A ROARING TRADE
Hearts chief Savage aims to bridge Old Firm gap with ‘clever’ recruitment plan
IT ALL started with a £30 payment to draft a scouting report for Hamilton Accies. Now Joe Savage wants his expertise to establish a multi-million pound trading model that ultimately transforms Hearts into title contenders. It’s been almost a year since Savage was appointed sporting director at Tynecastle and he has used the time to refurbish several aspects of club operations.
Previously head of recruitment at Preston North End, he had been part of a successful three-man package alongside Alex Neil and Frankie McAvoy since they took Hamilton into Scottish football’s top flight in 2013.
They later headed south together for Norwich City where they would operate at Premier League level before moving on to Preston.
Yet as Neil, and later McAvoy, fulfilled their ambitions to coach and manage in England, Savage started to feel hemmed in by the tag of recruitment man.
And so he grasped the opportunity to prove he was not a one-trick pony. A Zoom interview with Tynecastle chair Ann Budge and
chief executive Andrew
This is a special club with history, a big club and we can go places
McKinlay provided a platform for persuasion.
‘I wanted this job so that I could step away and show I had more of a skill set,’ says the 37-year-old. ‘I’m so thankful that Ann and Andrew noticed that in me.
‘Under my umbrella I have recruitment, analysis, medical, academy and the women’s team. It’s broad.
‘I have a five-year-old daughter and she is really into football. That has really drawn my interest... what is the landscape like for her if she wants to be a footballer?’
To that end, Savage has brought in Eva Olid, previously head coach with the Catalan FA, and he has also beefed up the academy structure by poaching John McLaughlan from Celtic as coaching development manager with responsibility for several age groups.
Yet he knows it’s through his work in sourcing players for Robbie Neilson’s first team that he will be publicly judged. So far, it has done him no harm to carry none of the baggage of his predecessor.
Unlike Craig Levein, Savage held no previous connection to Hearts and barely had a playing career to speak of before retiring from his part-time role as a striker with East Stirlingshire at the age of 28.
There has been no talk of Savage working head coach Neilson from the back and the pair worked in tandem to secure reinforcements like Gary Mackay-Steven to help secure the team’s promotion from the Championship back in January.
Yet it was in the summer that Savage really came into his own.
It took a while for the club to get its main business done but the hit rate from their main signings has been impressive. The arrival of midfielder Beni Baningime following his release from Everton has looked a fine piece of business from the minute he made his debut against Celtic on day one of the Premiership season.
Alongside him, Cammy Devlin has been a ball of energy since flying in from Australian side Newcastle Jets, while Barrie McKay and Liverpool loanee Ben Woodburn have provided guile in attack.
‘The key word is patience,’ says Savage. ‘Until the signature is on paper, you have not got that player.
‘I always say to recruitment staff you never know what goes on behind closed doors, what might have changed. With Beni, we wanted to be at the front of the queue if Everton released him.
‘We knew we were getting Cammy Devlin at the beginning of July but couldn’t do anything because we had to go through the work permit process, then he got called up for the Australian Olympic squad and then had to quarantine for two weeks.
‘We thought we had Ben Woodburn tied up but Jurgen Klopp was undecided because he had been training well with the first team.
‘We were never panicked because we had others lined up. But you’re aware that even if you have ten lined up, you could be left with one after an hour of phone calls.’
That may be so but there finally seems to be sense and method to Hearts’ transfer policy now after years of churn and a procession of bad signings.
‘You will never hear me criticise another recruitment department because I know how hard it is,’ adds Savage. ‘We felt the turnover of players here was too much but still we needed to get our own in, seven or eight to strengthen the squad.
‘And we will try again in January. We have to be striving for Europe, potentially try to split the Old Firm and get into that top two.
‘I’m not saying we are going to do it but my ambition is to win the league. We have two top sides in the Premiership but why are we here if we don’t want to win the league?
Let’s see if we can help Robbie and his staff build a team.
‘With its history, tradition and fanbase this is a special club. And it’s a big club. We can go places.
‘We have to make Tynecastle such a hard place to come.
‘Rangers won the league comfortably last season and while at Norwich I watched a lot of Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s Feyenoord side.
‘He has done it all before and so has Ange Postecoglou who has brought a style of play to Celtic that has caused us problems. It’s about trying to bridge the gap by being clever with our recruitment.’
That Savage is able to speak of operating in such esteemed company is remarkable given his modest background.
Originally from the Lanarkshire village of Carfin, Savage had been working as an engineer with SSE when he called time on his playing career on medical grounds.
‘I was sitting on the couch one day and got this shooting pain from my hips which made me jerk,’ he explains. ‘My wife Yvonne told me to get it checked out at the hospital.
‘The doctor said the good news was that I didn’t have arthritis. The bad news was that I probably would get it eventually. I agreed that I could give up the football then a
couple of weeks later I got a phone call from the Bo’ness United manager Allan McGonigal.
‘He asked if I’d come along and play but it just didn’t feel right. I was a centre-forward and my game was all about physicality, winning headers — and landing heavily.
‘So I agreed to do some scouting, oblivious to Allan’s connection to Hamilton. Next thing, I’m being asked to go and watch Hamilton’s next opponents Dunfermline.
‘I was getting £30 per game and loving it before I got the opportunity to go full-time. I formed a real alliance with Alex and Frankie and things snowballed from there. ’
Savage first caught wind of Hearts’ potential interest when Levein was removed from his dual role as manager and director of football in late 2019.
The process of installing a successor to the latter role was paused following the appointment of Daniel Stendel as manager and shelved altogether when the pandemic hit a few months later.
In comparison to his predecessor, Savage has gone about his business with relative anonymity.
There has been no suggestion that he is puling the strings behind Neilson, no footage of him passing notes to the dugout during games.
Yet one day, he will inevitably be charged with finding a replacement for the man in charge of the team.
Just last month, his Rangers counterpart Ross Wilson found himself tasked with replacing Steven Gerrard at short notice, with many remarking that the Ibrox sporting director ought to have had a list of potential replacements tucked away in a drawer for such an eventuality.
Savage is eager to dispel that particular myth. ‘Am I keeping my eye on managers now? No, I’m not.
‘I’m happy with Robbie and he is happy here. We have a close relationship, so I think I’d be the first to know if he was planning to leave.
‘If someone comes in for him that’s another story. But to have targets? That’s disrespectful.
‘Say you do have a drawer full of potential managers and then when you go into the drawer they’ve all gone into new jobs, signed new contracts. What happens then? And who is to say we don’t have someone behind the scenes here who could step up and do the job?’
Savage is planning for next month’s transfer window. An obvious priority would be a new striker to take some of the weight off top scorer Liam Boyce. Longer term, he also wants the club’s youth system to start regularly producing players of the requisite quality — something promised yet not delivered on Levein’s watch.
‘One of the things that is a bugbear of mine is that we don’t have a reserve league or a B Team,’ he says. ‘The jump from Under-18s to first team is massive, too big. ‘Brexit is also complicating things, both in terms of recruitment and clubs watching our players. Scottish players will become more appealing to English clubs.’
Ultimately, the key will be for Hearts to find a sustainable transfer model that sees them recruit young, hungry players cheap and sell them on for a profit. The club have been quite clear in their ambitions to do just that with Baningime (below). Devlin could possibly follow. ‘Every club has to find a way to trade,’ he adds. ‘At Norwich, we brought in Ben Godfrey from York City for £300,000. Four years later, he goes to Everton for £25m. What a return that is on your money.’ Under the guidance of Budge and the Foundation of Hearts, the club have built a new main stand at Tynecastle but Savage can see further potential for investment in bricks and mortar.
‘If we were to start player trading at a high value, we would potentially look at our own training ground.’ he says.
‘We have a lease at Oriam but further down the line that’s something the club could look at if the finances are right.’