THE Scottish Professional Football League will today consider Hearts' appeal to have their transfer embargo partially lifted during a board meeting at Hampden.
The Tynecastle club are currently in the midst of a registration ban after falling into administration last summer, leaving the club increasingly reliant on a thin squad of largely inexperienced youngsters.Hearts' administrators, BDO, held informal talks with an SPFL representative last Wednesday and were told their claim would be heard today.
Bryan Jackson, the senior business restructuring partner at the financial company, has followed that conversation up by submitting a document outlining their case ahead of the meeting. The SPFL have previously been clear in their stance that the club must serve their punishment for suffering an insolvency event.
However, Hearts will request leniency, citing the mental and physical fatigue on the ill-prepared young players who are now 20 points adrift at the foot of the SPFL Premiership, while claiming they would be little threat to the sides above them in the standings if allowed to bring in a couple of extra bodies.
Two key requests will be submitted. BDO are hopeful the SPFL will indicate their willingness to allow the club a "one in, one out policy", as fears abound that clubs could swoop for their players during the current transfer window. Ryan Stevenson has already been linked with a move to China, while the finer details of Adam King's move to Swansea City are expected to be ironed out in the next 24 hours.
BDO will also ask for special dispensation to sign free agents, with at least two senior players thought to be willing to join for little recompense. Any signing, however, could not be made until February 1 due to a separate registration ban put in place by the Scottish FA judicial panel.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article