Thomas Okine And Co Must Be Shown The Door

When some of us do nothing but call a spade a spade, not out of malice or any ill-motivated agenda, but just so we get to the bottom of issues, we end up being the target of arrows.

I cannot sit anywhere and put my hands in fire and say that I am without fault but that does not stop me from critically examining issues and making fair comments on the issues once I don?t use invectives or malign others.

Unfortunately, some people consider frank talk and fair criticism to mean something else and so have made it a point to target some of us for saying it as it is.

As my fingers hit the keys of my laptop, I am reliably informed that some Accra Hearts of Oak officials have penciled me not for a job (of course I will not accept to work with a group of people who do not see beyond their noses), but for me to be intimidated to stop criticizing officials of the club.

Last Saturday, on Radio Gold?s very incisive sports programme on which I am a regular guest, a caller called into the programme and tagged me as an anti Hearts person.

I simply laughed because all those who know me from Adam, know that if it were possible for the team one supports to run through our veins, nothing else apart from Hearts of Oak will run through my veins. I am a Phobian through and through and nothing will change that.

In fact if it is possible to follow football in the world beyond, I can say with certainty that I will support my beloved Hearts of Oak.

But my love for Hearts does not mean that I should play the ostrich and pretend, when things are not going on well with the club.

Come to think of it, does the bible not admonish us not to spare the rod lest we spoil the child?

So why should I sit idly by and watch my beloved team waste away and not talk just because I love the team?

Those who are not prepared to accept that Hearts is dying are the ones who do not love the team.

Some of us will not sit down and allow the current wound to fester into an ulcer before we begin to cry over spilt milk.

Hearts of Oak prides itself in being the oldest club in the country and rightly so.

But can Hearts pride itself in being the best managed club in the country as at now? The answer is a big fat NO.

Can Thomas Okine and his team sit anywhere and be proud of what is happening to the club?

Is it not a shame that after five matches in the MTN Champions League the team has no goal, and only a single point, to show for it? And that is where my ?Oyiwa? comes in.

Truth be told, I am praying that Kotoko qualifies to the semis of the Champions League and that is when those who think some of us are talking too much would hopefully realize that sometimes it pays to talk.

Those who think some of us talk too much about Hearts; will they blame the team?s ignominious outing in the Champions League on the ?talkatives??

And I will credit the single point that Hearts has to Saani Mohamed, the player who was benched for nine months just because some small-minded officials of the club wanted to punish him for no sin that the young man had committed?

Is it a crime for a player to get married? Yet Saani was supposedly punished for getting married. Such preposterousness!!!

For goodness sake, it is about time we start running the club more professionally with people who have the brains to administer football the way it ought to be done in these modern times and move away from the ad hocism.

We need to move away from brawn to brains and nothing would make me change my mind about that.

What was the sense in organizing thugs to besiege the Hearts Secretariat to rough up members of the National Chapters Committee (NCC) when all the NCC sought to do was brainstorm with the Board and Management the best way forward for the club?

Thomas Okine and his group have done their bit for Hearts of Oak but it is time they stepped aside for others to run the club more professionally.

I can bet my last penny that no club in Ghana has sold more players than Accra Hearts of Oak yet we have nothing to show for it such that renovation works at the Accra Sports Stadium and El Wak has turned the club into a homeless team.

And did I hear Commodore Mensah, the Board Chairman, complain about low attendance at Hearts matches? Who would go and pay money in these hard times to watch a useless team?

Hearts is just like any other on-the-shelf commodity and if it is not made attractive, nobody would waste his/her money on such a commodity.

As for all the talk by Tommy and his group about sacrificing financially for the team and not getting anything in return, it is nothing but bunkum.

Then again if it is a fact that they have been sacrificing and getting nothing in return, we thank them for their sacrifice and ask that they leave the scene for other people to also get the opportunity to sacrifice for the team.

The merry-go-round and musical chairs As far as managing Hearts is concerned must stop and it must stop NOW!

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