It hurts when people say we don’t care. We do because we want to do well and win a new Hearts deal, says Struna
AN ACCUSATION that players don’t care about losing is always going to hurt. The specific suggestion that mercenaries on short-term contracts are especially disinterested in how they leave the club? That is a particularly stinging barb.
It’s not one that Andraz Struna is prepared to let lie. Having joined Hearts on a half-season deal in January, the Slovenian international — who had been a free agent since last summer — makes a pretty good case for his own motivation.
‘I disagree,’ he said, when asked about the accusation that players with no long-term allegiance to the club cannot possibly play with wholehearted commitment.
‘You can look at that the opposite way. The player who signs only for six months maybe wants to prolong his contract, so he must show himself.
‘Maybe, after six months, he will be without a club, without security, salaries and all this. So I cannot agree with this.
‘We are all sportsmen. We live for this. This is not a reason at all. You cannot live if you are not happy. Who wants to live if he is not happy? And we are not happy now.
‘Nobody is happy with these results. It’s hard. It happens a lot of times to everybody, big clubs, small clubs, in every sport.’
The current run of wholly underwhelming results at Hearts, something under-fire head coach Ian Cathro hopes to start putting right with tonight’s home game against Ross County, has provoked understandable anger among supporters.
A special kind of fury was reserved for those who failed to lay a finger on Hibs in last week’s Scottish Cup replay at Easter Road, a tame and limp defeat for the visitors, with Saturday’s subsequent loss to Partick Thistle in Glasgow prompting new accusations that players lacked heart.
‘That is hurtful,’ said Struna. ‘Maybe somebody sees it like this or it seems that you don’t want it. But you do want it.
‘Firstly, it’s you who is disappointed, then everybody around you. We try.
‘We speak a lot between ourselves, trying to find solutions. We know that it’s not good. We know that something is wrong because, at the end, when you see the results, they are not what we want.
‘But, still, we care and we fight. That’s most important. We must be together. We know that we are together in this. Now even more, we must step together and be like one.
‘Don’t be distracted by what’s around us. Everybody has been in this situation in history. We know how to deal with this.
‘We know that we have had a bad week. It’s not easy for us. But it is also not a time to think too deeply about what happened, and to cry about it. We must always look forward.
‘Sometimes, you say we either win or we learn. It is really hard being in a situation like this. But you must move forward from the situation sooner or later.’
Although Cathro is taking the bulk of the stick, the rookie coach with the unusual route into frontline management (right) making just too inviting a target for some, few players have escaped criticism of late.
Just weeks on from a 4-1 thrashing of Rangers and a 3-0 romp over Motherwell offering hope of a bright future, many of the January signings involved in those wins are already being dismissed by fans as not up to the job.
None of the nine new signings will pretend their transition into the first team has been exactly seamless, although right-back Struna’s performances — covering for the long-term injury to Callum Paterson — have been of some comfort. As well as communications on the pitch, set-plays and individual duties to be organised, there is also the matter of a group bonding into an effective unit. That’s something not always evident on the training ground, but often invaluable come match day. Offering a peek inside the Hearts dressing room both at Firhill on Saturday night and at the club’s training ground housed on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Struna revealed: ‘There were emotions. What type? Everything came from disappointment. We were not angry with each other, but we were disappointed.
‘We are all a little bit stressed and we don’t want to be in this situation, but now we must be together and help each other. To go on from this, we must be clear that something is not like it should be. This is a fact. But we must be together.
‘It is not the time to have any kind of anger. Only positivity. The sooner you realise this, the sooner you can expect something.
‘It’s very important not to get too stressed. It’s a fact that not everything’s so good just now, so we feel a bit stressed from everywhere and also within ourselves. We all know what mistakes we’ve made.
‘Actions speak louder than words. The results must come. We will fight for each other, then for the supporters.’
“It is not the time to have any anger. Only positivity”