If Ann doesn't Budge and Craig Levein is the future, where does that leave Hearts?

A visit to Tynecastle wouldn’t be complete without an aftertaste as sour as the expression on Jambos boss Craig Levein’s face.

As charismatic as an irritable bowel syndrome diagnosis with the charm of a blocked drain, even the scientists at the Met Office couldn’t find an atmosphere in Levein’s vicinity.

While he may have been forced to retire from playing by a knee injury but it’s the incurable chip on his shoulder – especially where Celtic are concerned – that seems to define Levein the manager, as far as he can be described as one.

One of these men represents the future of Scottish football

How he found his way into that post is as much an indictment on him and his club as his conduct in the post has been. Having been Director of Football during Ian Cathro’s short-lived reign, presumably he would have been the person both directly responsible for the appointment and the man who would be his Head Coach’s most strident defender.

Instead, he seemed to have foisted on Cathro players who couldn’t play the style of game favoured by a coach with Valencia and Newcastle on his CV and taken to visiting the dressing room at half-time.

The writing was already scrawled on the Gorgie boardroom wall before Cathro got there. Levein, like many a manager before him was desperate to get back into the front line and the qualified but meek Cathro was the patsy, set up to fail, as Levein’s ticket back to the dugout.

Levein described it as “logical” that he should replace the man he had so clearly failed, betraying the fact that this was no impromptu matter of racing to his club’s aid in its hour of need. No, this was a pre-meditated mugging.

Logical to have stepped in on an interim basis, it could have been. Fitting his own comfort cushion to the manager’s seat for the long term would have baffled less substantial football figures than Hearts’ saviour, Ann Budge.

But with such glee as Levein could summon from his bottomless pit of internal gloom, he rubbed his hands (at least) and settled into the job that he had so conspicuously shafted his (conveniently friendless in the Scottish media) Head Coach out of.

And what exactly were Hearts fans getting? A playing “legend” once banned for 12 matches for injuring his own teammate in a friendly, and who was afflicted with a dose of the heebie-jeebies when his team actually had a chance of winning something on the first Feast of Albert Kidd.

A manager whose greatest success had been third place in the Scottish Premier League and who had once brought a discouraged Tartan Army to full despair by fielding the first 4-6-0 formation in the national team’s recorded history.

That could have been described as the reductio ad absurdum of Levein – the point of negativity beyond which it was impossible to go.

So what do Hearts have now? A Chief Executive in Budge who the media laud at every turn for her no-nonsense professionalism and vision. They have a partially-modernised stadium with a stand rebuilt at considerable cost. They have an upcoming million-pound, hi-tech hybrid pitch of the sort that should allow modern, progressive football.

And they have Craig Levein – the most regressive manager in Scotland – who, given time, will negate the effects of all three of those assets.

He will negate any positive impact Budge may have as he is incapable of producing an improved football product on the pitch.

Hearts, today, lie sixth in the table but far closer to eighth than to fifth place.

This is despite Levein having been in charge of player recruitment since 2014, the same year Edinburgh rivals Hibs were relegated to what is now the Championship. Currently, Hibs are 20 points clear of the Jambos with a goal difference that is superior to Hearts (on zero) by 17 goals.

And that, will very soon see that big stand that Hearts so proudly unveiled Scotland’s biggest architectural folly. Because even Jambos will struggle to stomach more of the rancid gruel that Levein serves up to the paying public.

As for the pitch, the negativity of Levein knows no bounds. On his instructions, the ground staff apparently neither cut nor water the pitch on match days, making it unsuitable for its intended purpose of playing football. (That probably accounts for the fact that 28 of their 46 points have been won at home.)

To be fair to Levein, that may be down to old-fashioned canniness and maybe he was brought up in one of those households that has an expensively-furnished lounge in which no one was allowed to sit, lest they risk spoiling the carpet or couch.

But a better analogy may be the office manager who refuses to unpack the latest computers supplied by Head Office because he doesn’t know how to use them but suspects that his staff do.

So, what do Hearts have to show for all this? A manager who plays to the Gorgie gallery by setting up his team to attack Celtic players – a guaranteed crowd-pleaser – and who makes snide remarks about Hibs and Celtic in the press.

His managerial win record with Hearts, though, is 36.11%. That’s better than Cathro’s but considerably worse than Neil Lennon’s record with Hibs at 52.2% (50% this season in the league).

Hapless Graeme Murty finished with a record of 62.07% for the current season.

While Levein made some fans and hacks happy with his idiotic jibes about Celtic and Brendan Rodgers “moaning”, “bleating”, “froth” and “fury”, he also insisted that he expected that £1m on the pitch to be scorned next season: “We’ll just let it grow.”

There spoke a man with a complacency that his record in management has done nothing to justify and Budge was surely taking note.

A modern stadium and modern pitch logically implies the requirement for a modern team, a modern manager and a modern Director of Football.

It’s difficult to see where yesterday’s bam Levein would fit in that scenario.

Swooping for Neil Lennon is out of the question. The far more adept Murty would probably carry too much negative press coverage.
Surely, she wouldn’t go for Steve Clarke at Kilmarnock (win record this season – 51.6%) and, with Levein back as Director of Football, Clarke would seem unlikely to be willing to consider going to Tynecastle.

Robbie Neilson is a progressive coach, with a record of success at Hearts, who is out of work but would be unlikely to agree to work with Levein.

This summer looks to be a test for Budge and just how ambitious she really is for Hearts. If she has a plan to make progress and involve Craig Levein at the same time, then she won’t just be a svaiour but a magician.

Of course, she could just sack Levein, send him packing with a gold-plated watch and bring in someone to take the club forward.

If that happens, stand back and listen. There may be much bleating and moaning.

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Time for Celtic to abandon Scotland?

No, it's not that old “let's go to the Premiership” line that we know is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. It's an even older line – but one that seems to have reached its peak at the most improbable time – the relationship between Celtic as a club and body of fans with the Scottish national football team and association.

This angst goes back at least as far as Jimmy McGrory, the highest goalscorer in the history of British football who was awarded just seven international caps – scoring seven goals.

Many will hark back to the era of Jimmy Johnstone and deciding to turn their back on the national team after hearing Scotland fans boo a man who was acknowledged as one of the finest players in the world. Others will point to the absurd – the surprise omission of Kenny Dalglish from the Scotland squad coincidentally preserving the consecutive caps record of former Rangers player George Young.

Sit in any company of Celtic fans and each will have his favourite story of a Celtic player overlooked for selection (Harry Hood being a decent example) or abused by the Tartan Army at Hampden (too many to name – let's plump for Brian McClair).

Yet somehow, today's Scottish football hierarchy has contrived to scale new heights in alienating the Celtic support, discarding all honour in their efforts to assuage the ire of Rangers fans – within and without the Scottish media.

In the interests of accuracy, it should be noted that honour – or even basic fairness – have never been attributes highly valued by the SFA. In the 1990s – when Rangers were riding high and Scotland still occasionally qualified for tournaments, the period was remarkable for the national team's ability to reach the latter stages despite sudden call-offs from certain Rangers personnel who were almost invariably fit for their club's domestic and European encounters.

Far from being criticised for their repeated acts of disloyalty, the practice was almost invariably either dismissed as bad luck or seen as some sort of virtue: to lead the charge for Rangers but let the country fend for itself. There were no worse offenders than the future Scotland and Rangers assistant manager, Ally McCoist and the terrorist-supporting criminal associate Andy Goram, who were nevertheless reinstated without question when the glamour matches came around.

However, even in those days – when Celtic fans had more pressing worries – there was rarely the level of unqualified anger that has surrounded the relationship between the Scottish football establishment bodies and their favourite team.

Ever since the media clamour to sack the incumbent Berti Vogts and replace him with Walter Smith (with then media pundit Gordon Duffield Smith the vanguard Bear), the SFA has flitted between accommodation and capitulation to the interests of Rangers FC, regardless of the conduct of their officials or rabble element amongst their players.

Walter Smith, who had been out of work as a manager since his sacking by Everton 18-months previously, had clearly briefed pundits such as Duffield who were able to say that they “knew” he was willing to take the job.

For this salvation from football's scrapheap, he rewarded his employers by abandoning the country without notice at a vital moment in a Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. David Taylor claimed to have been very unhappy about the whole show yet compensation was never pursued, Smith was praised in the sections of the media that would like to claim to be impartial and the interests of Rangers were seen to be still paramount in 21st-century Scotland.

Back at Rangers, and far from having any sympathy with George Burley, (who had replaced another former Rangers manager at the national team), Smith's players continued the policy of his previous period of tenure – some selective withdrawals added to loutishness and malice to the point of sabotage. Some, like Kenny Miller and David Weir, continued to support their nation's cause on the football field.

But the scurrilous behaviour of Kris Boyd, Lee McCulloch, Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor would have appalled any Scottish fan who cared about his country. It appeared neither to worry Walter & Ally nor Gordon & George (Peat), who made occasional rumblings about behaviour being unacceptable before making Burley the scapegoat for all the episodes. Is it a coincidence that all the issues of conflict or ill-discipline in Burley's Scotland came from players of the club whose players withdrew from squads most regularly?

Given that Duffield and Peat admitted to meeting with Rangers officials to change the date of the Scottish Cup final to give Rangers an advantage in their SPL campaign and announced this to the Daily Record without consulting their members or the other finalists, it might have been thought that the Ibrox hierarchy would feel a personal debt if not one of national allegiance.

But the story of Scottish football remains that the Rangers manager is untouchable – by the authorities or the reporters like Darryl Broadfoot, well-known Murray and Rangers lapdog, who finds himself appointed as a media professional by the SFA.

Duffield and Smith are adopting old-time policies in a new media age, which makes their reinstatement of the Ibrox four all the more apparently an act in the interests of Rangers over Scotland. Their control over the referees seems only to extend to supporting decisions that have clearly disadvantaged Celtic and in the process silently abandoning the much-vaunted anti-diving campaign that, if implemented, would have robbed Rangers of the services of Kyle Lafferty and Nacho Novo along with Miller and Boyd.

In the face of media complaints – from hacks close to the Rangers manager – Celtic players are disciplined retrospectively with the SFA refusing to define the rules of procedure when Celtic wish to appeal. When Lafferty carries out one of the worst fouls seen in Scotland in recent times on Andreas Hinkel, there is silence. When Boyd elbows a player, the definition of offence is altered by the referee to obstruction, allowing him to avoid suspension, though a direct free-kick was awarded.

McGregor is involved in an “incident”, which he declines to report until it has been reported in the media, and Fraser Wishart – another former Rangers player involved in “fixture-gate” – decries an “assault” on a footballer “just for the jersey he wears”. He should be called as a witness as McGregor allegedly told police he did not know what happened or even where, frustrating their efforts to examine CCTV footage.

When the naked bias only involves tabloid headlines, we can choose to ignore it. But the insidious relationships at the heart of Scottish football are now blatantly undermining fair competition. For too long Celtic players have carried the immigrant's burden – having to try harder to show loyalty in order to earn an acceptance that is often grudged and rarely translated into “equality of esteem” as our ASBO neighbours might call it.

Amongst Celtic fans, it is always a contentious issue with many thousands born in Scotland every bit as passionate about their country as fans of any other club. However, the SFA-RFC-SPFA axis (with dishonourable mention to the SPL, led by another former Rangers player) has shown itself to disdain all normal rules of fair competition. The only pressure Celtic can exert is by boycotting the games – at least as fans. In the meantime, some of those hard-nosed executives and directors at Celtic should make their own voices heard in the corridors of power.

The inescapable conclusion seems to be that you can now support Celtic or Scotland – not both.
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