It was announced a short time ago by Sky News that Heart of Midlothian manager Csaba Laszlo has left Hearts.
He’s been moaning for months about not being given any funds by Vladamir Romanov and recent confirmation that there will be new faces at Tynecastle during the transfer season may have been the straw that broke the camels back.
It seems the Gunts are a rudderless ship yet again…
Under the freedom of information act, my friend requested these figures from Lothian and Borders police:
The following costs were billed to Hibernian Football Club for the following
fixtures:
Celtic 30/8 £6,407.80
Kilmarnock 17/10 £2,718.60
Aberdeen 31/10 £4,899.00
The following costs were billed to Hearts Football Club for the following
fixtures:
Hamilton 26/9 £2,718.60
Falkirk 24/10 £2,718.60
Hibernian 7/11 £6,748.20
Putting aside the question of whether football clubs should have to pay for policing at all, I was always under the impression that policing costs were really high. In reality, they’re simply not. Even in the big games we’re talking around 40p per supporter. Considering the game against Hearts that is mentioned above was, I think, £27 for away fans – it’s not a significant overhead.
There is now a fairly decent selection of Hibs books available on the web. The daddy of them all is of course The Making of Hibernian by Alan Lugton – three volumes of the history of Hibernian Football Club. Sadly, volumes 2 and 3 are really hard to get hold of (Volume 1 can be purchased on the link below). They turn up from time to time on Ebay but can’t be found on retailers such as Amazon or Blackwells. I’ve no doubt that a single tome of all three books would sell a bucket load some Christmas. I’m crossing my fingers for 2010.
Here are a few you might be interested in, please feel free to recommend more via the comments.
Hibs books:
Hearts and Hibs: Capital Classics
The Hibs Story Hibernian Football Club an Official History
Sunshine on Leith: Hibernian’s Finest Sons
There is a Bonny Fitba Team: 50 Years on the Hibee Highway
Books about Hibs Casuals:
Hibs Boy: The Life and Violent Times of Scotland’s Most Notorious Football Hooligan
These Colours Don’t Run: Inside the Hibs Capital City Service
A search for Hibs on Google reveals one of the official site URLs with the title “Visit Trevster’s Homepage”.
Trevster is Stuart Crowther’s mate from the hibs.net days. Trevster also owned Hibs.net for some time but now works with Crowther on the official site. Since the new official site was launched, a number of the additional domains owned by Hibs have not been redirected properly to the main site. Instead pages with no titles have been put up with the message:
“Hibernian FC has moved. The normal URL for the Hibernian home page is http://www.hibernianfc.co.uk with the alternative http://www.hibs.co.uk – this page will redirect you in 30 seconds.”
Not exactly a great user experience and technically something of a problem. The official site being presented as “Trevster’s homepage” doesn’t look very professional.
The solution, if anyone from Hibs is interested, is firstly to add proper titles to these pages. This will stop Google from using link text from Trevster’s profile. Secondly they should add permanent (301) redirects from this and all the other Hibs domains to the main domain at www.hibernianfc.co.uk. This will sort the problem in Google, ensure users are taken directly to the new site and also have a number of other benefits that are too geeky to go on about here.
Update: Or did they? The Scotsman thought so (although they may have simply copied their news from the internet) but they removed the story after a few minutes. The Daily Record now quotes Csaba as saying he hasn’t left. What a shambles of a club.
Hearts(nil) held one of their famous media conferences today at Tynecastle. Mad Vlad Romanov seem to have had enough of being criticised for being unable to afford a striker and he and Csaba have parted ways only days before the end of the transfer window. It now looks like Hearts will go into the weekend managerless and strikerless.
Csaba had been making noises that he might leave as he was not being backed by the club:
“I have two years left on my contract and I would like to stay here because I love the people in Edinburgh.
“But we (me and the board) are pulling in different directions. I look for players and I have to accept when I cannot get them.
“If a person gets tired then they need to sit down and think about their future. I want to feel the support of this board.”
