I’m boss and not Levein
Under- f ire Ian Cathro insists he is the man in charge at Hearts – despite the Pittodrie intervention from Craig Levein.
Director of football Levein sent messages from the stand in the 2- 0 defeat by Aberdeen yesterday and also went into the Jambos dressing room at half-time.
But Cathro was adamant his was the loudest voice when addressing the squad.
When asked about former Scotland boss Levein’s half-time intervention he said: “There’s no space, the
schematics of Pittodrie, there’s no space to do many things.
“You see a different person sitting behind this desk but trust me, if you were in my changing room you wouldn’t be opening your mouth.
“Let’s explain this first of all. We have good staff, we have good coaches.
“And I involve them in our work during the week, I am someone who wants to train with a lot of coaches.
“We have good staff with the Under-20s and Jon Daly, Andy Kirk and Liam Fox who have recently joined us.
“We work together. I have always worked in a situation where we have one member of our technical staff in the stand who understands the game plan, the work we have done and so on.
“So that person has the responsibility to keep the dialogue active on things I’ve asked them to look at. It’s completely normal.”
Cathro, who has won just five of his first 17 matches, insisted there was nothing out of the ordinary about leaning on the experience of someone like Levein behind the scenes.
Levein is a former Hearts boss and Cathro said: “I know there’s a historical aspect to this that turns it into a story for you now and then. But, trust me, it’s completely normal.
“It would be remiss of me not to rely on the experience of everyone that’s involved in the situation.
“It’s one of the positive things that we work collectively.
“Now, I can’t discuss too many positive things right now but if we are talking generally about this – to try and stop some sort of directed hysteria – it’s entirely normal that we work together.
“More specifically a coach sits in the stand which we vary through my decision.
“They work for me. They are doing things asked of them by me, for me.”