Gary Mackay has his say on Hearts’ pitch and back-room staff

I’ve never really questioned the wisdom of people at the football club, but when you see the pitch in the condition it was in on Saturday, you have to query the decision to host a show on the pitch a week before the opening league game at home.

Hearts pitch looked a little worse for wear after the Fringe show two Fridays ago. Pic: SNS

Everything about the club should be geared, first and foremost, towards putting things in place to give the first team the best possible opportunity to win football matches, and that clearly wasn’t the case with regard to hosting the International Festival event. It’s symptomatic of the questionable decision-making throughout the football club at present.

Another thing that continues to baffle me is the number of backroom staff we continue to employ. From the outside looking in, it looks like we have a bloated staff, full of coaches who don’t seem to be making us any better as a football team, and we have now employed a loans manager even though we only have three young players currently out on loan. No disrespect intended to Gary Naysmith, a dyed-in-the-wool Jambo whom I have huge respect for, but is this really a justifiable use of the club’s resources at a time when the fans are ploughing so much of their own cash in? The Foundation of Hearts really need to be asking questions about what is going on at the football club just now because right now everyone who is pledging their hard-earned money is entitled to wonder if it is being put to the best possible use.