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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Hearts of Darkness - but time for a proportionate response to cheats and hooligans

Four months ago, I wouldn't have written this. In fact, I confess that, even now, this is a gut reaction to something wholly unacceptable, clouded by the context of fairly recent events.

But I'm not sure that criminal proceedings against the Hearts balloon who swung a fist in Scott Sinclair's direction are proportionate or necessary.

Hands on: Scott Sinclair felt the love from Celtic fans

I must confess that there is little about the Jambos that warms my heart. I respect the fact that their supporters stepped up to save their club, when others watched their own club die and blamed everyone but the culprits, all of whom could have been found inside their own stadium at any given match.

But Hearts took their medicine, paid their bills and came back.

I think they have a good, if hard-to-love team, which I believe will present our strongest challenge this season.

They played ugly against us, but they played well. They committed too many fouls to the extent that you could consider their foul play part of Robbie Neilson's plan.

Neilson is an interesting character. Not yet feted by the media in the way that Derek McInnes has been lauded to the strains of Bonnie Tyler singing “Holding Out for a Hero”, he has led a team through adversity, to strength.

He managed to outclass a far better funded team of Rangers impersonators to the Championship and make a decent fist of things in the SPFL. I have a hunch that Neilson is the one to watch as far as Scottish coaches within the Scottish game are concerned and that his team will be formidable opponents this season.

On the other hand, it's hard to find any feelgood factor whenever we play the Tynecastle men.

There have been many occasions on which their fans' rabid antipathy towards Celtic have been evident, none worse than the attack on Neil Lennon and the appalling contortions the Scottish legal establishment went to in order to mitigate the guilt of an assailant who had apologised unreservedly for his actions.

Their striker Jamie Walker secured an absurd penalty through a piece of abject cheating and there are reasonable calls for him to face retrospective punishment. I would support that, as long as it was done within an established structure that applied equally to all clubs.

We should try to eradicate that from the game, though we all know we never will.

But the fist-waving idiot?

Bear with me while I combine personal experience with distaste at reactions to recent events.

Firstly, let it be said that the thug who swung a fist towards Scott Sinclair deserves to be punished. A stadium ban would be in order, maybe even a lifetime exclusion, and you would hope that a strident defender of standards as Ann Budge claims to be would take the lead in getting her own house in order.

But, here's a silly anecdote. I once had a friend who was, by common consent, an absolute arsehole, much of the time. He even, pathetically, admitted as much to me, once.

One day, while walking down Union Street, I heard this almighty, shocking roar in my ear. It was my friend, who – never knowing where was too far – had spotted me, run towards me and shouted “Boo!” in my ear with all the volume he could muster.

I am not proud to say that I swung my right fist with all the power my adrenaline-fuelled body had in it - quite a lot. At the last split-second, I pulled it towards me, saving my friend from being laid out on the deck, quite possibly with a serious injury.

I am even less proud to admit that the reaction to punch him came after I caught sight of his buffoonish, grinning face.

In that few seconds, in an agitated state, I “chose” (as far as you can within those reaction times) to knock his head somewhere towards the Clyde and still had time to make that look like an angry gesture, rather than what it was – a real, volatile intention to smack that grin off his face.

I'm quite glad that I didn't make contact and I don't think it would have been a good thing, had I been unable to change my decision. If I had connected, he would have been hurt and I might very well have found myself in trouble.

That is just one occasion on which I have welcomed the maxim that the intention to commit a sin is not the same as the commission of the immoral act.

The thug who swung at Scott Sinclair doesn't have quite my excuse and I suspect he may have a greater history of launching his ham-like fists towards the faces of people who had upset him by being good at what they do.

And we absolutely must make football grounds safe for players and fans. Scott Sinclair didn't antagonise the Hearts fans – he simply took the quickest natural route towards the Celtic fans to celebrate his debut goal.

And had the assault been carried through, a jail sentence would have been appropriate. But supposing that maroon-clad clown may have thought better of lashing out at someone who had simply done his job, I wonder if a criminal record for a swing in the heat of the moment is warranted.

That's supposing that Ms Budge does take action.

But back to context. I suppose that this is informed by the absurd press reactions to Hibs fans taking to the pitch to celebrate their Scottish Cup win, when they were accused of all kinds of calumnies against their opponents players and coaching staff, though none have convincingly reported as much as an Indian burn, as evidence.

And yet all manner of punishments were called for – and many journalists insisted that their “eye-witness” accounts should be taken on trust, despite a Sheriff – presumably in full possession of all the available facts – concluding that threats to the wellbeing of the professional losers were greatly exaggerated.

Those same “respected” commentators called for sanctions from everyone just short of the UN Security Council for Hibs fans on the pitch that day and most of Scottish football scoffed.

So, maybe it would be enough for Hearts to deal decisively with Gormless-from-Gorgie and send a clear signal that Scottish football clubs can be trusted to deal with such actions in a way that the courts have, thus far, failed to do.

But I could be wrong.
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