Ramblings

Originally posted on 8th January, mostly responses here to questions i was asked about why there was no director of football and why we could no longer beat either side of the gruesome twosome. Meantime we had beat kilmarnock 2 - 1 in the cup but i have completely neglected to mention anything about it.


Hey,

You know it man, this is nothing new for us long suffering brethren.
I think at the moment i am just glad that i only have one team to lead me through the mire. Interested tho i get ( a bit ) i just don't feel the Leafs, maybe if we got to see some of the games over here i would get in there too.
Jambo's for ever indeed and this is still the most spectacular season at Tynecastle for eons and it is not going to stop.

The why's
I think it is pretty clear over here, to put it in laymans terms ........ "Romanov, he's a blaw, is eh no"
There was a documentary on BBCScotland a few weeks back, it was a very poorly veiled attempt at undermining our owner. The basic premise was to uncover some of his unsavoury business exploits over the years whilst he ammassed his millions. I ask you what successful entrepreneur does not have a few dodgy deals in his closet? The best they could come up with was a scam he has with a company in Croatia or something like that where he is exploiting a loophole in their tax laws so he can maximise the companies profit at the expense of the workers pension scheme. All sounds pretty ruthless but i still think that there are many worse goings on in your bog standard global conglomerate. Basically he is not a mafia boss or a KGB agent just a bloke who made a lot of money selling western shit to the Russians during the collapse of the Soviet Union. But that is not my point, during the show he was interviewed and stated (this is pretty much verbatim) "In ten years Hearts will be champions of Europe! Hearts will never be beaten five nil from Barcelona or Real Madrid, Hearts will be champions and i will be Hearts champion" Good grief can you imagine any British boss coming out with that kind of wild statement and he had this smile on his face like you just knew that he knew he was talking shite. I figured this is a cultural thing it is ok in his neck of the woods to come out with outrageous stuff like that, infact the people expect and respect that kind of possitive talk. Over here tho we just kind of shrug our shoulders and give it - "come oan man get real".
So the long and short of it is, this bloke will say just about anything if he thinks it sounds good at the time.
I think Hearts must be seen as a poisoned challice by a lot of the football world and will stay that way until at least the end of the season at least. Maybe then if the keel is even we might be in better shape to attract, players, managers and DOFs.

I am maybe warming a little to Rix, the style of football over most of the last two games has been as good as anything, maybe even better than under Burley. Maybe he just took a bit of time to get the team to start playing again after the trauma's, well see, cup game against Kilmarnock at the weekend and we play Hibs pretty soon so chances to get us smiling again.
and.
I was never really convinced by Burley, not for any other reason than he had never managed the team under pressure so the jury was still out, Rix at least has picked up a really hot potato and is running with it. Could just have been that Burley happened upon a brand new team, who clicked and caught a lot of people cold. If you analyse the results and the performances from the start of the season - apart from the first 3 games of Burleys reign, each game was steadily less good than the one before. The logical end was allways to start drawing games and eventually start losing games too. I remember commenting on the 1-0 win up at Inverness in September that it was far too early to be using the "grinding out a result when you are not playing well is a sign of a championship team" adage.
I am liking Rix's approach to substitutions at the moment, over the past 3 games he is making exactly the right change and in good time also - none of this bringing a new striker on with 7 minutes to go. For sure it didn't work against Celtic but he was forced into that with Fyassas being ordered off. His changes are just made with conviction and make absolute sense.

Burley is now manager of Southampton who have lost their 3 games under him, if Heart of Midlothian football club is a hot potato then Southampton is the English equivalent - Harry Rednapp, has now moved from managing arch rivals Portsmouth to managing Southampton for 6 months then moved back to Portsmouth, meanwhile Southampton get relegated from the premiership for the first time since the 70s.