Hearts crisis overdue but still forecast

Csaba Laszlo has been one of the surprises of the SPL season. The man currently known as "Hearts manager" picked up a squad who had played miserably all of last season, and managed to at least get them back towards the top end of the table. In fact, in the run up to Christmas, the Jambos were starting to threaten a sustained push for 3rd.

Since then, though, the wheels have come off a bit. Hearts haven't scored a goal in around 5 hours of playing time, and there are signs that Laszlo has rinsed the maximum out of his squad already. His rigid 4-5-1 is hard to beat but hardly the most creative formation, and they created practically nothing against Motherwell on Wednesday.

It wasn't primarily the tactics that let them down, however, but the players' work rate, and Laszlo teared into them after the match. At least we think he did - the man likes to talk so much that it's quite easy to get bored long before he's done talking.

Hearts desperately need a striker, as big-boned Nade clearly doesn't cut it, Tulberg is perma-knacked, and the kids aren't considered good enough. Will Vlad cough up for one? Not if the persistent bad news about his business interests in accurate. They have signed Ian Black from Inverness on a pre-contract for next season, but he's the only addition so far.

It's very likely that Hearts will finish January with a weaker squad rather than a stronger one, as the club tries to get some big earners off the unreliable wage bill and cash in on any saleable assets.

Then we will really see what Laszlo is made of. In many ways, he seems similar to Valdas Ivanauskas - a decent coach, but who became more and more visibly stressed by the week and eventually had to be removed from his duties by Vlad for his own health.

Things have been unusually calm at Hearts for months, now, and this simply won't do while Romanov is still in control. Another meltdown is long overdue.

Transfer windae update

It seems Kris Boyd's move to Birmingham is off, after failure to agree personal terms. This means one of two things - either Boyd is a greedy bastard who simply asked for too much money; or Boyd doesn't want to leave Rangers, and so set his wage demands unreasonably high so that Birmingham were compelled to reject them.

Alan Hutton was similarly reluctant to move to Spurs last January, until Rangers sweetened the deal to encourage him on his way. With a total of £4m on the table from the Midlands, though, and Killie due a reputed 15% of any transfer due to a selling-on clause, Rangers have much less cash to play with this time around.

Chairman Murray was on the offensive yesterday, saying it was "ridiculous" to suggest Rangers were a selling club. Well, obviously they are (Hutton and Carlos Cuellar being 2 sales in the past 12 months from the first team) and we're about to find out just how much they need some money this month. Chris Burke has gone on a free to Cardiff, but Alan Gow's £250,000 move to Wolves has broken down after he failed a medical. All this after Murray claimed that no one else would be sold apart from Boyd.

Rangers: skint, and looking increasingly desperate.