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.

--

That Club Statement from Dave King and The Rangers on investment for Steven Gerrard

Yesterday, the Twitter account associated with this blog @theceltsarehere posted this "screen grab" of one of those infamous statements from The Rangers.

Here it is in full:

Yes, it was just a spoof but, as the Twitter conversation reveals, apparently not so easy to distinguish from the broadsides delivered by The Rangers communications Tsar, Jim Traynor.

So, if anyone at Ibrox is looking for a statement-writer, drop me a line.

Payment in advance, please!
--

The reality for The Rangers and Steven Gerrard? It's over!

Yes, we all saw him and heard what Steven Gerrard had to say but, then again, some of us saw Maurice Johnston in a Celtic shirt for his "second coming" and we all know how that finished.

So, Monday came and the least surprising thing that anyone watching Scottish football with half an eye for the truth or bare facts could have heard.

The Rangers have, allegedly, a new high-profile manager but no money or investors with which to fund his improbable aspirations.

I use the word, "allegedly" with good reason.

Yes, we all saw him and heard what he had to say but, then again, some of us saw Maurice Johnston in a Celtic shirt for his "second coming" and we all know how that finished.

Steven Gerrard may really have been so stupid as to have agreed to manage The Rangers with a maximum budget of £6m to spend on players but it would be very surprising.

Less surprising, given that we are dealing with Dave King, would be that Gerrard was spun a convincing line to get him to sign so that King could drum up cash through season ticket sales (which he would then go about pumping out of the club).

Banking on the fact that the newly-unveiled boss would be embarrassed into sticking to his part of the deal, King may have thought that Gerrard would just think that he had to lump it and hope for the best.

I could claim to have impeccably-placed sources to back that up but it would be untrue. However, the available facts and a little experience suggest that King's hastily-arranged move on Friday may have been football's equivalent of a resistable marriage proposal publicly made at your grandparents' golden wedding anniversary party.

Awkward to back out of after they have already popped another bottle of champagne.

But, if that is anything close to the truth, don't be surprised if Gerrard's advisers are already looking at ways to get out of the deal.

King will have calculated for that eventuality, probably why supporters were asked for their cash up front. No doubt a few thousand tickets were bought and paid for online between Friday and Monday, with the only surprise being that he didn't wait a few days longer before announcing that there were no new investors.

Yes, there will be some fans who are not so much unfailingly loyal as eternally gullible and feel that their only chance is to try to fund the Ibrox resurrection themselves.

But this posted on Twitter by John Bradshaw (@JBLuvsCeltic) provides the vital details that demonstrate just how desperate King's supposed share offer is and explains the departures of two directors last week - the share issue can't happen as King is facing action by the takeover panel.

So, even though £6m would have been nowhere near enough to improve The Rangers team, that money will not be there, either.

Effectively, Gerrard has a potential transfer budget of precisely zero of your British pounds.

And that would point to another likely outcome. Liquidation would see HMRC and preferred creditors recompensed before the likes of Gerrard saw a penny.

Like many other Scottish football fans, I tired long ago of "in the know" bloggers claiming to have an inside track on likely insolvency events but it does not seem at all improbable, given the circumstances.

Gerrard may take the chance to hobble through a season of grief and humiliation but, if he wants out, he will walk away.

King can jettison the whole shebang and he will not hesitate to do so if he deems it the most beneficial step for him.

But, one way or another, it seems to me that Scottish football will have to reconcile itself to a final dose of reality.

For Rangers, The Rangers and any other conceptual variation of The People's club, the message is clear.

It's over.

The Great Steven Gerrard Swindle? Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Reality

I have been wrong before but this move just doesn't add up

I do not like The Rangers Football Club. I don't dislike them with the same intensity that I did Rangers and I got a great sense of closure when Rangers were liquidated.

But any club emulating what I have always believed to have been a uniquely objectionable sporting institution is worthy of similar derision, though the stakes are less high for me, simply because we won.

Nonetheless, the new neighbours who moved in are noisy and do their best to be vexatious and even (especially) offensive. So, while, on a competitive level, I am much more concerned with Motherwell (for obvious reasons), Hibs, Kilmarnock, Aberdeen and, next season, St Mirren, the happenings at Ibrox are still worthy of comment.

I am not objective, as my first statement acknowledged. I'm biased, and speaking from a position of ill will towards The Rangers.

But, thus-declared, I have my own observations to make about the appointment of Steven Gerrard as the six-year-old Ibrox club's seventh manager.

The Player

Firstly, due respect: I liked him as a player and acknowledge that he was the best English midfielder of his generation and an all-time great English footballer.

But I have never believed that he would make a great manager because he always seemed to have a working-class sense of humility that, while endearing, was born of self-doubt whereas Frank Lampard exuded such confidence, displayed as smug arrogance, as to be guaranteed to rub me up the wrong way.

Don't get me wrong - I have always respected Lampard. In fact, I have always believed that he could make an excellent manager, which I have never believed of Gerrard.

Time will vindicate or condemn my superficial assessments but, amongst the undesired outcomes at The Rangers, Steven Gerrard taking over as boss has never registered.

Age-old Theme

For film buffs and those of a certain vintage, the last six years have been reminiscent of the Hollywood classic, Sunset Boulevard, in which an ageing "once-was" refuses to accept the realities of time and progress, surrendering any last vestiges of dignity in the process.

How Do I Look? Have I still got it?

Her increasingly desperate attempts make for compelling, if sometimes uncomfortable, viewing.

The Rangers demonstrate similar delusions, though the constantly-changing, increasingly-ridiculous storylines could have been churned out by the scriptwriters of River City.

McCoist, McCall, Warburton, Murty, Caixhinha, Murty, Nicholl, Gerrard. Between them, they have won League Two, League One, the Scottish Championship (at the second attempt) and the Petrofac and Dry Blackthorn cups.

Candidates

At the turn of the year, Derek McInnes was approached. Deek, the most transparently dishonest, Ibrox-hearted Aberdeen manager since Jimmy Calderwood, did everything short of baring his bearded backside in order to show his preference for the Glaswegian imposters over his current employers. But still, somehow, he couldn't bring himself to cash in on the points gift he had sent in advance, so troubling were his doubts about the club's financial stability.

That disappointed me as I was quite sure that he would fail at Ibrox. But he also surprised me. Never appearing to be the sharpest tool in the box, Deek nevertheless made a wise judgement.

I wasn’t unduly troubled, though I would have felt better if he had been in the bag – a few months can bring untold changes and that might mean improvements.

And so I wondered if there was the possibility of some new investment, however improbable, from the Bank of China or some such institution looking for a high-profile presence.

In the meantime, the next obvious candidate would have been Steve Clarke. This prospect bothered me a little.

Clarke has a varied and high-level coaching background, has done an excellent job with Kilmarnock and could surely do much more with the sort of funding that, even The Rangers could likely find, given his reputation and extensive list of contacts.

He also comes across as an intelligent guy, which was why I was fairly confident that he would decline any offer.

Then there was Steven Robinson, whose style (if you can call it that) I dislike intensely.

Robinson is a throwback to days that should be long gone, using physicality and a peppering of brutality to good effect against superior football teams.

Robinson is reminiscent of a young Jimmy Nicholl – staunch, no one likes him and he doesn’t care. So, in that sense he would have been a good fit at Ibrox, though not box office.

He’d have straightened them out in terms of being organised and aggressive but he wouldn’t have sold season tickets, so he was a non-starter.

Then there were the “Warnocks”. Of course, there is only one Neil Warnock but I use the term to describe one of those experienced firefighting bosses, who English chairmen turn to when their clubs are in distress.

The kind who have lived with the intense daily pressure, fans calling for their heads, the press pack stitching them up and who, year after year, come back for more.

He is one of many who just might have done a job – at least on an interim basis – finding a tactical approach to favour a desperate situation and maybe even swinging a cup or two.

But what The Rangers got was the much-admired player and virgin manager, Steven Gerrard.

He thinks it's all over: An emotional Gerrard so close to a title

This pleased me greatly, for a number of reasons.

Map-reading

Firstly, “it puts Scottish football on the map” – no, it doesn’t. Scottish football was already on the map and our own Brendan Rodgers has done a great deal to make that happen.

Brendan was the bookies’ second-favourite for the England manager’s job, within a few weeks of joining Celtic, after Roy Hodgson resigned. He has also been quoted as a likely candidate for most half-decent prospects in the English Premier League, including Chelsea, and was heavily-linked with the soon-to-be-vacant Arsenal job.

So, Scottish football is getting plenty of attention from down south and beyond, which is partly why we have Moussa Dembele, Olivier Ntcham and Odsonne Edouard. It was also quite probably a factor in attracting Clarke to Kilmarnock, persuading Youssouf Mulumbu that he could reset his career there and convincing Steven Caulker that a season at Dundee would be worth a try.

These things have all been excellent for Scottish football as has the work Neil Lennon has done at Hibs, building a very promising team.

Having Gerrard in Scotland will generate more interest and perhaps persuade the likes of Aberdeen and Hearts to consider experienced, progressive managers, who would not have been available to them two years ago.

Why else would I be happy that Gerrard is there?

Having a rookie coach thrown into a torrid situation is obviously a bonus for rivals, but the lack of tactical experience is only one element.

Leadership

Leadership is said to be one of Gerrard’s strengths but that is the sort of glib comment uttered by people who have little or no understanding of the skills and qualities associated with leadership in modern-day football.

Personally, I have never felt Gerrard to be a great on-field leader. If he had been, perhaps he would have won a league title in his career.

But, that aside, leading by example is a very different prospect to leading through communication.

This is something that the majority of ex-pros and Scottish football pundits seem never to have considered.

Book-learning

As a hobbyist blogger, I am very much a half-assed amateur when it comes to football. However, I do read about the game and biographical works about football managers reveal some common themes.

First is that a little reading about football demonstrates that, in the modern game, old-fashioned techniques are largely obsolete, partly due to increased education as well as the changing dynamics brought about by huge salaries.

Even in the lower reaches of the English game, managers study various psychological techniques, including drawing on successful leadership and motivation strategies from other sports.

St Mirren’s Jack Ross gives indications of this sort of thinking but he is one of a very few in Scotland to allude to this. I have my doubts about whether Gerrard has been similarly studious but you can guarantee that Pep Guardiola and Zinedine Zidane did so before entering management. Ryan Giggs? I’m guessing not.

Second, is the intense, nigh-on intolerable pressure, which seems to increase year-on-year. Gordon Strachan recently spoke of sitting in Glasgow holding hands with his wife hoping it would get better, when first in the Celtic manager’s job.

But look at the physical changes that took place in Slaven Bilic, once one of the coolest young managers in the game but who appeared to be collapsing before our eyes before he was finally released from his West Ham purgatory.

Before & After: Two years took their toll on Slaven Bilic

Likewise, Antonio Conte – looking like an Italian film star on his arrival, exuding confidence to the point of mania but latterly resembling someone recounting his traumatic survival of an earthquake – one year after winning the League on his first attempt.

Before & After: Antonio Conte

The Rangers is one of the least forgiving and most unreasonable clubs in football and Gerrard – neither an insider nor one whose England performances cut much ice in Scotland – will discover this when unrealistic expectations are not fulfilled.

Circumstantial evidence

But, more than this, are the circumstantial factors.

According to the media mania, his name alone will attract top-quality players and investment has been promised.

But let’s look at that rationally.

As recently as Friday, Dave King couldn’t even state if the necessary investment would be internal or external, claiming that it “didn’t matter”.

Now, far be it from me to call King a glib and shameless liar, but the empirical evidence is against this mystery investment existing.

A few weeks ago, The Rangers signed a third-rate kit deal that was derided by a large proportion of their own fans.

So, it seems safe to assume that the club hadn’t even thought of signing Gerrard at the time, as having such a big name manager on board – with exciting signings to come – would surely have been a bargaining chip in negotiations with Nike, Adidas or even New Balance.

Secondly, having promised a manager “capable of delivering trophies”, just in time to undermine Graeme Murty (and make this blogger’s concerns that The Rangers would run Celtic close in the Scottish Cup semi-final seem like frightful anxiety), King has appointed someone who can offer no evidence of the same.

Again, that sounds awfully like someone who had no idea that Gerrard would be boss, just a couple of weeks ago.

And yet, with a multi-million-pound war chest arriving any day now, The Rangers would surely have felt confident of luring a manager who had actually won something in the past – or at least managed a team – and who would back up Dave’s promise of Silverado.

We are also invited to believe that, on the cusp of a brave new era, two directors decided that they wanted to bail out before the times got truly exciting.

Add to this the debt, the issues with the takeover panel, the need for stadium repairs, etc. and the Steven Gerrard appointment looks more and more like a swindle perpetrated on someone who knows little or nothing about The Rangers or the Scottish game, aided and abetted by the most ignorant and unscrupulous shower of reporters that have ever covered any sport.

I’ve been wrong before, of course – like when I thought that we would face a few scares in the cup semi – but, at face value, this whole episode looks not so much a damp squib as a custard pie primed with a banger, ready to explode in a lot of faces.

Sympathy for the Red?

I suppose I could sympathise with Gerrard, who seems to have displayed that English-football arrogance of thinking that Scotland should be a soft-touch and a shortcut to the top.

I suppose I could predict that Brendan, Neil, Clarke, Robinson, Ross and even McInnes or Levein will take great pleasure in bringing the big-shot rookie down to earth, with a mixture of tactics, man-management and experience at the coal face, and that we should go easy on someone who has been pretty inoffensive, thus far.

I could but, on reflection – nah – f*ck him!

--