Scottish football club Hearts can now relax a bit coz its ban has been lifted by Scottish Premier League. Accordingly, they are now free to sign new players with prescribed restrictions. Notably, Hearts was banned from signing any new player citing their inability to pay salary and bonuses to existing players and admin staff. Moreover, even the timing of payment made was arbitrary; hence SPL, then, decided to restrict their powers to sign any new player until they clear all the outstanding payments. Even though, they can now sign new players but there is a catch whereby they can only sign under-21 players that too with a one-in, one-out policy along with a wage restriction to new signees. At the moment, either Hearts has cleared its outstanding or has entered into a settlement with the concerned players; hence they can add new talents into their squad. More importantly, Hearts current undertakings to pay old dues have been written on promissory notes which would be difficult for them to decline, while earlier; they have verbally been promising to their players and administrative staff.
Hearts boss John McGlynn is a happy man now; he shared his joy by saying, “It’s good news. Obviously it helps. We’ve lost a couple of players now and we have a few injuries and suspensions, so it might come in handy that the transfer ban has been lifted.
“It’s still very restrictive. We have four players in the Scotland Under-21s, so where are we going to get better players to come in? You’re really looking down to the English market and players who are not playing at their clubs down there who you are going to take a chance on.
“Although the transfer embargo has been lifted, it’s not as if there are players who are hanging off the edge of trees who can just come in and hit the ground running.”
Actually, he along with the director of football John Murray have often been seen following matches in England this season and hopefully they have a ready shortlist in hand mentioning their target players after their ban lift.
Earlier, Scottish Premier League received information Hearts has cleared its most of the dues towards players and coaches hence its ban needs to be reassess, and after investigating first hand, they decided to lift the ban with three conditions, i.e., any new sign up should be based on one-in one-out policy, only under-21 players, and new player’s annualized salary has to be lesser than retiring players.