IT’S ALL ABOUT EU
Robbie can use carrot of European football to attract more quality
THE season has been put to bed but I’ll bet my bottom dollar Robbie Neilson is already dreaming big about the next campaign.
Be in no doubt the Hearts manager will be looking to improve on what was a hugely successful season but that’s the nature of being at a club like this, you have to be relentless in your pursuit of success.
Can they do better than third place? Let’s face it, it’s doubtful given the resources of the Old Firm but that doesn’t mean they can’t set their stall out to eat into the gap and maintain their superiority over every other team in the league.
Then you add onto that another real go at silverware, having come up just short in the Scottish Cup Final.
And finally, the one that could be a real game-changer. My old club are guaranteed group stage football in either the Europa League or European Conference League and that, in terms of attracting players, is crucial.
Good players would want to come to Tynecastle anyway but this is an added incentive and given how good their recruitment was last season, I’m intrigued to see how Robbie and Joe Savage go about their business.
But it’s not just about who comes in. The core of players already there make it, to my mind, the strongest Hearts have been in years.
It is full of players who know what the club is all about and I expect that Robbie doesn’t even have to go into the dressing room much to get his message across.
Guys like Craig Gordon, Craig Halkett, Stephen Kingsley, Liam Boyce and Michael Smith – all signed on extended deals – will be part of a leadership group that lays down the standards to the more inexperienced boys and the newcomers. They are all big personalities who will command respect because of the careers they’ve had and the mentality they’ve got.
You then bring in other players to fit into the jigsaw but the core of the group remains there at Tynecastle.
It wasn’t always like that though at Hearts. In my first spell I wandered into a totally divided dressing room, full of cliq cliques. Although there was no full-blown animosity, there was a definite feeling of ‘them and us’ between the home-based boys and a lot of foreign lads who had been brought to the club by Csaba Laszlo. Boys like Christian Nade and Laryea Kingston were good lads in their own way but they didn’t feel like the right fit for Hearts. Laszlo was fired and when Jim Jefferies and Billy Brown came in, one of the first things they did was sign me from Ayr United. I knew the Scottish game and just how big Hearts were. I made it my business to make a big impression in the dressing room and the likes of Andy Webster was brought back to the club. Jim and Billy had been around long enough to know how important it was to let people like me, Andy, Danny Grainger, Ian Black and Jamie Hamill get on with it.
We hardly ever saw them in the dressing room because they trusted us to run it in a way that got the best out of everyone.
So I reckon Robbie will gather his squad around him on the first day and lay out the goals for the new season. Lay down the challenge to continue to be the third best but let’s see if we can keep up with Celtic and Rangers for a bit longer.
He will want to become one of the most successful Hearts managers and for that to happen, he needs a trophy or two and a good Euro campaign, not only this season but over the next few campaigns.
If I were still a Hearts player, I’d be licking my lips at the thought of a run in Europe.
I’ll never forget facing Spurs in 2011. Okay, they smashed us 5-0 at Tynecastle when Gareth Bale, Rafael van der Vaart and Jermain Defoe ran amok but we drew the second leg 0-0 which was a bit of a consolation!
Players live for nights like these. Hearts have earned their crack at them for the season just finished and there will be no resting on their laurels.
Robbie wouldn’t stand for that. More importantly, neither would the players he has in that dressing room.