Can Tony Bloom's Hearts really topple the Old Firm with data instead of money?

Times

a day ago

Maybe the first thing to recognise about Tony Bloom is that it shows the credibility he carries that there has been no chorus line of sceptics sniggering and guffawing about all of his grand claims for Hearts. When we have been in this sort of territory before — yeah, we remember the characters who arrived and started bloviating about how this or that club was going to tear it up — let's just say it tended to come from chancers who were easy to dismiss. Bloom is another matter entirely.
This is a very serious guy with a track record that stacks up. Not only has his personal wealth been estimated at up to £1.3billion, it was accrued largely from professional sports betting. In other words he has made an absolute fortune from showing exceptional judgment, much of it on football, so why would that suddenly desert him about Hearts and the SPFL? He bought into Brighton & Hove Albion and improved them significantly. Of even greater relevance to Hearts, given size and budgets, he invested in Union Saint-Gilloise and transformed them into Belgian champions 90 years after their previous title. Now he's rocked up and talked of splitting the Old Firm and winning a title and being in the Champions League within a decade. Many who would usually machine-gun anyone for coming out with this sort of stuff have held their fire.
What is so staggering about Bloom's unshakeable confidence is that he foresees this total reinvention of Hearts, this calculated act of 'disruption', as being achievable without throwing money at them. His introductory investment of just under £10million is all there will be from him in terms of hard cash. He is basing an intended revolution on his complete faith in his company Jamestown Analytics. Sure, he knows Derek McInnes — and, eventually, any head coaches who succeed him — and the wider club staff and the training and stadium facilities all have major parts to play, but it is Jamestown he regards as the cornerstone of making Hearts great.
So here's the thing: those of us who long to see the Old Firm properly challenged can have the utmost respect for Bloom and still seriously doubt that the Hearts project will pan out as he intends. Real improvement? That seems guaranteed. Trophies? Cups are quite likely soon enough. But win the league? There is just so much piled up against a club of their size, with their budget, in going the distance with two giant rivals over the marathon of 38 games.
For a start, Jamestown are only data experts, even if Bloom may be quite right to acclaim them as the best in the business. Jamestown could unearth exciting talents for Hearts only for the players themselves to turn their noses up about coming. Or their agents could find them better deals elsewhere. And even when they come, and really impress, Hearts will be as vulnerable as any mid-sized club to others swooping in with attempts to quickly cherry-pick their stars. Building a title-contending team will be enormously challenging given their wage structure would leave them at risk of losing any truly outstanding talent (albeit for high fees) after a year, and potentially even to Celtic or Rangers.
And say they do start to win consistently, month after month: they will have to keep their heads as well as their players. The attention and pressure which will build on them will be absolutely relentless. It's now more than 14 years since Rangers had the players and the nerve to win a league when there were fans in the grounds, and that's at a club where everyone always bangs on about having to be 'winners' to handle being there. Rangers are usually portrayed as credible challengers, though. That will all be new for Hearts if and when it comes. They will have to deal with growing national and even international media attention, the narrative of it being 40 years since the last non-Old Firm champions, endless questioning of their ability to go the distance, even the traumatic baggage of being the club which blew it on the final day in 1986. Leicester City showed a new force can come from nowhere and handle all of that stuff but it will be incredibly difficult. Union Saint-Gilloise may have waited nine decades for their title but the spread of champions in Belgium (seven different clubs in the past 17 years) meant it was less of a big deal there than it would be in Scotland.
Then there is the big difference between the Belgian and Scottish leagues. After 30 games in Belgium the division splits and the top six play each other across ten more matches, home and away. Like in Scotland, everyone meets four times a season. But in Belgium the points totals from before the split are halved. Last season leaders Genk had 68 points before the split and 34 after it. Union Saint-Gilloise went from 55 points to 28 (rounded up). Suddenly Bloom's club went from trailing by 13 points with ten games left, to trailing by six when they still had two matches to come against the leaders. All they needed was a storming finish and they delivered exactly that, winning nine and drawing one of their post-split games to leapfrog the rest.
Halving a hard-earned points total might not be especially fair on the league leaders but it sure as hell opens up competition and potentially keeps a title race alive. Bloom will know Scottish football well enough, even by now, to realise there is not a cat-in-hell's chance of Celtic and Rangers ever voting to ventilate the system in the same way here.
Last season was typically chaotic and turbulent for Rangers and they were miles off a serious challenge to Celtic, but their final points total, 75, was a figure surpassed only once by any non Old Firm team in the SPL/SPFL era. In the past seven seasons no team other than Celtic or Rangers has reached even 70 points. So it will take a serious leap in consistency even for Hearts to haul level with Glasgow's underperforming runners-up. Beyond that, the past five titles have been won with between 92 and 102 points.
Interestingly Bloom doesn't seem to be on record as ever saying Brighton could win the Premier League, even with Jamestown behind them. The stated goals there have been long-term — becoming an established top ten club (they pretty much are), qualifying for Europe (they made it for the first time in their history last season and narrowly missed qualifying again) and winning trophies (they reached the FA Cup semi-finals in 2019 and 2023). Those seem reasonable, realistic objectives, more sober than he has declared for Hearts. Yet this serial winner has seen something about Hearts and the Scottish scene which lit him up.
Already he has talked like few dare to talk in terms of challenging Celtic and Rangers. He is far too substantial a guy to dismiss and that makes his conviction about what Hearts can achieve both surprising and absolutely fascinating. Good on him for every word of it.