BURLEY: "Just because I think finishing third would be a good season does not mean we don’t want to finish first"

By Alan Campbell

WILL George Burley walk? Amid the euphoria which has engulfed Tynecastle and its environs, the one question which nags at Hearts’ supporters is whether the fragile relationship between their manager and major shareholder Vladimir Romanov will irretrievably break down.

It must be galling for a manager, and one who as recently as 2001 was voted by his peers as the best in England, to have the club’s de facto Lithuanian owner parachuting players into the club. It’s just not the British way of doing things, old chap. But while Burley may have had occasion to consider his position since his appointment at the tail end of June, pragmatism suggests there will be more lost than gained by a hasty exit from Tynecastle.

Until the hypothetical day when Romanov crosses the line agreed by the two men and picks the side, Burley would do well to consider the positives – and what better to focus his mind than the career of the man who will be in the visitors’ dugout on Saturday when Rangers arrive at Tynecastle on Premierleague business?

Alex McLeish and Burley began their management apprenticeships within 43 days of each other in 1994, the latter at Colchester and McLeish at Motherwell. But, despite both being ranked in the top tier of young British managers, it wasn’t until McLeish replaced Dick Advocaat at the helm of Rangers that a list of trophies started to pile up on his CV.

The blunt fact is that Burley hasn’t even the consolation of the First Division title with which to impress prospective employers. Unlike McLeish, who won it with Hibs. The more perceptive would still rate Burley’s achievements in guiding Ipswich into the Premiership and into Europe after finishing fifth, as well as Derby County to the Premiership play-offs, as ample reasons to hire him; but at some stage in a successful manager’s resume there has to be league or cup wins.

Which is why, after initial indignation when the point is put to him on Thursday, Burley accepts that Hearts could provide him with a unique opportunity. And at Tynecastle he would be unlikely to receive the abuse McLeish has had from a section of the Rangers support for the cheek of leading them to two league titles, two Scottish Cups and three CIS Cups.

“I’ve just started,” Burley laughs of his career, but he is also mildly disconcerted when speaking about the spaces in his trophy cabinet.

“There’s not many managers have silverware,” he responds, before switching defence to attack. “I’m pleased about my career and my record whether I’ve won a cup or not. When I took over Ipswich [in 1994], if I had told people I would take the club back into Europe they would have said not an earthly chance. But I did.

“I got manager of the year from the League Managers’ Association, so I couldn’t get any better than that as far as being a manager is concerned. I still feel I’ve got a lot to offer, put it that way. I’ve improved as a manager because you learn through experience and get a better feeling for players. I’m confident in my own ability.”

There are still sceptics out there, but all the available evidence is that Romanov is prepared to provide Burley with the ammunition with which to challenge the Old Firm in the medium term. After Hearts’ dramatic start to the season, nobody is laughing at the Lithuanian’s claims any more. That the ammunition is not always to Burley’s choosing is just something he is going to have to learn to live with.

The jury, never mind Burley, is still very much out on the latest acquisitions, Ibrahim Tall and Samuel Camazzola, neither of whom impressed in a reserve game against Livingston on Tuesday, but these were deadline-bursting signings and the manager is not obliged to play them. It was Romanov’s network, not Burley’s, which brought European Championship winner Takis Fyssas to the club; there is only universal approval for the Greek internationalist and the other summer arrivals, Julien Brellier, Roman Bednar, Michal Popsisil, Edgar Jankauskas and the already iconic, seven-goals-in-seven-games Rudi Skacel ... compare and contrast with another Marseille ‘release’ entering the SPL, the as-yet unseen Rangers and Sean Connery signing, Brahim Hemdani.

As Jim McLean, who took Dundee United to the title in 1982-83 with a squad even thinner than that of Hearts, has pointed out, whoever is advising Romanov obviously has a very good knowledge of football.

What should also give Burley succour is the knowledge that the Lithuanian will finance further plunges into the transfer market as early as January if – and there’s no reason to believe they won’t be – Hearts are still chasing the championship. This time, unlike the frenzied activity of the summer, there will be more breathing space for the manager and major shareholder to find common ground on the new additions.

Naturally, though, Burley is being cautious about his employment prospects. This week his wife, Gill, will open a clothes shop – not in Edinburgh, but in Ipswich where the couple’s home remains. The manager rents a house in the Scottish capital and commutes the short air distance when necessary to Suffolk.

After eight largely successful years in the dugout at Ipswich, the club where he distinguished himself as a full-back, Burley found himself receiving his jotters in October 2002. Ironically the man who was forced to carry out the firing, the normally affable David Sheepshanks, is the one chairman with whom Burley has been truly comfortable.

“I deserved to get sacked,” says Burley candidly of a year when Ipswich were relegated, then made a poor start in Division One. “In football it’s going to happen. I had almost eight years there, which is not bad for a manager. As well as taking them to Europe, we got into four play-offs and brought through some of the best young players in the country.

“I’ve still got a very good relationship with David Sheepshanks. I knew him when he was a supporter and I was a player. I saw him on Tuesday, when I was at Ipswich’s game against Southampton.”

Nothing at Portman Road would have prepared Burley for employment under Romanov, but he did experience how disruptive disharmony was at Derby County. He says there was nothing wrong with his relationship with chairman John Sleightholme, but the opposite was the case with the club’s director of football and fellow Scot Murdo Mackay.

Until recently it was a mystery how Mackay, who was made bankrupt in 1993 and prohibited from being a director of any company for three years, pitched up in his Derby post. Since his sequestration he has been involved in several business ventures, including one called Inside Soccer Recruitment which employed Terry Butcher and Eric Black. The Motherwell manager, in his recently published autobiography, alleged he lost £37,000 in the venture and Black almost double. The firm was later put into compulsory liquidation.

In the circumstances, when Burley and Mackay couldn’t work together at Derby, it might have been the latter’s integrity which was questioned. Instead Burley came under scrutiny when Derby players were asked, after the May play-off defeat against Preston, whether the manager had acted in an unprof essional manner and taken training sessions under the influence of alcohol.

None would concur, but Burley, who denies the allegation and has to live with the slur, walked out of the club. Mackay offered to follow, but is still at Derby. The local evening paper revealed this year that Sleightholme, the chairman, was formerly a director of several of Mackay’s companies.

For all his reported difficulties with Romanov over interference in playing matters, Burley may well conclude that he is dealing with a more transparent set of circumstances in Edinburgh. Nor are Hearts, under the Russian-born Lithuanian, likely to be a selling club, as were Ipswich and Derby. If that was the case Paul Hartley would be at Celtic and, possibly, Andy Webster at Rangers.

“It does excite me,” he admits. “The potential of Hearts, for me, is massive. I’m not so much surprised as amazed at the size of club it could be. At Ipswich and Derby I thought we had tremendous fans, but to take 5,500 to Tannadice and 6,200 to Livingston is incredible.

“We can compete one day with the Old Firm. I know Mr Romanov said that six months ago and everybody laughed. It could arise in the next two or three years but only time will tell.”

Burley, for reasons that are all too understandable, is sticking to the mantra that this season the target is for Hearts to finish third. But is this constant refrain not putting a ceiling on the club’s potential?

“Not at all,” he replies with that trademark smile which holds a hint of menace. “Just because I think finishing third would be a good season, it doesn’t mean we don’t want to finish first – or win every game we play. But you can only progress from the season before.”

In fact, given how late Burley and the new playing recruits were in arriving at Tynecastle, the progress of the last seven weeks has been astonishing. It wasn’t so much the six league wins on the trot going into yesterday’s game against Inverness Caledonian Thistle, but the manner of these performances.

More goals (19) scored than any other side. Less (4) conceded than any other side. More shots on target (47) than any other side. And, just as tellingly, more fouls committed (113) than any other side.

Not all these statistics can be lies, just as Hearts are not a dirty team as such. But the figures are testament to the attacking philosophy at the core of Burley’s side; the solid defence shored by Craig Gordon, Steven Pressley and Andy Webster; and the manner in which the side hunts in packs to close down the opposition. It is perhaps also pertinent to point out that as well as an intelligent manager, Hearts possess intelligent players.

All of which has given the Edinburgh side huge momentum to take into the rest of the season, even although Burley knows better than most that disappointment is only 90 minutes away. The downside of Hearts’ position is that other clubs will now raise their games against them.

“There are so many pitfalls round the corner in football, so we’re not getting carried away,” agrees the manager. “We’re still in the very early stages of building a team and a squad, but we have a nucleus who are working hard for each other.

“They’ve all been hard games to date, but we’ve deserved to win them all. We’re a very positive team – we go out to try to win games and score goals. That’s been the case from the start of the season. I want players to express themselves and go forward.

“There’s no doubt that at some stage we’re going to get beaten and there will be set-backs, but we’re going to have a positive outlook.”

A peculiarity before yesterday’s game against Caley Thistle was that the three strikers had scored only four of the 19 league goals, but Burley has an explanation.

“They’re still not fully fit. None of them had a pre-season, and the best is still to come. I wouldn’t swap any of them for any other striker in Scotland.”

None of this talk smacks of a manager contemplating walking the plank. Two years ago Fulham wanted Burley before appointing Chris Coleman, and earlier this season he was again linked with the London club. But aside from being closer to his family, is trying to help Fulham (in the employment of Mohammed Al-Fayed) or a club of their stature avoid relegation really a better job than potentially winning trophies and competing in Europe with Hearts?

Don’t think so. Burley, who denies that he came close to resigning when he and Romanov had a spat over Brellier playing against Dundee United, may, in his more contemplative moments, also conclude that he needs Hearts just as much as Hearts need him.

Taken from the Sunday Herald