Robbie’s axe is detached from reality
For the reality television generation, it’s always about that instant gratification.
Public votes, get-meout-of-here evictions – junk entertainment to satisfy a baying-for-blood demand.
A culture of change for change’s sake, one where everything’s a drama and where there’s a clamour to point fingers and blame.
These are the days of fast food and social media pile-ons.
And it has seeped into football where the game of patience is consigned to the past.
It’s that appetite to sate the baying mob that cost Robbie Neilson his job as Hearts boss last weekend.
It was a panicked and reactive move from a board’s abysmal attempt to read the room.
As decisions go, time will show if his sacking is nothing more than a quick hit.
Just ask Jack Ross about that Assassin’s Creed.
Boardrooms at Hibs and Dundee United bent to the whim of their respective fan bases by prematurely pulling the trigger as soon as their manager hit a bump on the road.
The Easter Road executives should have been watching Sheffield United on Monday night take a huge step towards a return to the English Premier League.
The Blades are being guided back to the top by Paul Heckingbottom who was given just nine months in Leith before being sent packing and branded a dud.
Message boards, social media and fan forums are where today’s chief executives take the temperature for the popularity or otherwise of the manager before deciding to give him the chop.
An esteemed former manager once imparted a statement that has continually held true.
His claim was that it would be foolish to presume that everyone who reaches the top in football at an executive level knows what they are doing.
Having worked within the game since leaving school, his wise words continue to ring true.
Hearts chief executive Andrew McKinlay isn’t a fellow I’ve crossed paths with before and the former Scottish Golf CEO may or may not be up to scratch in his role.
He has, though, bowed to pressure and dismissed Neilson after a toxic afternoon at Tynecastle where his team went down to St Mirren.
A manager who has banked the experience of leading the Jambos in Europe this season, an invaluable learning curve, is now surplus to requirements after five defeats on the bounce and six losses from their last seven games. Hearts should have been standing firm in support of Neilson as he had credit in the bank to the tune of a £5million bounty the club had landed for their European campaign.
The more you assess this sacking, the more ludicrous it looks.
Injuries to key men, inconsistency of performance from players who won’t lose a minute’s sleep for their role in the saga and the natural law of being a club outside the Old Firm where peaks and troughs are par for the course.
One by-product of the impressive resurgence of Aberdeen with Barry Robson as caretaker manager is that Hearts will believe handing Steven Naismith will be the catalyst for a similar upturn in fortunes.
We’ll see how long it takes before there’s a public vote on that one.
Hea rts have shou ld firmstoo d supp in ort of Robb ie