a population that isn't capable of filling a stadium in the way Glasgow managed to.
 
Wallace Mercer has the right idea

It wouldn't be popular but it would be the best thing for football in the city. I've never really appreciated the argument of sentiment in regards to this. You'd probably lose a few hundred or even thousands fans, but the second the amalgamated team starts picking up a bit of success, there'd be fans piling in. I'm sure that was the case in Livingston and Inverness (at least). Dundee could probably do with one team as well.
 
They were stronger than Aberdeen from about 1995-2010. They've been mismanaged frankly. No matter if people won't admit it but McInnes has been a success for Aberdeen. Very consistent and that consistency has grown their revenue to a significant extent where they are now ahead of the Edinburgh clubs for sure.
 
They were stronger than Aberdeen from about 1995-2010. They've been mismanaged frankly. No matter if people won't admit it but McInnes has been a success for Aberdeen. Very consistent and that consistency has grown their revenue to a significant extent where they are now ahead of the Edinburgh clubs for sure.

Thinking back to when Rangers, Hibs and Hearts were all in the second division now seems a bit odd.

Utterly depressing to think that we were 3rd in the table by the end of it.
 
The rest of my family are hearts fans and they don't go much, they say it just comes down to pretty poor football, the manager and lack of funds to even get close to competing with the likes of us and them. They've pretty much lost interest.
 
The rest of my family are hearts fans and they don't go much, they say it just comes down to pretty poor football, the manager and lack of funds to even get close to competing with the likes of us and them. They've pretty much lost interest.

I've read someone on here or somewhere else say that you find more Hearts fans come from the surrounding areas and more Hibs fans are living in the city itself.

Do you think there's any truth in that?
 
I think Budge is doing fine and won’t take financial risks. They just don’t have the regular numbers to push on to any sort of challenge.
I think they have a lot of armchair fans but they don’t have the inclination to buy season tickets to push them on to another level.
For the club, coming 3rd is pretty much winning the league.
 
I actually think hearts are the third biggest club in the country. I'd say both edinburgh clubs are some way bigger than aberdeen as well in terms of support.

I read a thread on here about advertising the league and making it look as good as possible to the outside world. They've got semi-decent stadiums between them. Why the camera angles focus on empty stands and massive gaps is something that could easily be improved upon.
 
I've read someone on here or somewhere else say that you find more Hearts fans come from the surrounding areas and more Hibs fans are living in the city itself.

Do you think there's any truth in that?
Personally being from the South West of Edinburgh it was entirely hearts fans but the east, North East is crawling will hivs fans. Ratio wise I would say the split is 60/40 hearts.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 8-1
Fu.ck them all.

Lol.

My thoughts are basically that Hearts fans think like losers so effectively they automatically become losers. HIVs and the sheep - and the rest - are the same.
They can say what they like about us - and the paedos too if you like - but we have an identity that transcends ordinary fitba clubs. We have a loyalty that the diddies can only dream about.

Am I right, DR?
 
Last edited:
It wouldn't be popular but it would be the best thing for football in the city. I've never really appreciated the argument of sentiment in regards to this. You'd probably lose a few hundred or even thousands fans, but the second the amalgamated team starts picking up a bit of success, there'd be fans piling in. I'm sure that was the case in Livingston and Inverness (at least). Dundee could probably do with one team as well.
You ever been to Inverness?

Nobody cares about ICT up there. Inverness is one of the fastest growing cities in the UK and it still can’t get anyone to show up to watch ICT.

It’s a merging scummy bastard of a club that should be slain ASAP. Reinstate Caledonian FC
 
It wouldn't be popular but it would be the best thing for football in the city. I've never really appreciated the argument of sentiment in regards to this. You'd probably lose a few hundred or even thousands fans, but the second the amalgamated team starts picking up a bit of success, there'd be fans piling in. I'm sure that was the case in Livingston and Inverness (at least). Dundee could probably do with one team as well.

It might make business sense but if Rangers were to amalgamate with the scum would you be happy? I know that I, for one, wouldn't!:eek:

W.A.T.P.
 
I've only known 2 Jambo c.unts in my lifetime and both hated us more than they loved their own club.
So, I wish the c.unts only the very worst.:D
 
Edinburgh is a large city, but the areas surrounding it are quite rural. The greater Glasgow area makes up 1.8million, a third of scotlands population and then as you head east across places like Falkirk, West Lothian and Fife it is still vast majority old firm fans. So the support isn't really that large for Hearts and Hibs compared to ours.
 
Mon' Edinburgh City!?!?

I do think maybe give it 80 years they may emerge as the main edinburgh team as they have the stronger brand.

Am i mental? Probably.

Would i like to see it? Probably!
 
I grew up in Edinburgh. The amount of shit I took from 'hearts' fans who called me a glory hunter and never actually went to games themselves was insane. Potentially they are massive. Edinburgh will be bigger than Glasgow soon but it's full of absolute hypocrites
 
Rangers are an outlier in the sense that even though we’ve had 8 years of little success, battered from pillar to post, we still generate massive season ticket sales.

The reality is most other teams - hearts for example - can’t sustain large crowds as there is no expectation it will ever get better. It must be pretty souls destroying knowing it is very likely you’ll never ever win the league.

It would all change if they ever got a significant backer willing to do a Man City and splurge on success. Which will never happen
 
They are neither fish nor fowl these days.

A previously decent club and fiercely competitive rivals, with supporters with whom you could share a post match pint without feeling the requirement for a grit blast afterwards.

Sadly, they succumbed to the "sevco" bloodlust that still prevails our country.

In short, %^*& 'em.
 
Pressure. Their fans think they SHOULD be the 3rd force at least, and their players fold under that pressure. Motherwell, Killie etc over the years have had the freedom from that pressure to over achieve.
 
Bit off topic but quite amazing how differently both clubs were treated for insolvency events.

- Rangers were fined for going into administration they weren’t.

- They failed to pay players on several occasions (no action from the SFA/SPL)

- Hearts taken to court by HMRC several times for failure to pay tax. No 7 plus year investigation into them by the football authorities?

- Hearts debt was around £30m at the time of admin which was bigger than the debt we went into administration with but somehow we were cheats and they were victims????

The hypocrisy of Scottish football is staggering at times.
 
Last edited:
They don't have enough fans. End of. Ridiculous when you think Edinburgh has grown to 600k population while Glasgow has shrunk but there it is. Too many snobby gits in the capital have no interest in football
 
Hearts are a very big club, in Scottish football terms.

With the new stand in place, and a stadium over approx 20k, they sell out every game at home (ignore the league cup games - we dont sell them out either.)

they have enough fans, and money in Edinburgh to be as big, or bigger than Aberdeen and the "third force". Look at any cup final or semi they have been in, they have no problem bringing 25k to Hampden for a final.

The problem is Edinburgh. Unless you are dyed in the wool Jambo/Hibee nobody cares. Edinburgh is one of the richest cities in the country, but generally people would rather go to the rugger at Murrayfield. Hearts also have a turnaround of about 25 players a season - they arent quite as bad as the Romanov days, but they cant seem to keep a player for more than 2 years. Unless your name is Christophe.
 
Some of my best mates are Hearts fans and I definitely don’t hate Heart of Midlothian. However as someone pointed out a lot of their mostly younger fans jumped on the hating Rangers bandwagon which pissed me off. Expected that from the spoonburners and sheep shaggers but anyway.....
They need to get shot of Levein ASAP as he’s a rotten manager.
 
Back
Top