In an ideal world, you would have all your players funded and tied down. It can work the other way. You could bring in a player on big wages and a long contract and find he quickly falls out of form. I'm sure there are numerous examples of that in the past and possibly at Hearts. This way we can look at, for example, Ibrahim Tall (on loan till January) and if he does well, great, we can exercise our option and, if not, say thanks very much and off he goes.

Phil Anderton