Breaking News: Hearts striker Christian Nade has been diagnosed with MRSA, the flesh eating disease. Doctors have given the fat bastard 40 years to live.

John Hughes walks by the touchline at the end of a game.  A fan puts out his arm and Hughes signs it.  Further on a lady lifts her top and Hughes signs her breasts.  As he nears the tunnel, a woman leaps naked onto the pitch, lies down and spreads her legs.  yogi says, “Sorry, it’s Csaba Laszlo that signs all the fannies.”

Breaking news: 2 Plane loads of volunteers from Ibrox have taken off from Prestwick Airport heading for Haiti to assist with the looting and rioting.

A container holding 250,000 Hearts tops was returned to the Scottish Executive today by the people of Haiti. Attached was a not saying “We have no homes, no food and no water but we still have our dignity.”

I loaned the Jambo next door £20 last week and haven’t seen him since….feckin’ bargain!

Csaba Laszlo and Yogi Hughes are in the pub.  Laslo buys the first drinks, Yogi gets the next round in and then Csaba goes up again, once those drinks are done, Yogi turns round to Csaba and says “Shouldn’t you fuck off now, it’s the 4th round!”

Be careful , driving conditions are awful tonight.  I just came off the road and hit a Jambo.  It took e ten minutes, two fields & a golf course but I finally got him.

What’s the differance between Christian Nade and a beach ball?

The beach ball has scored this season.

Thanks to Brainwrong for many of these.

If you enjoyed this you might want to see some of the best and worst beards in football.

Kids whose training sessions should have started this week have been sent home after being told that the sessions would not be continuing for financial reasons.

Could this be the perfect time for Hibs to expand their youth development scheme?

Christian Nade yesterday

It is now 645 735 750 773 809 876 935 playing minutes since Christian Nadé scored a league goal.

Hearts’ Christian Nade’s Wikipedia page has been the victim of some appalling vandalism over the last couple of days.  The entry for the rotund, talent bereft striker’s full name was changed to Christian Steak Bake Nade and his position to Halfway Line Marker.  It is believed that this malicious mischief may have been the act of a Hibs fan.

Mr Nade is a well known object of ridicule amongst the followers of the Hibees.  Since Hibs now have at least 5 or 6 strikers strikers who would walk into the Hearts first team and because Hearts have failed to strengthen at all during the close season, slagging “Steak Bake” Nade as a proxy for Heart of Midlothian Football Club has become endemic in Edinburgh.

Nade, who signed for the Jambos two years ago from Sheffield United and has established himself in their first team, has amassed a total of 6 league goals in 39 games.  An average of 0.154 per game.  His tally last season was 3 in 39 games, less than half the number of yellow cards he received (7).  On the other side of the city, Derek Riordan has almost reached Nade’s total from last season in just two games and has a record of 68 goals in 130 games for Hibs (0.52 per game).

Hearts manager, Csaba Laszlo has been quoted as being pretty unhappy about the apparent lack of funds available to bring in players after Hibs beat Hearts to the signature of Anthony Stokes.  That race was the equivalent of Usain Bolt against, well, Christian Nadé but that doesn’t seem so obvious to Shabby who is now making ultimatums with Vladamir Romanov.  Only one winner there I feel.

So, after two games this season, Nade has failed to score any goals.  It seems only fair to track the number of minutes until he gets a league goal.  His last was against Aberdeen on Valentines day 2009.  He scored at 45 minutes and hasn’t since.   645 735 750 773 809 876 935 minutes on the pitch and counting….

Update: Rumours that the newspapers are shortly to be full of stories about a certain Jambo cavorting naked on the internet have not been confirmed.

Nade rumour thread

Update 2: Nade rumours have not gained any further credibility but lardy boy has not played a game since the rumours broke.  That’s a real shame since it means I’ve been unable to update this post since.  Hearts still don’t seem to be scoring much though so all is good.

Update 3: His appearance against StMirren is Nade’s first game back since Csaba Laszlo said “Nade is without a goal so far this season and his time at Tynecastle has been marked by injury. The players commitment has been called into question as he has struggle to keep his weight under control.”

Update 4: Steak Bake Nade was fined for driving without a license this week but showed his detractors his real (comedy) value by spending another fruitless 36 minutes on the pitch in Heart’s draw in Aberdeen.  So, 7 points for lardy boy this week.

Update 5: During the week, fat ass Nade made the outlandish claim “I’m going to score, definitely.” He got his first start for Hearts for a while and lasted 67 minutes before being subbed by fellow huddy David Witteveen. Nade, along with his team mates, failed to score a single goal at home to bottom of the league strugglers Falkirk.

Update 6:  Nade went off injured in 59mins of non-scoring at Motherwell.  Acording to Shabba it’s not that bad though so fortunately it looks like he’ll be starting in the derby next week.

It’s been widely rumoured since Yogi arrived at the club that Stokes would return to play for him after an uneventful spell down south.  Stokes signed for Sunderland for around £2 million so you’d have to figure that Hibs have paid some sort of fee to get him back to Scotland.  Lets hope he can find the form that got him that transfer in the first place.

This is a genuinely exciting signing and along with the return of Benji and Zemmama and addition of 3 midfielders who all, so far, look the biz – we could be in for a decent season.

To top it all, the Jambos were humped in 4-0 by Dynamo Zagreb tonight too.  Happy days!

Here are links to his hatrick for Falkirk against Dunfermline:

Goal 1 Goal 2 Goal 3

I was amused to see Dundee United at 42 points but actually that’s a “D” – Avergae Score. 42 is pretty good when compared to the English Premiership teams, only 5 of whom get over 50 points and 11 of whom are technically insolvent.

So, what does it all mean? Absolutely bugger all.  More recession scaremongery and a company (Equifax) inventing a press release purely for the publicity.

EQUIFAX’S SCOTTISH PREMIER LEAGUE CREDIT RATINGS TABLE

*Motherwell Football and Athletic Club Limited is a company voluntary arrangement, so automatically given zero points and insolvency rating.

EQUIFAX’S PREMIERSHIP CREDIT RATINGS TABLE

Thanks to Tortohibby for putting this on YouTube.

Ukio Bankas Shares

Update – 04 February 2009

The latest happening appears to be that the Lithuanian government is, for the first time, going to confiscate money that was being laundered through a Lithuanian bank.  Which bank would be shady enough for that to happen I hear you ask?  Okay maybe not, it is of course Ukio Bankas.

Incidentally, if there was ever any wonder where the Christophe Berra money was going, now you know.

Update – 27 November 2008

There’s never a dull moment in Gorgie.  There appears to be yet more money problems as Hearts failed to pay their players again.  It happened in September and again last week.  They somehow scraped together enough to get the wages paid by the end of the day last week but this week they’ve failed completely.

Amusingly they haven’t used the same old “glitch” in the payment process excuse and have come up with an entirely new “blip” in the payment process excuse.  So, it would seem that everything is okay then.  Aye, right.

Basically, Ukio Bankas Investment group has failed to turn up with enough readies to cover wages, again.  What a shambles.

Hearts went on a bit of poor run of form after the last time they went without payment.  They beat Inverness 1-0 at home the day after then lost 0-3 to Dundee United, lost 1-2 Kilmarnock, drew the next two against Hibs and Aberdeen then lost 0-2 to Celtic before beating St Mirren.

Update

27 November 2008

I’m not really sure what’s going on at Mad Vlad’s Madhouse now, not that I ever was.  It seems they met the debt repayment and are now being hailed as The fastest growing company in Lithuania. I’m guessing that’s pretty much hype to try to boost flagging shares but either way it seems the crisis may have been averted, albeit temporarily.  Hearts’ players even got paid last week.  Despite  waking to find there had been another “technical hitch”, the funds came through later in the afternoon from somewhere.  In better news, this page is now in the top half of the first page of Google for people searching “ukio bankas”.

Edit / Update

13 November 2008

Ukio Bankas shares continue to plummet like the proverbial lead balloon.

They are down another third this week as the lovely graph shows -

Ukio Bankas shares plummet

Is it bad for Hearts?  Who knows?  I doubt that it can be good.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Original Post

I haven’t done a “demise of hearts” post for a while so it’s about time.  Plenty has gone on since the last one.  There were rumours this week that Hearts were to go into administration on Wednesday 8th October.  These rumours have the same source as similar ones that have appeared every couple of months recently and there is some basis in fact.  The club were never likely to go into administration this week though.

Basically what happens is when Hearts don’t pay their bill, the company who is owed money starts legal proceedings and gets a court order to wind up the club.  The court sends notice to Hearts advising that if they don’t pay the bill by whatever date, the administrators will be sent in.  Inevitably, Hearts pay the bill at the last minute.  It happened the last few times and it’ll happen this time.

There have been other Romanov related rumblings this week, not least the fact that Ukio Bankas shares are in freefall.  Here is the graph from this week…

Ukio Bankas shares in freefall this week

And from one year ago…..

Ukio Bankas shares over last 12 months

It would appear that all is not well. What effect this will have on Heart of Midlothian is difficult to say. There have been big problems in paying staff at the club and other parts of the Romanov empire appear to have been affected too. Ukio Bankas sold 5.12% of it’s shares to Medicinos Bankas UAB on the 2nd of October, presumably to raise some ready cash. It doesn’t look such a great deal for Medicinos and certainly hasn’t steadied the share price.

Aluminium companies have suffered greatly on the stock exchange recently and we’ve yet to see the full extent of the fallout from that.  Romanov owns a big aluminium plant in Bosnia which has been the cash cow of the Ukio empire and there was a report online that it was struggling just now although I’ve lost the link for the time being.

Hearts have put out a statement to the effect that everything is okay, nothing to see here. Just a few more “technical glitches” – aye right.

I spotted a George Foulkes photo caption thread the other day, some of the replies are pretty amusing.

George Foulkes - "I'm sorry, my friend, but I have absolutely no recollection of having assaulted you."

Or, alternatively….

“Oi fatty……gonnae stay there for a minute so I’m not the stupidest looking erse in this photo”

“For the final time, I don’t have a hip flask and ye canny have a nip.”

“Champions of Europe within 5 years, Meester Foulkes – I promise.”

This little nugget was posted on HMFCkickback today:

“UBIG has invested quite a bit of cash in the Republika Srpska part of Bosnia Herzegovina in recent years.
It backed the huge Birac alumina plant at Banja Luka, which a couple of weeks ago gave up 98% of its capital to cover bad debts. Birac has also lost around 80% of its share value in the past year (from 30 to 6) and recently laid off 245 workers.
UBIG also founded the Balkan Investment Bank in Banja Luka, which manages the Balkan Investment Fund. This has poured cash into a number of major businesses in that area.
Its biggest fund placements have been in the aforementioned stricken Birac plant plus a bauxite firm, metals company and Srpska Telekoms. All have lost at least 50% of their value in the past 12 months.
The credit crunch means nobody is giving any more loans to UBIG or UKIO, which invested heavily in the property market in the Baltics and Russia – just before these markets crashed.
UBIG and UKIO have backed loser after loser. Now that the credit has dried up, they are having to account for their losses.
In recent days UKIO’s shares (which have nosedived over the past three months) have been among the highest-traded on the Baltic exchange — suggesting that the company is spending a LOT of cash trying to prop up its value. Yet the price of UKIO shares is still falling.”

hearts v's airdrie - wrong scoreline

Hibs were beaten this week by Morton in the CIS cup which wasn’t great.  Despite some poor refereeing decisions, Hibs were beaten by a team that tried it’s ass off and everyone accepts that Morton won.

But that’s not the case at Tynecastle where the mini-Huns, Hearts, were beaten by the mini-mini-Huns, Airdrie on penalties.  Hearts have been unable to accept this scoreline and the Hearts official website is reporting the game as a victory – 4-0 on penalties.

There are three possibilities here – they are deluded, they are incompetent or they are both.

Notice also the attendance for the “big team” – 6844

DO you think that as more and more clubs are bought by foreign billionaires, you are going to see more interference by them?

Aye, you are going to get interference more and more from a manager’s point of view. I think there are signs of that. I mean the guy who owns Hearts takes the team out to the manager.

Here’s my suggestion:  Get a time machine and continue the campaign from when The Pieman left the club.

I think it’s difficult for fans of any most clubs to believe that Hearts fans have done the square root of bugger all since Vladimir Romanov ripped the soul from their club and made them the laughing stock they are.  Some of them still think he’s going to pull through and build a stadium, wipe the debt and win them the Champions League.

Anyway, I support the efforts of the few Hearts fans who are actually attempting to do something, they should be applauded for attempting to save the club they (misguidedly IMO) follow.  It’s easy to sit and mock from afar when your own club is in secure financial shape with a benevolent if not exactly inspiring owner (and I should know) but remember 18 years ago, Hibs went down a similar road that Hearts are on now.  It took the efforts of the Hands Off Hibs campaign to avoid being taken over by someone who was happy to wipe the club out.  The point is that the fans have to make that effort.  Who knows, it might not be too late for the Jambos to save what’s left of their club.  Time marches on though…..

In other news, Romanov’s chief attack dog Charlie Mann is to part company with Mad Vlad.  His employer, Weber Shandwick “are to cease any involvement with Hearts’ majority shareholder from the end of this month.”  Public Relations will now be dealt with in-house.  No reason given, make up your own but first here’s a quote from Mr Mann in 2007, “Don’t worry, things aren’t as bad as you fear…. When you see people like me walking away, that’s when to worry!”

Strangely, Charlie will be part of the panel, along with Hibs Blog favorite George Foulkes for a Talk 107 debate/discussion/pagger about Hearts on Friday 11 July from 6.30pm.  It’s going to be live so let’s hope George Foulkes is in his usual state.

Finally, I’d like to report on the imminent departure of Shaggy Fail but Hearts managers getting the heave-ho is hardly news is it?