Taxi for Laszlo?

As the saga at Rangers continues towards a potentially horrid (or amusing, depending on your allegiances) conclusion, Walter Smith is not the only one concerned at the lack of progress.

Over in Edinburgh things are not going according to plan for the Maroon half of the city, as Hearts gaffer Csaba Lazslo says he'll consider his options unless transfer funds are made available to help his struggling strikers.

Hearts, without a win in the league since the 2-1 win over Hamilton at the end of September are stuck in 9th place following their goalless draw on Saturday against bottom side Falkirk.

Csaba Lazslo, the winner of last season's Manager of the Year has expressed his frustration at the lack of progress at Tynecastle and is calling for additional funds to be made available to, as he puts it, arrest the slide down the table.

The frustration at the poor start to the season is also beginning to out itself on the terraces. Captain Michael Stewart was the object of the supporters dismay at the performances this season, booing him as he was replaced in the second half for Ian Black. Others put the blame at the poor performances at Laszlo's door, stating that a team that is struggling to score should never take the field with just one (mis-firing) forward.

Since their 3rd place finish last season, the club has seen a series of players leave for pastures new with Christophe Berra, Robbie Neilson, Bruno Aguiar and Christos Karapidis all having left Tynecastle without adequate replacements being found.

The goals this season have been coming mainly from the midfield pairing Andy Driver and Suso Santana, so the search for a quality addition to the increasingly impotent front line that has so far managed only 9 goals all season is a top priority.

Of the club's recognized strikers, only David Witteveen has scored this season, while Christian Nade hasn't scored since the 2-1 win over Aberdeen in February. Gary Glen, like Arvydas Novikovas one of the youngsters in the Hearts array of attacking forwards hasn't scored a league goal since 2008.

Laszlo's thinly veiled threat to club owner Vladmir Romanov was one borne out of frustration at the lack of funds available to find players capable of building on last seasons success.

Romanov is not a man to take such a threat lightly and responded in double-quick time to lay the blame for the clubs misfortunes this season firmly at his managers feet, blaming Laszlo for failing to identify signing candidates of the quality required to improve the team.

Like their rivals at the other end of the M8 motorway, Hearts are facing an uncertain future. While Romanov secured football at Tynecastle when he bought the club, putting an end to several attempts by previous owners like Chris Robinson (who tried to sell Tynecastle to property developers Cala Management) and Wallace Mercer (who attempted to merge Hearts with arch-rivals Hibs), it has not been an easy time for the employees at the club.

Recent years have seen a series of ugly managerial changes, militant players, unhappy at the goings on at Tynecastle where sold off, not to mention last season's fiasco around the late payment of wages, incidents which have put Hearts in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Despite promises of continued investment from Romanov, including a new main stand at Tynecastle to increase capacity to 23,000, the Lithuanian banker seems reluctant to make good on those promises. His recent investment in Lithuanian premier basketball club BC Zalgiris suggests that the continued trouble his ownership of the Edinburgh club is causing has Romanov taking his money elsewhere. With debts at one point reaching £36M in 2007, the money supply at Hearts is being squeezed and Laszlo may well have to suck it up for now.

Taking a longer term view, beyond the purchase of a single striker, at a time when the Old Firm are debating their future in the Scottish League setup, this seems to be the ideal time to invest heavily in the club and position it for total league dominance when - not if - the ugly sisters of Scottish football pack their bags and disappear across the horizon.

Hearts are the sleeping giants of the SPL. With Rangers imploding and Celtic struggling to make an impact, at no other point in the years that Romanov has been in charge at Tynecastle has there been an opportunity to challenge the Old Firm and establish a new pecking order in Scottish football as the one that exists now.

Whether or not Hearts will live up that billing in a post-Old Firm league, or whether they'll be looking for their 11th manager since the Romanov revolution in January remains to be seen, but the ball is very much in Romanov's court.