Gary Mackay: No more five-year plans - I want to know what kind of Hearts team I'll see on Saturday

Hearts owner Ann Budge has been criticised by fans.

Tell me what kind of Hearts team I’m going to see at Dunfermline this Saturday and that will do me. That’s what football is about. Football is Saturday to Saturday. It isn’t about three years or five years ahead.

It doesn’t matter what people roll out, Heart of Midlothian Football Club will always survive without restaurants and corporate hospitality areas. It will never survive without a football team.

If you are going to talk about departments, then the football department is totally underachieving. An £8.5m wage bill throughout the club and we aren’t able to beat Arbroath, Brora Rangers or Queen of the South in a week. That isn’t good enough and we all know it.

I respect the board and Ann Budge for what they’ve done. I respect them for continuing to back every manager, but they need to look at themselves as ask why they are having to keep backing every manager in the chair.

Are we going to keep making the same mistakes? We are now at 97 players signed since 2014 and by the looks of it there will be yet another massive overhaul this summer.

As much as that seems unavoidable if Hearts are to compete in the Premiership next season, it is becoming as tiresome as it is costly.

So these three-year and five-year plans haven’t worked. If we are going to talk about what has happened in the last three years at Hearts, then it's been close to disastrous.

I like Robbie Neilson as an individual and I thought he didn’t get the credit he deserved last time he was in charge at Hearts. He has a different coaching staff with him this time which maybe changes how the team is being challenged and prepared for a Saturday.

Robbie will know himself that, with a plane having been flown over Tynecastle demanding his removal when he was doing pretty well last time, he and the board are fortunate that the stadium isn’t packed to capacity just now.

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