BAIRN AGAIN AN
Hartley was helped back on his feet by Rodgers and McInnes ... now he has grand plans for Falkirk
WHEN Paul Hartley first took charge of Falkirk in early October, he did so with plentiful words of wisdom ringing in his ears.
The theory, at least, was simple. Under Peter Houston, the Bairns had simply become stagnant. They remained a good side who just needed to hear a new voice and be presented with fresh ideas. Things would quickly turn around.
A proven manager with Alloa and Dundee, Hartley didn’t panic when the anticipated ‘bounce’ failed to materialise overnight.
Two games came and went without a victory in the Championship. Then three and four.
By the time six had expired, he sensed the problems might be deeper than he first feared.
When his side drew at Dumbarton two days before Christmas — an eighth league match without victory — he knew that radical action was required.
‘When you go into a job, you think you’ll get that little bounce and a win in your first couple of games but it just didn’t happen,’ he reflected.
‘I knew the job was tough but I didn’t think it was as tough as it proved to be. I think it had stagnated to an extent.
‘A lot of players don’t like change when you go into a team. Many get caught in a comfort zone.
‘They always say that the first 100 days in any job are the most important ones and they were certainly very challenging.’
Given how his tenure at Dens Park had ended, Hartley wouldn’t be human if he had simply shrugged off a continuation of a wretched run. He admits there was many a sleepless night in that period.
‘You do doubt yourself,’ he admitted. ‘I was coming from losing my job at Dundee when there was a bad run of seven games on the bounce.
‘You then go into a new job and you think: “This is going to be good.” Then you think: “Here we go again.”
‘But you’ve got to stick with your principles and you’ve got to believe in yourself. I always knew it would turn if we could get to January. The board were really good.
‘It’s not always the case these days. They said they were here to help me. We knew we had to change the whole mentality of the group.’
Hartley didn’t have to suffer alone in those testing hours.
It may be almost seven years since he first tipped his toe in the management waters with Alloa, but the 41-year-old still views himself as a work in progress.
Accordingly, lifting the phone to confidantes who had survived precisely what he was going through seemed entirely natural.
‘I spoke with Craig Brown, Brendan Rodgers, Archie Knox and Derek McInnes just before Christmas,’ he explained.
‘All of them are guys who have lost jobs. All of them were very important for me.
‘Brendan talked about the time he lost his job at Reading.
‘He stressed that in the first 100 days I would see everything about the players and staff — who is there to work hard and what do you need to change.
‘They’ve all been there — going into a new club and realising that they needed to change a mentality and an environment.
‘We’ve managed to do that. There’s a good atmosphere about the place now. The spirit is good and results have been good.’
The changes could not have been more radical but subsequent results have vindicated them.
Conor Hazard, Tommy Robson, Louis Longridge and Alex Jakubiak were just half of the players who were brought in.
‘Twelve players went out and eight came in,’ said Hartley.
‘What we’ve done is recruited well. They’ve really improved us.
‘It’s changed the dynamic of how we play now. There’s more pace in the team.
‘It’s a bit like St Mirren last year. Jack (Ross) went in there at roughly the same time as myself and struggled for the first period. I remember speaking with him.
‘I think he brought in ten in January and ten went out. They had a really strong finish to last season and look at them this time.
‘It would be nice to think we can do next season what they have done this year. That’s the aim.’
Falkirk have not yet given up hope of sneaking into the play-off places, though.
Ten points behind fourth-placed Dundee United with ten games remaining, they have but a slim chance. Even that slither of hope, though, is a marked improvement from the dark days of early winter.
‘We were nine points off Dumbarton in December and we’ve turned that around big time,’ said Hartley, whose team are now a point above the second-bottom Sons in eighth place.
‘We’re now looking at the teams above us and wondering if we can catch them. We’ve had a good run in the Scottish Cup so far. This game against Rangers is financially brilliant for the club. It will help us going into next season.’
So grim were things for the Bairns a couple of months back that the announcement they were streamlining their academy in order to bolster the first-team budget might have been viewed as an exercise in skilfully burying bad news.
For all the first team’s current woes, axing the production line that had reared the likes of Scott Arfield, Darren Barr and Stephen Kingsley was never going to be popular.
Hartley understands the argument. But nor could be subscribe to a business model that only seemed to offer jam tomorrow.
‘It upset a lot of people and I can see why,’ he added. ‘We brought a lot of players through in the past who had been sold.
‘But we couldn’t sustain it. Yes, there are a lot of disappointed kids
and I totally get that. But the club are desperate to get to the Premiership.
‘If we keep missing out, we’re going to be back to the situation where the club is in financial difficulty.
‘The fans want to see Premiership football. They don’t want to see Championship football. They’ve had that for eight years.
‘We feel we’re a Premiership cub. We had 6000 at the Dumbarton game last Saturday — the second biggest in the country.
‘We’re putting a lot in place at the moment. We have a head of recruitment who is based in England to try and help us. We’ll work with a tight squad next year.’
Weather permitting, Sunday’s trip to Ibrox in the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup ought to be the perfect opportunity for Hartley’s reborn Bairns to prove they are worthy of consideration in the longer term. Facing a Rangers side who have won their past five matches, it’s the very definition of a long shot.
But having come a long way in the past couple of months, Hartley feels his players might just be able to go a little further.
‘Rangers have got momentum,’ he said. ‘They are playing well offensively. I saw them at St Johnstone on Tuesday and they played really well.
‘They’ve got real pace about their team. It’s almost picking itself right now.
‘We know we’re up against a good team that’s in form. We’re the underdogs but we’ll go there and be positive.
‘No one gives us a hope, to be honest, but we are not going there to park the bus. I’ve said that to the players.
‘We’ll have the best part of 2000 fans going. They deserve a team which will put up a show.’