Stendel must get what he wants if he is to fix this mess
DANIEL STENDEL got off to a bit of a false start during the week when admitting, on the day of his grand coronation, that he had never heard of Hearts. How he must wish that was still the case. If he isn’t already wondering what in the name of the wee man he has got himself into, just wait until this coming Saturday when he’s frozen to the bone on the touchline at the Fountain of Youth Stadium, watching a game of pinball on a plastic pitch against a Hamilton Accies side up for getting wired into his team of gutless wonders.
Maybe Barnsley do have a decent case in insisting he has no right to be at Tynecastle. Maybe he should get in touch with their legal team and let bygones be bygones. You never know, they might still be able to offer him some way out of this.
Watching brief excerpts of his TV interview in the wake of yesterday’s predictably dismal home loss to St Johnstone, Stendel looked like a man for whom a great realisation was dawning. Like the ringmaster putting his head in the lion’s mouth before remembering he’d forgotten to give it lunch.
‘It’s hard work. More hard work than I expected,’ he conceded.
No surprise there, then. Forget all that guff earlier in the season from his predecessor Craig Levein about being relaxed about the team’s situation because they were still only ‘x’ amount of points off fourth.
Top six is already beginning to look like a pipe dream with this squad of dross his shambolic and expensive recruitment policy cobbled together. Lose at Accies and Hearts are, no pun intended, marooned at the bottom of the Premiership.
Accies haven’t won in 11 games, of course. Well, they couldn’t have anyone better coming to visit as they endeavour to put that right.
‘We need to change some things very quickly,’ remarked Stendel in his St Johnstone post-mortem. Yes, and not just on the field.
The fact Levein is still hanging around and having a say in things is bad enough. That chairman Ann Budge actually appears to be entertaining the possibility of keeping him and his former assistant Austin MacPhee on at the club as she works out how best to reconfigure the football department is nothing short of bonkers.
Does she honestly think the punters will swallow that? Their protests were ignored until it was absolutely impossible to do anything other than take Levein out of the dugout in late October — and they would be fully entitled to get back out on the cobbles should the management team behind this disaster zone be allowed to carry on in alternative roles beyond the expiration of their contracts. They shouldn’t be there as it is.
Clearly, Stendel has realised what a mess the place is in. He wants the younger players farmed out on loan back training at Riccarton during the week because he has noticed a real lack of identity and a greater need to establish a route from academy to first team.
That was supposed to be part of Levein’s remit. Much was made of it when the likes of Harry Cochrane and Anthony McDonald were getting a game. Mind you, when you bring in upwards of 80 players during your five-year spell as director of football, establishing an identity is always going to be a little tricky.
Budge stated earlier this week that she wants Stendel to ‘shout his demands’. If he is to have any chance, he must begin by insisting upon the place being emptied from top to bottom.
He was absolutely right in keeping Levein and MacPhee out of the dugout yesterday. He does not need them hanging over him at the club in any capacity.
Watching Rangers manager Steven Gerrard mark the signing of his new contract this week by posing for a photo with his entire backroom staff should have hinted at just how important having your own people behind you really is in modern football.
Stendel should make it clear he deserves the staff he wants, whether that be his former Barnsley assistants Chris Stern and Dale Tonge or others.
He should make it clear he wants the old guard out of the picture. And he must make it clear that January should only be the start in bringing in a whole new squad of talent. No expense spared.
He will never be in a better bargaining position, for sure, than now — because Budge, in football parlance, is having a ’mare.
Lauded by all for her role in saving the club, things began to go a bit Pete Tong when she started putting that new stand together at Tynecastle.
Being forced into admitting they had forgotten to order seats for it after initially blaming the weather was an embarrassment — and things haven’t picked up much since.
If it stays like this in footballing terms, her retention in the wake of next year’s handover to the Foundation of Hearts surely cannot be the seamless fait accompli everyone has so far accepted.
Even the appointment of Stendel this week was totally cack-handed with Barnsley, still vowing to take Hearts to court over contractual issues, throwing it out there with vicious timing that the reason they got rid of the 45-year-old in October was because he was allegedly negotiating with another club behind their backs.
There hasn’t been this much talk of ‘tampering’ since Graham Rix was the manager. That Hearts don’t even know if they want a sporting director any more — never mind identifying someone capable of doing the job — is a risky strategy.
For someone schooled in German football and clubs where individuals all have set roles and parameters, it must be anathema to Stendel.
The chaos that Budge’s unyielding trust in Levein created is there for all to see. That this squad commands the fourth-highest wage bill in Scotland and, somehow, looks like bona-fide relegation material is all the evidence you need of what has been going on.
Stendel already seems to have clocked it. The question is whether he has the wherewithal to turn it round.
Shouting his demands is the least he can do. Even then, this looks like a job likely to leave him screaming for mercy. The early signs definitely haven’t been good.