"We're lucky to have a club"

I have to be clear that the anonymous contributor to this is aware that this is more of a rant than a structured deep dive of current events, but hopefully this can stimulate debate or even resonate with some of the support in terms of their current mood.

I’ll start with this – I know nothing. I haven’t ever played football professionally. I don’t have my coaching badges. I haven’t had a season ticket in several years. I am, at best, an armchair supporter. If you want to use any of that to dismiss my concerns around the managing/management of the first team at Hearts, I couldn’t blame you.

But I would suggest that you might better spend your time doing something other than reading this if you have already decided that my views are irrelevant.

Following the club’s relegation from the topflight for the first time since 1981, Anne Budge arrived as the saviour of the club. That wasn’t really accurate, the support had already raised money to take the club to the point where an investor could still enter the scene, had we not done so then the club would, in all likelihood, already have folded. What Budge did was to loan the club a sum of money. That certainly “saved” the club, but it was not an altruistic act. It is unlikely that Budge has lost any money since her arrival. Certainly other members of her family have benefited financially from her connection with the club.

The narrative around Queen Anne and her elevation to a near divine presence is peculiar. Budge didn’t arrive on her own. She rode into Tynecastle with Craig Levein by her side. Levein was a much-admired former player and manager of the club. But his history with the club has been reimagined in ways that were unhelpful. While no one could argue that Levein was anything other than an excellent player, it is not true that he was one of the greats, or that he was a legend of the club. He played just over

300 games for the club, but he didn’t win anything as a player. He was partnered by many players who were just as capable as he was, and in Sandy Jardine one who was better than him. The contribu;on of the likes of Dave McPherson was just as important to the limited success the club enjoyed during his playing career. As a manager Levein guided the club to third place in consecutive seasons and secured European football. That has to be considered a success given the dominance of the Old Firm in Scotland. But as with his playing career he didn’t win anything. The football was often “industrial”, but when one considers the backdrop to his time at the helm it would be churlish to deem his time as manager as anything other than successful. But that was a long time ago.

After his time with us he had a disastrous spell at Leicester, a fairly mundane time at Dundee United, and a reign as manager of Scotland which was nightmarish. How he met Budge; I don’t know. Why she decided to rely on him as her football advisor; I don’t know. What I do know is that long before Budge took the keys to Tynecastle, Craig Levein had decided upon his course of action. On day one out went the incumbent manager, Gary Locke. Locke had worked tirelessly to keep the club in the topflight despite a huge points deduction and an inability to sign any players. Despite those constraints he managed to oversee some good results, blooded several exci;ng youngsters into the first team, and stuck with it when the going must have been very tough indeed. The decision to release Locke may have made sense had the club secured the services of a respected manager, but instead the decision was taken to appoint Robbie Neilson (a former player under Levein) who was coaching the under 18’s at the club at the time. It was an odd choice. But it looks less odd when one looks at the choices that followed it.

Neilson enjoyed success in his first season with the club winning the league and securing a return to the top division. Hooray. Then we nabbed third spot in the league despite having offloaded the bulk of the players who had got us there.

The following season saw Neilson leave the club for MK Dons following fan pressure for him to go...pressure that arose from the turgid style of football the club were playing. Supporters who were investing huge sums of money into the club as Founda;on of Hearts subscribers were keen to see a style of play that was more exciting. In the early moments of Neilson’s career, the team had played some thrilling football, but that had become a distant memory as the seasons wore on.

Next to occupy the manger’s chair at the club was someone called Ian Cathro. Nobody knew who he was. A coach under Levein at Dundee United he was appointed manager with only his recommendation. It seemed an unusual, possibly bold, choice at the time. A man, like Neilson, with no experience of managing a big football club...but who, unlike Neilson, didn’t even have any playing career to draw on. Dismissed as a laptop manager by the likes of Kris Boyd, the Cathro experiment unravelled very quickly. There were suggestions that he was being “mentored” by Levein...who can forget the time that a note was taken from Levein in the stands to Cathro in the dugout. Very quickly the fans turned on Cathro and he was removed from his post. The search was on for a new manager.

Much was made about the need to get the appointment right. Applications were invited. Interviews were, I assume, conducted. Days turned into weeks. Then more weeks. Eventually the club made the announcement. Our new manager was our current Director of Football. Craig Levein. He would remain as Director of Football but would also now be first team manager. The right man, we were told, had been just along the corridor.

A farce. We now had a situation where Levein had sacked one manager, Locke, appointed the next two managers, and how had put himself into the top job...in three years. The football under Levein was eye bleedingly awful. Fan pressure ultimately forced Budge’s hand and she had to remove Levein from the job. This time we appointed someone from outside of the club. Hallelujah.

Daniel Stendel arrived after a spell in charge of Barnsley. The supporters of that club appeared to have enjoyed the brand of football he played, but he had been dismissed after a run of ten games without a win. Levein had left the club floundering at the bottom of the league after a run of games where we had won only two matches in 15 games. Immediately following his dismissal, the club appointed Austin McPhee as acting manager...a man who had been brought to the club by Levein and who had no managerial experience. Stendel was forced to work under some fairly difficult circumstances, a first team squad low on morale, an inability to bring in his own coaches, no support in the January transfer window, the club captain throwing his toys out of the pram, experienced pros like Glen Whelan not giving a toss about the club, and most worryingly Levein himself still skulking in the corridors. A story emerged that Stendel had arrived to take the first team squad for a training session to discover Levein standing on the other side of the pitch in his full club training kit...that is a pretty bold move. It also says something about how committed the club were to the Stendel experiment that they would allow Levein to be anywhere near the building, never mind the pitches. Covid arrived, the league was suspended, then the club were demoted following a vote amongst all member clubs. That meant that Stendel was out...although he didn’t know it, only discovering that he had officially been sacked after the club announced his replacement. Nice.

His replacement was a real surprise...Craig Levein’s first managerial appointment; Robbie Neilson. I’m not making this up.

Neilson got us promoted. We finished third in our first season back in the top division again. Then results went down the pan and he was out the door again.

Surely this time the club would do the sensible thing and conduct a proper search for a manager and appoint someone with experience and a commitment to playing attractive football. Names were floated in the media. In the interim the club appointed Steven Naismith as head coach. Naismith had been a player under Neilson. He was also coaching the b team in the lowland league. That was the sum total of his managerial experience. He had a few games towards the end of last season...a fine win against Ross County (second bottom of the league) and a good win against Aberdeen at home were the highlights of this period. Some fans thought he should be given a chance. I wasn’t one of them. I like Naismith. He was a cracking player. But I wanted a manager. Not another experiment. Not someone else who was “just along the corridor”. Eventually the club appointed Naismith as manager. Except they didn’t. They appointed him as director of something or other, placed someone called Frankie McAvoy (the academy head) and Gordon Forrest (part of Neilson’s coaching team) to be a sort of a super committee.

All of that was done because Naismith didn’t have his badges and was thus not eligible to manage the club in European games without incurring a financial penalty. Rather than accept that penalty the club decided to create a confusing situation and make the club look amateurish...at best.

Now just a few games into the new season the supporters are growing restless again as results continue to be poor...and performances worse than that. It is now a pattern at the club. We appoint people from within. People who already have relationships with the board. It is all, dare I say it, a little cosy? I can’t think of another club who have made so many of their managerial appointments from within the club in the last ten years, or a club where so many of the managers have been former players. The problem with our approach is that the people we are appointing are part of the problem that has led to the need to appoint them in the first place. Neilson was part of the set-up under Locke. Cathro worked under Levein who had never won anything as a coach. Levein was already in the building. McPhee was one of Neilson’s coaches. Neilson had been manager before. Naismith, McAvoy and Forrest were all in the building under Neilson. Stendel was the only “risk”. It didn’t work for Stendel...but the circumstances didn’t help him. All of these decisions have been taken under the stewardship of Anne Budge. She is responsible. As indeed are the other board members. They have presided over a period of inconsistency...and failure.

Huge sums of money have been spent on players who have failed to deliver. Huge sums of money have been spent on projects which do not help the first team to improve. “Aye but aff the pitch things are great.” Good. I’m thrilled. But a football club is judged by its success on the field, not by the menu in its restaurants, or by the prospect of a hotel development. A balance has to be struck. I would go further and say that an imbalance must be struck, with things weighted in favour of the first team. The club is not a charity. There is no need for “equity” when it comes to investment. Everything must come second to making the first team as good as it can be. When Naismith is removed, which is inevitable, will the club appoint McAvoy? Will Neilson return for a third spell? A quick look at certain fan’s forums will reveal that there are certain voices who take an almost perverse pleasure in defending every decision taken by the club, who delight in patronising anyone who dare dissent, who are so smug that they make Nicola Sturgeon and Donald Trump look humble. Maybe they are right. Maybe I should just be grateful to have a club. Maybe third place in the league, no matter how we get there, is the only thing that matters. Maybe it is only the result that matters. Or maybe...they are wrong? Maybe the time has come to say that we have said “thank you” enough, to acknowledge that our thanks has been shown in cold hard cash totalling millions, and that no more thanks is needed. Maybe third place isn’t the thing that should matter most? Maybe there is a way to win games with a bit more style, to entertain people, and that if that led to fourth place, we wouldn’t be weeping into our Frosties on Sunday morning?

Maybe the results matter but so does being entertained at the end of a hard week in a job you don’t really like, and when the decision to go to the game, to possess a season ticket is a tough one financially? I think we could find a manager, and players, who could do better. We already have some “good” players like Kent, Cochrane, Devlin, McKay and Atkinson...we even have a few players who are better than “good” like Beni and Shankland. Is it really that difficult to play a style of football that is exciting when you have seven players like that in your team? Hell, even the kid Vargas might be a good player and that gives you 8. Not 8 world beaters. Not 8 players to challenge the Old Firm. But 8 players who should be capable of beating Motherwell and St Mirren... Much of this will be dismissed as whining, especially if we beat Kilmarnock on Tuesday. But I do believe we could be better...but that will require people to take some seriously tough decisions and to step out of their comfort zones. I’m not sure anyone at Hearts has that in them.