NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE
Now just days away from returning home to their super new stadium, there is only one problem with Hearts under Craig Levein. His squad is chock-full of players who are...
THE bulldozers have long since given way to those tasked with providing the finishing touches on the shimmering structure, but, among Hearts supporters, there remains an appetite for destruction.
One year after Robbie Neilson signed off in front of the rickety old main stand with victory over Rangers, excitement at an imminent return to a revamped Tynecastle is tempered with the realisation that much of the team is no longer fit for purpose.
The irony of Hearts’ journey in the three years since exiting administration is lost on no one.
Under Neilson, they had a shrewd head coach and a side good enough to romp to the Championship title and second place in the topflight table in his final game in charge. But, all along, they were saddled with a dilapidated home that needed enormous investment.
Having done the hard part by securing upwards of £12million in funding for a new structure, they have somehow contrived to weaken the on-field product to a lamentable degree.
With the need to decant to Murrayfield to facilitate building work in Gorgie always likely to make this a challenging season, no one anticipates the return to Tynecastle for the game with Partick Thistle on Saturday week to be the panacea to every ill.
Atmospherically, the home of Scottish rugby when a third full may be no match for Hearts’ spiritual home, but a change of backdrop shouldn’t mean players completely losing their way as witnessed in successive home losses to Rangers and Kilmarnock.
There’s a stark lack of quality about the men in maroon these days. Recruitment in the two windows immediately following administration was impressive. Osman Sow, Igor Rossi, and Alim Ozturk were unqualified successes.
Since then, it has gone dramatically downhill to the point that you wonder if there’s a strategy at all.
The desire among many to lay the blame solely at the door of the deficient Ian Cathro ignores the fact that Juwon Oshaniwa and Conor Sammon arrived under Neilson.
It was in Cathro’s first window, however, that the rate of decline really accelerated. Nine players arrived on his watch in January and only three remain.
While the short-term deals offered to the likes of Lennard Sowah and Andraz Struna limited the damage, this was negated by the three-and-a-half year deal gifted to Malaury Martin, an immobile 29-year-old who has made one league appearance this season.
Having seen Cathro’s team slide to fifth place over five months, the recruitment over the summer did nothing to improve the concentration of quality. Cole Stockton has yet to score since arriving, while Polish defender Rafal Grzelak is plainly not up to the demands of the Scottish Premiership.
Some 49 players have arrived since Hearts emerged from administration. Notwithstanding injuries to the likes of Jamie Walker and Arnaud Djoum, the side which lost for a third successive time against Killie was devoid of pace, width and guile.
For Craig Levein, there is now no hiding place. Much was made of the director of football passing a note down to Cathro from the Pittodrie stand. Yet as the man tasked with overseeing the club’s recruitment over the past three years, he either proposed or approved each signing.
Now back at the helm as manager, there is no escaping how flawed so many judgments — not least his own — have been.
‘I’m just wondering what the Cathro experiment cost them,’ said BBC pundit Allan Preston. ‘The players that they’ve brought in... as director of football, Craig has got to take his share of the blame.
‘There were so many credible managers out there when Hearts needed a safe pair of hands.
‘The fans have been pumping in the money and the new stand has been built. They needed stability.
‘What they did was gamble and it’s failed miserably. They brought in sub-standard players and it’s cost them hundreds of thousands of pounds. How many years has this experiment set them back?’
The feeling when Cathro was axed in August was that common sense had belatedly prevailed. As a man who enjoyed success previously at Tynecastle and with Dundee United, Levein’s return to the dugout promised to dampen the flames.
‘There’s a moment when it’s right and that moment’s now,’ he said at his unveiling. ‘The club is in a fairly healthy place which means it’s now possible for me to do two things at once.’
If a meek defeat to a Hibernian side now ten points ahead of them called that into question, then two further losses have put the former Scotland manager squarely behind the eight ball.
Eight years after he last dipped his toe in club management, a man once renowned for his expertise in ensuring the whole of any side was greater than the sum of its parts appears, at best, to be rusty in the black arts of the dugout.
The cutting of the ribbon on the new stand should have been symbolic of the club’s rebirth. Instead, the foundations on the park threaten to undermine it.
‘It’s frustrating. Everything is going wrong,’ conceded striker Esmael Goncalves. ‘But going back to Tynecastle, hopefully things will go better there.
‘We are not doing perfectly, so it’s normal the fans are angry and we understand that. But we are trying to improve and they must see this and keep staying with us.
‘Hopefully, things can click there because we are working hard, we are trying hard and giving everything on the pitch.
‘We are a big club and we have a massive support with our fans.
‘I think it’s early. The season is far from finished. We are starting now.’