After 25 games, this season compares with the best since '83

[Ben Dover]

not as simple as you are making out lionflaps.

 

celtic weren't the best team in 85/86 but won the league.

 

we probably aren't going to be measurably the best team in the league but it's still possible to win one.

 

 

Indeed, hindsight is a wonderful thing but I wish now that JJ had been more pragmatic on our last two trips to Glasgow

and simply parked the bus !

I'm sure The Special One would have had no qualms about doing that had those points been pivotal to winning the title.

Having said that if we beat them in our last two encounters ( home to Tic and away to the Hun ) then we will have

shared the available points 50/50 over the year

Then of course we can really rue the early season draws and defeats at Tynecastle

[Mysterion]

Think one of the differences this season is that I still turn up to Tynecastle and wonder what type of performance we'll see. We've seen anywhere from sublime to horrendous this year. When we get a win it's really enjoyable rather than "expected" as some think.

 

 

Great season for the fight Hearts have put up.

[Victorian]

It is as simple as that.

 

Its time dinosaurs like yourself stopped using 85/86 as any sort of guideline to our current team as well, it was nearly 30 years ago FFS.

 

If we are the best team in the league then I reckon that's gives us a better than average chance of winning the thing.

 

Try dealing in fact instead of fiction.

 

obviously.

 

if it was possible then i doubt anyone would complain.

[Boab]

It is as simple as that.

 

Its time dinosaurs like yourself stopped using 85/86 as any sort of guideline to our current team as well, it was nearly 30 years ago FFS.

 

If we are the best team in the league then I reckon that's gives us a better than average chance of winning the thing.

 

Try dealing in fact instead of fiction.

 

Oi....! 25 years...us oldies are counting every day you know!

[Victorian]

Indeed, hindsight is a wonderful thing but I wish now that JJ had been more pragmatic on our last two trips to Glasgow

and simply parked the bus !

I'm sure The Special One would have had no qualms about doing that had those points been pivotal to winning the title.

Having said that if we beat them in our last two encounters ( home to Tic and away to the Hun ) then we will have

shared the available points 50/50 over the year

Then of course we can really rue the early season draws and defeats at Tynecastle

 

yep. then it really would have significant parallels to 85/86.

[IMA MAROON]

BB, i text my mate that the Huns win today, for example, makes it all that much harder for Hearts to win the league. Simply because not enough teams will put up a fight or take enough points off the OF. Our record at the moment would be title potential stuff in other leagues.....

 

The Rangers win was good for us as it puts pressure on the mhanks. Now they have to handle that pressure.

 

The only way they are going to drop points is if their bottle goes.

[Hearts Heritage]

 

.... fairly good dundee united and aberdeen .....

 

 

 

Going into the run in Celtic were 4th favourites with us 3rd favourites as We had to play United and Aberdeen in consecutive weeks and they all had a game in hand.

 

Celtic were away at Aberdeen

We were at Tannadice

 

http://www.londonhearts.com/scores/games/198604121.html#TableBefore

 

And we cheered Celtic's victory over Aberdeen...... as that put us 5 points clear....

[Clerry Jambo]

When most of the SPL managers come out with the usual "anything we get from the OF is a bonus" pesh, then the status quo in this league will continue.

[Jambomuzz]

Obviously I'd love to see Hearts win the league as soon as possible, but to be fair I cant see it coming within the next few years.

 

Hearts need to focus on reducing that debt and making sure they are producing the best young players from the Academy. It will take years for this debt to be clearing but when it is we can focus on truly making a team to rival the Old firm, without wasting alot of money in 05/06.

 

For short term improvement on top of that we need a manager that is going to stay for the next 5 years. It has to be JJ, I just hope that once his contract is coming to a close that he is enjoying it enough and feels that we are progressing enough to stay on for longer. He will have time to fully build his own team. Im maybe a bit too young to know all the facts for 97/98, but im sure I seen somewhere that the cup win didnt just come over night. JJ built his team over the previous 2/3 years before peaking with the cup win. Thats what needs to happen here, but hopefully just hopefully we can take more than just the cup

[Geoff Kilpatrick]

It's quite feasible that we could split the points this season with the gruesomes.

 

If so, all we can do is win our other games or at least remain unbeaten and see what happens. I want us to break 76 points now, which is the equivalent of winning every home game and drawing every away game, as a minimum target for the season, because to me that represents a major step forward in consistency. Hopefully, with that target in mind, we can keep the gruesomes 'honest' in the race.

[Gambo]

The annoying thing for me is that we could have gotten away with our 4 losses to the Old Firm so far this season had we not dropped a mighty 12 points at home against ICT, St Johnstone, Dundee Utd, Kilmarnock, and Motherwell, those 12 points would have seen us top the league.

 

I am sure the old firm would say the same about the points they have dropped.

[Jambomuzz]

It's quite feasible that we could split the points this season with the gruesomes.

 

If so, all we can do is win our other games or at least remain unbeaten and see what happens. I want us to break 76 points now, which is the equivalent of winning every home game and drawing every away game, as a minimum target for the season, because to me that represents a major step forward in consistency. Hopefully, with that target in mind, we can keep the gruesomes 'honest' in the race.

 

I wouldnt go as far to say its a major step forward in consistancy. For me a Major one would be ahcieving the same feat next season again, if not betterring it. Thats what we should be looking to do, theres no point putting all this effort in this season, only to lose all sense of progress by having a piss poor/averege season.

[DETTY29]

The simplest of all the stats. As Fergie said, to win trophies in Scotland, you need to be able to beat the Old Firm in Glasgow.

While that is very true there are some factors we can't omit

 

- Fergie was a geius

- Aberdeen had a buying power similar to that of old firm - Peter Weir was purchased for ?300k+, plus Ian Scanlon thrown in.

- Dundee United were even buying Bannon for around 1/4 mill. (And us Pettigrew and Addison before that

- McLean and Fergie used the clubs power on contracts to avoid selling to OF - Remember Gough really did a Webster of sorts at the time

 

Reading the Dalglish thread reminded how much as players I loved Dalglish and Souness, and dozens of other Scots playing in England.

 

But now, is there a person I hate more in Scottish football than Graeme Souness. Probably David Murray.

[Bruno]

What annoys me is that in leagues like Turkey, Holland, Romania, Russia and Germany we've seen either long established dominance broken or new teams coming through to win championships for the first time in the last 3 or 4 years. Obviously this has much to do with the fact that some clubs have seen significant investment, the gap between established teams and smaller ones isn't on the same scale as it is in this country and the fact that these are all bigger countries than ours with more than two clubs can attract attendances of 20 000+. 15 years ago in Spain we had Deportivo winning a championship, Blackburn in England, France has many different champions (Lyon's 7 in a row aside) but we've been stuck with this for 25 years now and it shows no sign of ending.

 

Top 25 European leagues and how many different teams have won the league in the last 25 seasons, since Aberdeen in 84-85.

 

1. England - 7

2. Spain - 5

3. Germany - 7

4. Italy - 7

5. France - 8

6. Portugal - 4

7. Russia - 6 (19 seasons - Russian league only started in 1992)

8. Ukraine - 3 (19 seasons - Ukranian league only started in 1992)

9. Holland - 5

10. Turkey - 4

11. Greece - 4

12. Denmark - 8

13. Belgium - 6

14. Romania - 6

15. Scotland - 2

16. Switzerland - 10

17. Israel - 6

18. Austria - 7

19. Czech Rep - 4 (17 seasons - Czech league only started in 1993-94)

20. Cyprus - 5

21. Bulgaria - 7

22. Croatia - 4 (19 seasons - Croat league only started in 1992)

23. Belarus - 7 (20 seasons - Belarussian league only started in 1992 and then switched from summer to winter football and back again hence an extra season)

24. Poland - 9

25. Slovakia - 6 (17 seasons - Slovak league only started in 1993-94)

26. Norway - 7

27. Serbia - 3 (18 seasons - Serbian league only started in 1992-93, includes 4 seasons since Montenegran teams left the league)

28. Sweden - 10

29. Bosnia - 8 (16 seasons - Bosnian league only started in 1994-95)

30. Finland - 8

 

Our league is an embarassment. And the fact that the authorities allow and encourage it to continue like this is beyond a joke.

[Charlie-Brown]

While that is very true there are some factors we can't omit

 

- Fergie was a geius

- Aberdeen had a buying power similar to that of old firm - Peter Weir was purchased for ?300k+, plus Ian Scanlon thrown in.

- Dundee United were even buying Bannon for around 1/4 mill. (And us Pettigrew and Addison before that

- McLean and Fergie used the clubs power on contracts to avoid selling to OF - Remember Gough really did a Webster of sorts at the time

 

Reading the Dalglish thread reminded how much as players I loved Dalglish and Souness, and dozens of other Scots playing in England.

 

But now, is there a person I hate more in Scottish football than Graeme Souness. Probably David Murray.

 

You are right and you are also wrong here Detty29 - at that point in time most clubs had no debt or minimal debt (certainly by todays comparison) as Banks were a lot less willing to lend anything at all to football clubs, credit vailable to our clubs was a lot less - as an example Wallace Mercer bought Hearts & had to deal with debts of approx ?250K that were threatening to put us out of business as with no players of any value to be sold and before Tynecastle had any meaningful value in the property boom years, the early 80's was a time of deep recession & high unemployment and without Mercer securing our future we were goosed.

 

Aberdeen & Dundee United in contrast were both very well run clubs financially as well as under great managers like Fergie & Maclean had spent the best part of a decade building up sound youth development to provide players for their first team most of their teams were home produced they also had training centres in Edinburgh & Glasgow and poached players from under the noses of Hearts, Hibs Rangers & Celtic who were far less focused on youth development.

 

Another reason that Aberdeen & Dundee United were able to compete financially for some of the best players was that they didn't shop in the same market as Rangers & Celtic who always had stronger buying & bargaining power the new firm targeted players that the Old Firm would shun until years later ie Fergie went back to former club St Mirren to get the likes of P.Weir D.Bell & W.Stark whom he'd previously managed as youngsters, they both also signed some players that had been deemed as flops in England and brought them home - Mark McGhee & Eammon Bannon being 2 of the best examples - I think they also got Scanlon from somebody like Notts County. Aberdeen also had a habit of successfully taking Dundee FC's best players off them taking Jocky Scott, Gordon Strachan & Stewart McKimmie from them.

 

But the main reason that the New Firm financially was that they sold high and bought low - Aberdeen sold Archibald for ?900K to Spurs, Strachan ?450K to Man Utd & McGhee & Black to Hamburg & Metz for substantial fees and used this money to buy the likes of Peter Weir, Billy Stark Frank MacDougall & Stewart McKimmie for a lot less than they'd taken in even though they were paying Scottish record transfer fees for some of these players they were still substantially in profit in relation to player sales. Although most of Dundee Uniteds players were home produced or picked up for nominal sums early in their career Dundee United did similar selling Ray Stewart to West Ham for ?400K and using approx half of that to buy Bannon & Pettigrew before fleecing us for an aging & declining Willie Pettigrew a while later Hearts never learned their lesson and a decade later Maclean again got the better of us in the tranfer market giving us biscuits Allan Preston in part exchange for Scott Crabbe.

 

Basically as well as being very well run football clubs with great managers in Ferguson & Maclean, Aberdeen & Dundee United also had great youth systems & produced the bulk of their own players, had good scouting and a good eye for players but crucially they also bought & sold very well in the transfer market and were almost always significantly in profit which helped them pay good bonus money to help keep their other best players & reward their success.

[Buffalo Bill]

You are right and you are also wrong here Detty29 - at that point in time most clubs had no debt or minimal debt (certainly by todays comparison) as Banks were a lot less willing to lend anything at all to football clubs, credit vailable to our clubs was a lot less - as an example Wallace Mercer bought Hearts & had to deal with debts of approx ?250K that were threatening to put us out of business as with no players of any value to be sold and before Tynecastle had any meaningful value in the property boom years, the early 80's was a time of deep recession & high unemployment and without Mercer securing our future we were goosed.

 

Aberdeen & Dundee United in contrast were both very well run clubs financially as well as under great managers like Fergie & Maclean had spent the best part of a decade building up sound youth development to provide players for their first team most of their teams were home produced they also had training centres in Edinburgh & Glasgow and poached players from under the noses of Hearts, Hibs Rangers & Celtic who were far less focused on youth development.

 

Another reason that Aberdeen & Dundee United were able to compete financially for some of the best players was that they didn't shop in the same market as Rangers & Celtic who always had stronger buying & bargaining power the new firm targeted players that the Old Firm would shun until years later ie Fergie went back to former club St Mirren to get the likes of P.Weir D.Bell & W.Stark whom he'd previously managed as youngsters, they both also signed some players that had been deemed as flops in England and brought them home - Mark McGhee & Eammon Bannon being 2 of the best examples - I think they also got Scanlon from somebody like Notts County. Aberdeen also had a habit of successfully taking Dundee FC's best players off them taking Jocky Scott, Gordon Strachan & Stewart McKimmie from them.

 

But the main reason that the New Firm financially was that they sold high and bought low - Aberdeen sold Archibald for ?900K to Spurs, Strachan ?450K to Man Utd & McGhee & Black to Hamburg & Metz for substantial fees and used this money to buy the likes of Peter Weir, Billy Stark Frank MacDougall & Stewart McKimmie for a lot less than they'd taken in even though they were paying Scottish record transfer fees for some of these players they were still substantially in profit in relation to player sales. Although most of Dundee Uniteds players were home produced or picked up for nominal sums early in their career Dundee United did similar selling Ray Stewart to West Ham for ?400K and using approx half of that to buy Bannon & Pettigrew before fleecing us for an aging & declining Willie Pettigrew a while later Hearts never learned their lesson and a decade later Maclean again got the better of us in the tranfer market giving us biscuits Allan Preston in part exchange for Scott Crabbe.

 

Basically as well as being very well run football clubs with great managers in Ferguson & Maclean, Aberdeen & Dundee United also had great youth systems & produced the bulk of their own players, had good scouting and a good eye for players but crucially they also bought & sold very well in the transfer market and were almost always significantly in profit which helped them pay good bonus money to help keep their other best players & reward their success.

 

Tremendous post Charlie.

 

In addition to this, although Aberdeen and Dundee Utd had top managers, their timing was fortunate too, and this would be my key point.

 

 

Firstly, Rangers were terrible at this time. They didn't win the league between 1978 and 1987, and could only bag the odd cup here and there.

 

In the 1980s, Celtic still won the most league titles, four, in 1981, 82, 86 & 88, and the Scottish Cups of 80, 85, 88 & 89.

 

So although some people talk of the 'New Firm dominating', they did only dominate for a short spell, as much really, as Hearts and Hibs did in either the early or late 50s.

 

 

Fergie and McLean's timing was fortunate because if we look at the mediocre, middling players of Rangers, we can surely deduce that Peter McCloy, Sandy Clark, Stuart Munro and Davie McKinnon weren't on too much more money than Alex McLeish, Dave Narey, Neil Cooper and Paul Hegarty.

 

Certainly, when Rangers upped their game with the Souness revolution, Dundee Utd never got a sniff of a trophy after that (well, not in the 80 era), and Fergie was wise enough to jump ship before Souness' first season was completed.

 

 

As good as the New Firm were, and they were good, their timing was even better.

[Guess The Crowd]

Very good thread.

 

I was thinking about this very issue over the weekend, when away from my computer/ internet access. Then came home last night to find

 

1. This thread, with lots of good reminiscing, about a club who've put in a half-decent challenge every so often over a 25-year period.

2. A thread on another forum entitled 'Albert Kidd'

 

Says it all really.

[Diego10]

05/6 was certainly the exception. Rangers' finishing total of 73 was amazingly low. You're focusing on last season's Celtic - but they were freakishly awful, and still ended up on 81!

 

Most of the time, both halves of the OF can be expected to score 85 plus; one of them often gets over 90; and twice over the last decade, both got over 90, with the ultimate joint runaway being when both got 97 points in 02/3. So what's happening this season with them is actually fairly normal: finishing totals of Celtic 92, Rangers 87 or so look about right to me at this point.

 

And it's because that's fairly normal for them that I always find the prospect of Hearts winning the title to be such a tall order: close to an impossible one. Because as BB's shown, we almost never score 2 points a game or more over a whole season. The only time we managed that since promotion was 1991/2 - yet two points a game gives us 76, leaving us well adrift.

 

3 times since 1995 that's happened. so no that regualarly to be honest.

[Gizmo]

If we had won in 86, do we think that would have changed the complexion of the Scottish game - cementing us as perennial challengers and attracting a lot of extra fans, allowing us to be a spanner in the works of the 'Souness' revolution - or would it have simply been a final hurrah before ushering in the era of old filth dominance?

 

Would redeveloping Tynie to sit say 25K and filling that somehow week in week out, would that be enough to give us a platform to challenge - or would that still leave us too poor financially? Would it take success first to draw back the fans - or are they all lost to apathy/cost of tickets/gone west as glory hunters?

 

I detest the thought that the old firm have this league sown up for tne next 25 years too.

[Mr Romanov Saviour of HMFC]

It has been a fantastic season. I think regardless of what happens now, I'll look back on this as one of my favourites.

 

Really love this group of players. To go from hating just about every one to loving the team in a season is quite something! All down to one man (and Mr Romanov being the best owner in Scotland).

 

[Debut 4]

If we had won in 86, do we think that would have changed the complexion of the Scottish game - cementing us as perennial challengers and attracting a lot of extra fans, allowing us to be a spanner in the works of the 'Souness' revolution - or would it have simply been a final hurrah before ushering in the era of old filth dominance?

 

Would redeveloping Tynie to sit say 25K and filling that somehow week in week out, would that be enough to give us a platform to challenge - or would that still leave us too poor financially? Would it take success first to draw back the fans - or are they all lost to apathy/cost of tickets/gone west as glory hunters?

 

I detest the thought that the old firm have this league sown up for tne next 25 years too.

Winning it may have had a huge positive impact on many aspects of the club but even though we didn`t i think we should still have went from strength to strength and put in more closer challenges, at least, for the title. Don`t get me wrong, we were still a very good team but we went from 2nd to 5th in a season, then 2nd again in 88, 6th in 89 , 3rd the year after , 5th, then another 2nd in 92.

 

But in both they runners up years of 88, 92 we were a wee bit off winning the title in the closing weeks.

 

 

We didn`t win the league in 86 but finishing 2nd still takes a special mentality, to stay the course and perform every week. But just getting over that finishing line and saying you ARE a winner , you ARE the Champs opens a whole new outlook on things.

 

Maybe not winning that last game in 86 had a bigger effect on the club than we realise.

[shaun.lawson]

3 times since 1995 that's happened. so no that regualarly to be honest.

 

Five times actually. Within that, I'm including 1995/6, the first season of what we might consider the modern era of Scottish football: a year in which strong Rangers and Celtic sides disappeared over the horizon, and it became all about 3rd for the rest of us. Celtic that season got 83 points - but over only 36 games, not 38. They'd have been on 88 had it been the latter.

 

One other thing to bear in mind. Both last season and in 06/7, the title race was over by March - meaning the leaders then lost interest, and didn't end up with the total they would've accrued had they been pressed more closely. Celtic were on course for over 95 points for most of 06/7, before drifting into the finishing line once the league had been wrapped up; and last season, Rangers ended up six to eight points shy of what might've been expected had Celtic not been such a total shambles under Mowbray.

[Ben Dover]

If we had won in 86, do we think that would have changed the complexion of the Scottish game - cementing us as perennial challengers and attracting a lot of extra fans, allowing us to be a spanner in the works of the 'Souness' revolution - or would it have simply been a final hurrah before ushering in the era of old filth dominance?

 

Would redeveloping Tynie to sit say 25K and filling that somehow week in week out, would that be enough to give us a platform to challenge - or would that still leave us too poor financially? Would it take success first to draw back the fans - or are they all lost to apathy/cost of tickets/gone west as glory hunters?

 

I detest the thought that the old firm have this league sown up for tne next 25 years too.

 

That is a tough question.

I'm not sure if Aberdeen or Dundee Utd attracted any more floating fans in their hay days?

Although maybe they just didn't have a big enough catchment area to work with?

Nor did we see the 'bounce' we expected after the cup win in 98.........rather, in true Hearts fashion of course, we actually toyed with relegation the next season and that may well have nipped any resurgence in the bud

[Charlie-Brown]

Winning it may have had a huge positive impact on many aspects of the club but even though we didn`t i think we should still have went from strength to strength and put in more closer challenges, at least, for the title. Don`t get me wrong, we were still a very good team but we went from 2nd to 5th in a season, then 2nd again in 88, 6th in 89 , 3rd the year after , 5th, then another 2nd in 92.

 

But in both they runners up years of 88, 92 we were a wee bit off winning the title in the closing weeks.

 

 

We didn`t win the league in 86 but finishing 2nd still takes a special mentality, to stay the course and perform every week. But just getting over that finishing line and saying you ARE a winner , you ARE the Champs opens a whole new outlook on things.

 

Maybe not winning that last game in 86 had a bigger effect on the club than we realise.

 

Winning the league in 86 would have been tremendous but I think it affected us more negatively in big cup games and losing finals & semi's damaged us more than Dens Park did - we didn't seem to believe we could win the one-off games at Hampden. Rangers & Celtic both upped their game in the late 80's and outspent everybody else by some distance although nowhere near as much as they did a decade later but they still put a clear distance between them & clubs like Hearts & Aberdeen etc. That Hearts & Aberdeen were able to challenge them at all was a tremendous credit and us finishing 2nd 3 times in 7 seasons was probably when we performed at the top of our capabilities for a sustained period .... it's just that Souness/Smith's Rangers were a lot stronger than we were for almost all of that time.

[Buffalo Bill]

If we had won in 86, do we think that would have changed the complexion of the Scottish game - cementing us as perennial challengers and attracting a lot of extra fans, allowing us to be a spanner in the works of the 'Souness' revolution - or would it have simply been a final hurrah before ushering in the era of old filth dominance?

 

Would redeveloping Tynie to sit say 25K and filling that somehow week in week out, would that be enough to give us a platform to challenge - or would that still leave us too poor financially? Would it take success first to draw back the fans - or are they all lost to apathy/cost of tickets/gone west as glory hunters?

 

I detest the thought that the old firm have this league sown up for tne next 25 years too.

 

 

I'm not so sure personally. In the mid-late 80s, we seemed to be able to bring in big crowds one week and rubbish crowds the next because cheap gate prices and large tracks of terracing meant that fans could attend game to game without any hassle. I'm not convinced the title would've changed that.

 

 

And when we won the Scottish Cup in 1998, less than 12,000 Hearts fans attended the first home game of the next season...another 2-1 win over Rangers.

[Charlie-Brown]

I'm not so sure personally. In the mid-late 80s, we seemed to be able to bring in big crowds one week and rubbish crowds the next because cheap gate prices and large tracks of terracing meant that fans could attend game to game without any hassle. I'm not convinced the title would've changed that.

 

 

And when we won the Scottish Cup in 1998, less than 12,000 Hearts fans attended the first home game of the next season...another 2-1 win over Rangers.

 

I have attended Hearts matches in Scotland with less than a hundred jambos in attendance and tens of thousands at Hampden & Murrayfield .... i think we must have the most elastic fan-base in Scotland, we can have over 100K people lining the streets to see Silverware and within a shortwhile only a few diehards even bothering to go to a game - it's quite bizarre.