Elvis says player power shows dressing room at club is united
BY FRASER WILSON
THE club and the target may have been different but the dressingroom anger was just the same.
Steven Pressley led a player revolt when he spoke out against Vladimir Romanov’s running of Hearts in 2006.
So he can fully understand the mechanics behind the players’ mutiny that this week cost Angelo Alessio his position as manager of Kilmarnock after just six months in charge.
Alessio was sacked on the back of a full-scale player revolt after a breakdown in relationships between the Italian and his squad who could not take to his methods.
Pressley and his team-mates might have been far more public 13 years ago but at the heart of their battle was a similar disharmony in the squad and the ultimate good of the club.
Dubbed the “Riccarton 3”, Pressley, flanked by Craig Gordon and Paul Hartley, read a pre-written statement to the media in which he explained the “significant unrest in the dressing room”, and the “impossible task” players were faced with in dealing with the madcap Lithuanian owner.
Weeks later the skipper was looking for a club after having his contract terminated. In Killie’s case it wasn’t the players who lost out – it was Alessio. Pressley said: “You have to remember the situation at Hearts was not like Kilmarnock. It was based around the treatment of players from the owner of the club. It was purely the owner – nothing to do with the manager.
“I was seen as the figurehead at the time. People would come to me with their problems before the manager.
“I just felt it had got to the stage where it had gone too far. Lies, deceit, broken promises, threats to squad members over payment of wages. The manager was being dictated to by the owners.
“I said to the players at the time, ‘Do you want to support me on this?’ If they didn’t believe in what I was doing not