There’s no holding back as stand-in Daly stands up for beleaguered Hearts
HEARTS OWNER Ann Budge has already hinted the club will look for an experienced figure to replace Ian Cathro as head coach — but that did not stop caretaker boss Jon Daly making a bold sales pitch for the position.
If the team’s performance at Parkhead yesterday amounted to little more than damage limitation against a Celtic side which produced a continuation of last season’s relentless Premiership form, the Irishman proved off the pitch that he was determined not to be cowed by a more illustrious opponent.
Brendan Rodgers has barely put a foot wrong since taking the Celtic job a year ago and he has also rarely misplaced a word during his exemplary appearances in front of the media.
Yet there was a whiff of sanctimony about the tone of his criticism of Hearts’ decision to remove Cathro before the weekend and Daly decided to call him out on the matter.
Loudly and at length, the caretaker described Rodgers’ words variously as ‘disgusting’, ‘disgraceful’, ‘farcical’ and ‘unsavoury’.
You suspect director of football Craig Levein, himself no shrinking violet when it came to speaking up against Scottish football’s established order during his days managing at Tynecastle and Dundee United, would have thoroughly approved.
If it was admirable that Rodgers should wish to side with a young coach burned by his first frontline experience, the criticism of Hearts — implicitly towards Levein and explicitly in the case of new signings Kyle Lafferty and Christophe Berra — seemed to cross a line.
Rodgers declared Berra and Lafferty ill-suited to the way Cathro wished his team to play.
It’s true that Levein would have had an influence in bringing Berra, a current starting Scotland international, back to his first club.
But the recruitment of Lafferty was done entirely at the request of the club’s coaching staff and concluded through the persistence of Cathro’s No 2 Austin MacPhee, who doubles as an assistant with the Northern Ireland national team.
If anything, Levein could have been accused of allowing Cathro too much of a free hand in his transfer dealings, specifically in the January window.
The assertion that neither Berra nor Lafferty fitted in with the pure playing style desired by Cathro may be true but, equally, the coach had found out the hard way that many of his first-choice players were not suited to Scottish football.
Only three of nine players recruited in the mid-season window remain at the club, with a slightly different profile of player sought for the new campaign.
‘There’s no chance those players would have come in the door without Ian’s say so,’ said Daly during an impassioned post-match press briefing.
‘Brendan’s a knowledgeable man. But if he thinks (Michael) Smith, (Ashley) Smith-Brown, (Rafal) Grzelak, Lafferty, Berra or (Connor) Randall don’t suit a 3-4-3 system, that baffles me.
‘They are wing-backs, centrebacks, strikers, midfielders. So it’s actually farcical that he thinks they don’t fit into the system and that other people make the calls around our club.
‘To comment on it when he knows nothing about the structure at Hearts is a disgrace. It’s very disrespectful.
‘We all know that Ian is a good coach and he had a philosophy of play. But his comments about me, Liam Fox, Austin MacPhee and Paul Gallagher — about how we’d come here (to Parkhead) and play a basic shape, were disappointing.
‘We were going to come here and play a defensive style of play because, for me, if you come to Celtic Park with a 3-4-3 system and you leave two men in midfield against their three, then you are going to lose five, six, seven — especially with where the players were mentally.’
Two of the three January recruits to remain featured yesterday — Aaron Hughes, another Northern Irishman lured by MacPhee, starting alongside Berra at centreback and Esmael Goncalves coming off the bench to score Hearts’ consolation goal late in the match.
Daly handed league debuts to Smith, Grzelak and Jamie Brandon, while teenager Lewis Moore was deployed wide left.
Celtic took a first-half lead through Leigh Griffiths, with Hughes getting himself into a fankle to allow Scott Sinclair to score the second after the break.
Griffiths and Callum McGregor added further goals to underline the title winners’ intentions for the new season but the performance of Moore was a bright spot for Hearts, the youngster showing up well on the ball.
Goncalves also showed more attacking threat in 20 minutes than ex-Rangers striker Lafferty, who was booked after predictably getting caught up in the occasion.
‘It was a difficult afternoon for us,’ said Daly. ‘We got punished for a couple of mistakes. I don’t see the team being judged on a result at Celtic Park. We will be judged on the Kilmarnocks, Rangers, all those types of games.’
A host of names have already been linked with the Tynecastle managerial post, with former England boss Steve McClaren the latest to enter the frame.
Steven Pressley, Owen Coyle and Paul Hartley have all been mentioned, as has the club’s 2012 Scottish Cup-winning manager Paulo Sergio, whose name was chanted by the away support.
Asked if he coveted the job full-time, Daly said: ‘The fact the players didn’t stop fighting till the end showed me I can motivate a team. Am I ready? Possibly — but that’s not my decision.’