Gary Mackay: Football has changed forever - youth and smaller squads is the future

Young players like Harry Cochrane, Aaron Hickey and Bobby Burns might get more chances if they hang around at Hearts.

There is no doubt the football landscape will change dramatically from now as a consequence of coronavirus. It might never be the same again.

Players will now enter a new era where a lot of the power they had will transfer back to clubs. It is a precarious time for them all across the globe.

Closer to home, Hearts talked about a five-year plan and that didn't work out well at all even before this virus came along. There are now a lot of players who will be having to think about a five-minute plan.

I don't mean just at Tynecastle, I mean everywhere. Because of the financial situation, clubs will simply have to work with smaller first-team squads and there will need to be more emphasis at most clubs on bringing younger players through.

Those kids should be on lower salaries with appearance and win bonuses for the first team. It's going to have a massive effect on players, managers and coaching staff at every club.

I think it will be very similar with how Dundee United were run under Jim McLean. Players will be on a decent basic salary but with everything written in regarding bonuses for achieving success.

United didn't do too badly using that approach if you look back because it was the most successful period in their history during the 1980s and into the 1990s.

The length of the contracts Jim offered to players back then just wouldn't work nowadays, but I think everything else in the players' deals was pretty shrewd.

The Hearts players will have seen that this year. They won't have had many win bonuses this season and the bottom line in football is winning games.

I think a lot of us would like to see contracts with more incentives in them going forward. Everyone wants a basic wage but there has to be motivation to achieve in football.

If you don't have that, then you are going to find it very difficult.

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