BACK TO BASICS
‘King of Hearts’ Levein is seeking the right reaction to life after Cathro as his men set up ‘home’ at Murrayfield
EXPERIMENT aborted, football rewrite in tatters. As Hearts prepare to set up temporary home at Murrayfield, Craig Levein is unapologetic about the club’s determination to get back to basics. We shouldn’t quite expect hoof-ball when Aberdeen visit Scotland’s home of rugby next weekend but, ever the pragmatist, Levein is determined to restore a steely spine to his team before it takes a bow under Tynecastle’s shiny new main stand.
Hearts may be flitting just a few hundred yards along the road but Levein is treating the three games against the Dons, St Johnstone and Rangers as away fixtures and figures the strange surroundings will help gird his players for the pressures of performing for a notoriously tough home audience when they settle back into Gorgie in November.
‘We’ll need to play a certain type of football to get us to a point where we’re playing at Tynecastle again,’ says Levein, appointed the club’s manager for a second time. ‘It’s a hard place to play at times when things aren’t going well. It’s a character test. You have to go out there and demand the ball under pressure.
‘I’ve been pleased with the way Jon (interim boss, Daly) has had the team playing, they’ve been cohesive and difficult to beat. I make no apologies for that, we’ll need to be difficult to beat before we get back to Tynecastle.’
Levein wouldn’t be here had his project to bring a more refined, progressive brand of football to Edinburgh not failed.
Depending on your view — and this one polarised Scottish football — the appointment of Ian Cathro was either bold and revolutionary or the ultimate vanity project from the club’s director of football, who had launched the 30-year-old’s career at Dundee United a few years previously.
Either way, the move was a miserable failure, with Cathro departing less than nine months on. Levein has accepted club owner Ann Budge’s request to clear up the mess himself.
‘The appointment of Ian was my choice, it was in my head,’ admits Levein. ‘I knew he was a very bright, intelligent guy who was a really good coach.
‘I tried to jump us forward a couple of steps. Credit to Ann and the board, they accepted that decision and we ran with it.
‘I like Ian as a guy and have a really good relationship with him. I just felt that we never really got into a place where his strengths were allowed to come to the fore.
‘I really believe he will go on to be a head coach somewhere or a coach at a big club again for sure.
‘I haven’t spoken to him. My initial idea was to wait until this was sorted and then have a conversation with him once the dust had settled.’
Levein will combine his director’s role with the position of manager and, if some fans have been left underwhelmed by the appointment, there was an unmistakeable glint in his eye as he met the media early in the week.
Budge was surprised at the enthusiasm Levein showed for a return to the frontline and that hunger was backed up by a threeyear commitment to the job.
‘I just love this football club,’ he continues. ‘I have spent most of my adult life working at Hearts, which is bizarre to think about. I joined in 1983 as a player and have been coach, director, director of football, back to coach. Something about this place makes me feel happy.’
The public view of Levein has been coloured by three years in charge of Scotland but a look back at his spells with both United and first time round at Hearts bring back memories of a touchline firebrand who took on opponents — and the authorities — without fear or favour.
As Hearts boss he once staged an impromptu media briefing at which he played video footage that ‘proved’ his young defender Andy Webster had been elbowed by Celtic striker John Hartson.
At United, he was outspoken in his criticism of official Mike McCurry after a refereeing performance he felt favoured Rangers at Ibrox.
And then there’s Hibs. Levein loved the cut and thrust of the derby game, not least because Hearts held the whip hand for most of his time in maroon. Before departing to accept the Leicester City job in 2004, Levein delivered a withering rebuke to his opposite number Tony Mowbray in which he accused him of ‘a lorryload of sour grapes’ after a defeat, adding: ‘I’m fed up reading about teams who want to play lovely, flowing football. Once others realise if you press Hibs high up the pitch, then they can’t play and are going to struggle’.
Levein’s desire to win a trophy should not be underestimated either. His first spell managing Hearts saw him simultaneously cut costs and establish the team as the third best in the land, yet he never came close to landing a cup.
His time at Leicester offered another lesson in accountancy but he was gone before his efforts could bear fruit. At United, he constructed a good team but left to manage Scotland before his assistant Peter Houston guided them to Scottish Cup glory a few months later.
Hearts will play to win but we should not expect pretty patterns. If the Cathro adventure was a genuine attempt to revolutionise the club’s football practices, there had already been a reckoning on the training ground before the decision was taken for Levein to manage a football team for the first time since he bowed out as Scotland boss five years ago.
‘I believe every country has its own identity and ours is that of a colder country,’ explains Levein. ‘The conditions allow you to run as much as you can and so the game is played at a frantic pace with a lot of changes of possession.
‘In general the money isn’t there to have a high class of player who can control the ball and manipulate the game, so you get this constant churn of possession.’
Levein would love to restore Hearts to a level of European competitiveness but knows that goal may ultimately be hampered by what he intends to do with his team in the short term.
‘In Europe everything is done very slowly and you wait for the opposition to make a mistake,’ he expands. ‘That doesn’t happen here. We don’t play that way.
‘Celtic will do well because they play a different style of football to everybody else. The more often you get there the easier it becomes.
‘Aberdeen might be getting into a place where they understand it. But we are not at it and neither are St Johnstone.
‘Some of the European games I was involved in as a player and manager were brilliant.
‘Everybody goes on about Bordeaux but we got beat — the Braga game was best. I loved it. Coming up with a way of playing that allows you to be compact and also have a goal threat.’
The Braga game has the dual distinction of being both Hearts’ first at Murrayfield and Levein’s last European tie as a manager.
He would settle for a similar scoreline — a 3-1 victory — when Derek McInnes’s table-topping Dons come to town on Saturday.
‘I HAVEN’T SPOKEN TO IAN YET. BUT I REALLY DO BELIEVE HE WILL GO ON TO BE A TOP COACH SOMEWHERE’