Heart Failure?

Forget balancing the books, Melbourne Heart must achieve success to establish themselves within the A-League writes 4ATB’s Victorian correspondent Justin MacDonald.

Seemingly in Melbourne Heart’s quest for financial viability, they have forgotten that remaining competitive on the pitch is an essential characteristic of any football club.  It sounds like a simple premise to the football fan. Win games and the fans will come. These fans might not become a part of your core support, they might not even be fans at all, but one thing remains the same between everybody who attends a football match, they pay money to see a product. Some fans may have a history with this product, for others you need to create a history for them, which is why winning games is so vital to the sustainability of a club.

Currently joint bottom with Wellington, Heart’s record, having amassed a mere 27 points after 26 rounds speaks volumes of the vision of the club. Questions have to be raised, is Heart’s goal to win the league or to balance the books? The appointment of rookie coach John Aloisi points to the latter. Although a great servant to the Australian game and briefly to Melbourne Heart itself, Aloisi was never the right man for the job.  Many questioned if this was simply a cost cutting exercise after the expensive and relatively unsuccessful appointment of John van’t Schiip. For all the talk of building a future for the club, a style, a point of difference to Melbourne Victory, it can certainly be questioned whether or not Schiip truly delivered on those promises.

This season the style has remained relatively similar under Aloisi, but results have faltered, with the wooden spoon a very realistic possibility coming into the final round of the season this weekend. More worryingly though for Heart fans, is that their team is nine wins away from table leaders the Western Sydney Wanderers while being 14 points behind cross town rivals Melbourne Victory, serious questions have to be asked about their future under John Aloisi.

A key component to this relative lack of success is the clubs persistence on selling any player that plays well for half a season. The departures can be seen as justified; Heart get a transfer fee, and the player gets a chance to further his career abroad. Although economically sound, this has disastrous knock on effects on the playing roster and Melbourne Heart as an entity.  Every time a talented youngster leaves, Heart expects for another youngster to step up. This is simply not the case in football, with youngsters needing time and careful nurturing to fulfill their potential and deliver success. Although promising youngsters such as Jeremy Walker, Ben Garrucio, David Vrankovic and the like have all performed admirably when called upon, you simply cannot rely on these types of players to win you matches, let alone titles. Again, one simply has to ask, is this endless pursuit of balancing the books an obvious detriment to Melbourne Heart, and the answer is simply yes.

My point is that Heart needs to start doing everything it can to start becoming successful. 3 seasons in, and they are yet to finish in the top half of the table, and have only made the finals once, and this is simply put,can be put  down to the mediocre recruitment strategy that is thoroughly reliant on a talented youngster to step up his game in order for Heart to make a quick dollar from an overseas club. The club needs to find a balance between the veterans of the squad (of which there are many) and the talented youngsters within the ranks that need nurturing before they can go on to contribute effectively to an A-League squad. The signing of Soccerroo legend Vince Grella, although disastrous, was a positive step in the right direction.  Heart identified that Grella, although an obvious risk, would be able to push Heart towards a finals place. Although this didn’t work out as hoped, it was certainly a move in the right direction.

If he remains, Aloisi is going to have a monumental task with several players coming to the end of their contract at the conclusion of this season. These players include veterans such as Clint Bolton, Simon Colosimo, Matt Thompson and international marquee Fred. Tough decisions must be made, and there are surely to be several departures come the off season. The fact is though, it not about who departs, it is all down to how they are replaced. The Wanderers have shown that with the right coach and vision, there are the players out there that clubs like Heart desperately need. Heart needs to recruit strongly and intelligently, and with the salary cap to be paid in full by the FFA, there can be no more excuses for cost cutting. Sure, a genuine international marquee might give Heart the short term sustainability boost they so crave, but if results aren’t delivered, there is genuine fear that Heart may never be able to successfully establish themselves in Melbourne’s footballing market, especially with local rivals Melbourne Victory looking like they will return back to their successful days of seasons past under Ange Postecoglou.

At the end of the day, fans don’t turn up to games every week to see the team they care about so much settle for mediocrity for the sake of breaking even or turning a profit, they are there to see their team win games.

Justin MacDonald – 4ATB Victorian Correspondent