Robertson’s swipe at Celtic

“With the two players we have signed I have gone about my business quietly and in the right manner,” said Robertson. “Contact the players, contact the agents, then announce it when we’ve got it done. We’ve seen this week that if you make it public that you are after a certain player, it can unsettle them. We’re still pursuing players for one or two positions, but I won’t be saying who they are because I don’t want to upset the players or fans of that particular club.”

It was a reference to Celtic’s very public courtship of Paul Hartley, Robertson’s main man in midfield, a move Hearts appear to have fended off. The difference in the deals is as stark as that between the players involved. Hartley made it impossible for Walter Smith, the Scotland manager, to omit him from the training squad he named on Friday. Burchill, with six Scotland caps, has been released by Portsmouth after loan spells and injury punctuated the three-and-a-half years that followed his £900,000 move from Celtic. “He is 24 and a long way from his peak,” said Robertson, who seems content with a forward roster that includes Miller, Burchill, Dennis Wyness, Graham Weir, Hjalmar Thorarinsson and defender-cum-striker Kevin McKenna.

“We will know what we have to work with on Tuesday morning,” said Robertson, and it was unclear whether he was expecting another arrival or an unwanted exit before the end of the transfer window. On Tuesday evening, Hearts play Motherwell for a place in the final of the CIS Cup. This season could yet include at least one trip to Hampden for Hearts, but it is undoubtedly one of transition. Robertson has already lost Mark de Vries and Alan Maybury, while Patrick Kisnorbo will join them at Leicester in the summer. Miller, Burchill and Icelandic teenager Thorarinsson are all, for now, short-term solutions, contracted until the end of the season. David Fox, a midfielder from Manchester United, and Brian Cash, the Bristol Rovers winger, are on loan, as are Saulius Mikoliunas and Marius Kizys, the two Lithuanians who remained in Edinburgh after the Kaunas training camp earlier in January.

Had Vladimir Romanov, the Lithuanian-based banker, been as sleek in his acquisition of Hearts as his manager was when he signed Burchill, the club may by now have had the security to sign players on long-term deals. Miller has scored two crucial goals already while Mikoliunas and Thorarinsson were exciting additions at Almondvale last Tuesday, but there remains a feeling that things could change drastically in the summer. For better, or worse? The best sign yet came late on Friday, when Hearts chairman George Foulkes shot down Celtic’s move for Hartley. Their initial £200,000 bid, said Foulkes, was so far off the club’s valuation for their player that negotiations could not continue. “We don’t want to lose him,” said Robertson, “he is a big, big player for us, in more ways than one.” The news will lift the supporters, for whom a place in the final of a major competition is worth far more than a transfer fee. But it’s not just the supporters.

“I only won one winner’s medal during my playing career with Hearts and I didn’t play in that game,” said Robertson, an unused substitute in the 1998 Scottish Cup final victory over Rangers, the last involvement of a record-breaking Hearts career. “It would be nice to take them back into a final as manager,” he said. “The expectations of Hearts fans is to get to cup finals and to qualify for Europe.”

Robertson is one game away from meeting the first of those expectations, despite the maelstrom around him.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk