Skipping Steps?

While news coming out of Celtic remains limited outside of the announced departure of assistant coach, Gavin Strachan (perhaps other assistants formalized by the time your read this?), news coming out of Hearts has been Usain Bolt-levels of faster in speed, comparatively.

I have been actively monitoring and chronicling the Tony Bloom-related project at Hearts since early 2025, with the first related analysis published here, that included this section referencing the competitive dynamics being different for Hearts in Scotland than what USG encountered in Belgium:

The league is relatively flat from a competitive situation, without mega clubs like Celtic. The opening up in revenue between Club Brugge and the next tier of clubs is similar to what I laid out in Serbia with Red Star/Partizan, and has become endemic within European football.

But within that next tier is a bunch of decent clubs with considerable resources, all of which pose challenges week in and week out. Away days for USG to Antwerp, Genk, Gent, Anderlecht, and Club Brugge, in total, are probably more challenging than what Hearts face at Aberdeen, Hibs, Rangers, and Celtic.

In contrast, Hearts have a relatively clear shot at Rangers, and then even possibly Celtic….only without a pesky playoff system. Rangers are a basket case and Celtic de facto run by a partriarchal major shareholder whose footballing sensibilities appear to be frozen in time from decades ago.

Hearts have a larger economic footprint and far easier pathway to securing revenues from Europe versus what USG faced, all within a league equivalent to a land of the blind where a ‘one-eyed man’ has been king for 20+ years.

Sixteen months after writing that analysis and there have been huge changes across all three of Celtic, Rangers, and Hearts.

I have been using the USG analog to try and better understand what the project at Hearts may entail, and most importantly, what that may mean from a Celtic perspective.

Usual reminder - the use of an analog is not to suggest the two things are the same, but to get our minds to frame two things to note differences as well as similarities. Describing as zebra as being like a horse is my go-to example.

With Derek McInnes leaving for Rangers, I fully expected Hearts to be more expansive with their managerial search, and the club has announced Wouter Vrancken is McInnes’ replacement generated two questions for me:

1. Who is he?

2. What might his hiring suggest about the USG analog - is it still a useful analog?

In the era of the internet and information overload, I will not be redundant in listing his CV, but highlights are his time as manager at Genk and Sint-Truiden in Belgium.

I ran him through my usual managerial performance framework:

I am not going to do a deep dive on his history here, but his Sint-Truiden team dramatically over performed their resources last season, while his Genk teams were likely a bit above that club’s relative resource position within Belgium.

Those two clubs were not ones I had included within the player trading benchmarking peer group, so added them to contextualize. As referenced when examining the Wilfried Nancy hire by Celtic, it can be difficult to decompose the impacts of recruitment quality, player talent cycles, etc. vs factors head coaches control. What we see from the graphic immediately above is that both of Vrancken’s two clubs have been doing pretty well on the player trading front.

Sint-Truiden were acquired by a Japanese company in 2017 and over the past 10-years almost caught Celtic on player trading profits, despite having a far smaller commercial footprint. Their stadium seating capacity is reported on Transfermkt as 11,337, which is about 2,000 seats smaller than Motherwell, and in between Dundee and St. Johnstone to place them within a Scottish context.

Both clubs have been far more profitable with their player trading over the past decade compared with Celtic, for example.