Gary Mackay: Someone has to rescue our proud club from this mess

Like most Hearts supporters, I've been banging on for ages now about the need for a proper structure at the club whereby the manager has the final say on football matters, but it seems there's no chance of that happening under our present owner. I'm completely fed up with the way things are being run to the point that I've kind of distanced myself from the club of late.

I've not stopped going to games as my love for Hearts will never leave me. But it's just so frustrating when you see a situation similar to last year where a player who's fit and under contract isn't allowed to play simply because he won't sign a new deal.

This nonsense has been going on far too long now. Like Jose Goncalves before him, Marius Zaliukas is a player who would undoubtedly improve the team - he's the club captain and respected by his team-mates. People will say 'ah we should be used to it by now because that's the way Vladimir Romanov operates.' But in my view there is absolutely no justification for this ridiculous stance our owner takes against players who won't sign a contract.

We must be the only club in Britain, or maybe even Europe, who don't realise that the Bosman ruling has given players more power. I have to admit I'm not a lover of the Bosman ruling and what it's done to the game, but the simple fact is it's a regulation that's here now and we can't change it.

It's high time we learnt that players running down their contracts is a fact of football in the modern era, because all we're doing at the moment is cutting off our nose to spite our face.

We're effectively making people redundant for six months at a time when they should be playing. Any player who signs a three-year deal at Hearts is effectively only agreeing to play for us for two-and-a-half years as they know the owner won't allow them to play for us in the final six months if they're thinking of moving on afterwards.

As long as the player is still focused, what's the problem with him playing right up until his contract expires? They are not doing anything wrong in looking to further their careers. It's especially disappointing when these players are as important as Goncalves was and Zaliukas is now. It's an absolute no-brainer that these guys should be in the team until their contracts expire, all the more so when the defence is currently in such a mess.

We lost four goals at Falkirk with a defence that was anything but solid. Surely if the owner has the best interests of the club at heart, he would have allowed Zaliukas to return and steady the ship for what was a vitally important game against a Motherwell side that beat us three times last season.

Reading between the lines in the press last week, it certainly looked to me like Jim Jefferies was desperate to have him available. The manager was left in a position where he had to put Ismael Bouzid and Adrian Mrowiec together for the first time, with Eggert Jonsson shunted out to left-back. I have huge admiration for Eggert, but he's not a left-sided player.

The defensive crisis would have been significantly eased if Zaliukas was allowed to play. Granted, he might have played and we might still have lost the game. But it just doesn't make sense to handicap the team like that by stopping the best fit defender playing in such a vital game when we're third in the table?

We've got Jim in charge but what is the point of him being there if he's not allowed to pick the players he wants? If he's been told from the top that he can't play him, then somewhere along the line I wouldn't be surprised if Jim just thinks to himself 'I've had enough of this.'

The other thing that really gets me at the moment is the chaos that's been caused by the unfortunate injury to Lee Wallace. Lee was always going to be irreplaceable, but I can't believe that we've got around 60 players training at the academy, yet none of them are considered natural left-backs.

How has such a situation been allowed to arise? It's just further evidence of what can occur when the club is led in such a haphazard manner. The only left-back that seems to have been mentioned is the boy Tony Capaldi but once again it seems the manager's not been allowed to sign him.

Also, where is Campbell Ogilvie's replacement? Why has a shrewd Scottish football man like that not been replaced? It beggars belief.

It's almost five years since George Burley was sacked and since then it seems like all we've done as a club is shoot ourselves in the foot. When I got involved with the Save Our Hearts campaign, my intention was to keep Hearts at Tynecastle and Mr Romanov obviously played a huge part in ensuring that. But for me, things have gone too far. We need something to change or this ridiculous situation is going to continue for years.

The damage being done is going to have a long-term effect on the club. People will stop coming to Tynecastle and in turn they will stop bringing their kids. As much as I was part of getting Chris Robinson out and getting Romanov in, I have to hold my hands up and say enough is enough - it's time for change.

I acknowledge that the debt has become so big that it's well-nigh impossible to entice anyone to show an interest in buying the club and I admit there is no obvious solution, but I can only hope and pray that either someone can reason with our owner or a knight in shining armour can ride along and rescue our proud club from this mess.