Hope for broken Hearts

TOM ENGLISH

WHEN did the race to become Hearts' new manager begin in earnest? Phil Anderton will tell you when. At half-time in the game against Dunfermline last Saturday, a day that would end in tumult at the official announcement of George Burley's departure from Tynecastle, Anderton answered a call on his mobile. "Phil," said the voice on the other end, "I'm ringing to say that if there's a vacancy coming up at the club I have a person who'd like to talk to you." "Thanks," replied the chief executive. "I'll bear that in mind." Two hours before the news was made official and already the runners in the succession stakes were forming a queue at the start line.

By Thursday the field had stretched to 20. By Friday night it was closer to 30 and that's with all the "others" removed. "We've had a few loony applications," said Anderton. "These are guys who've written in to tell us that they train a team down the local park and that they're made for the job. They won't be ignored. They'll all get a letter on headed paper. 'Thanks for your application. Unfortunately, on this occasion, your skill-set doesn't quite match what we're looking for. We appreciate your interest.' They can frame it and put in on their wall."

The 30 that have been given varying degrees of consideration are known managers in the UK or foreigners with CVs that warrant a second look. Romanov is a difficult man but his apparent addiction to meddling has not frightened many candidates away. Last weekend some believed only puppets need apply for the Hearts post, but this is no flunkies' convention. With Hearts top of the SPL, money in the bank and Champions League football looking more probable by the week, there were always going to be enough heavyweights to support the line from George Foulkes that Hearts has become "a plum job".

On Wednesday, Anderton flew to London and spent an hour and a half with Claudio Ranieri, winner of cups in Italy and Spain and entrusted with £130m of Roman Abramovich's money at Chelsea before "failure" - second in the Premiership and an exit at the semi-final stage of the Champions League - saw an end to him. Ranieri, who more recently spent unhappy times at his old club Valencia, met Romanov in person on Thursday, the same day Anderton met Sir Bobby Robson. They are the leading pair, probably in that order, but there are others.

"It's been like Groundhog Day," said Anderton. "Since the announcement on Saturday, the pressure has been on. The time scales in football are compressed. I was speaking to somebody the other day and I asked them if they had to make a senior appointment how long would it take them to do it. They were looking at a minimum of three months. We've done a lot in a week.

"I say it's been about pressure, but maybe that's not the right word. I tell you, you could do worse things with your life than talk football with Ranieri and Robson. It was a great thrill. Anticipation would be a better word. Excitement. It comes from everybody and their dog saying, 'Right, where's our new manager?' Nobody is saying, 'Get your finger out' but there is a great passion there to move on.

"Ranieri's up for it. These meetings are about selling the club [to a prospective manager], but you also have to establish whether the candidate is for real and figure out how they see things. If there's common ground then you take it to the next level. I got a good vibe off him. He was excited. He knows what we're trying to do.

"We know Bobby [Robson] from the last time. We spent hours with him before but he had to decline for personal reasons. So it was just a case of picking up the phone. Was he interested? Yes. People have mentioned his age. I can tell you that he has more energy than most six-year-olds and his passion for the game would put 99% of us to shame. He's as sharp as a needle."

Ranieri. Robson. Romanov. In many ways they are three of a kind in that they are all touched with a little eccentricity. In that regard the two managerial veterans have more in common with the Lithuanian than the more youthful Burley ever had. Ranieri, after all, is the man who once admitted that his 84-year-old mother used to throw a fit every time he left the Irishman Damien Duff out of his Chelsea team. "She asks, 'Why isn't Damien playing?' She kills me about it and that's true."

Some of Robson's public utterances are famously loopy:

"We don't want our players to be monks, we want them to be better football players because a monk doesn't play football at this level."

"He's very fast and if he gets a yard ahead of himself, nobody will catch him."

Sir Bobby and his namesake Bryan had a chat at the World Cup in Italy in 1990:

Bobby to Bryan: "Where's Bobby Robson?"

Bryan to Bobby: "That's you gaffer."

Bobby to Bryan: "Oh yes... I mean Bryan."

Bryan to Bobby: "That's me boss, I'm here."

None of that should disguise the fact that both men are still engrossed in their football despite their recent bruising experiences at Valencia and Newcastle and their fabulous wealth. Ranieri, for instance, left Chelsea with a settlement in excess of £6m. Romanov, with his Elvis suits and his poetry, comes from the same peculiar place as the other two but he, too, is a deadly serious operator. Obviously his reputation for interference has not dimmed Ranieri's or Robson's enthusiasm for Tynecastle one little bit.

This is especially intriguing in Robson's case given that his two main confidants in Scotland are believed to be his former Ipswich players, Terry Butcher and Burley. We know the kind of advice they must have given him and also that he is disregarding it. Clearly, Romanov's reputation is not a problem to him.

IN OCTOBER 2002, STOKE CITY IDENTIFIED GEORGE Burley as their new manager. They courted him and, so they say, got a verbal agreement out of him. They invited him to a Wednesday night game and Burley sat in the front row of the directors' box right beside the chairman. The supporters applauded him. It was a done deal, to be made formal and announced the following morning.

The press conference was set for 11am, October 30. Martin Spinks was there for the Sentinel newspaper. "The table was all set up; the advertising boards, the television lights. We were ready to go. The only missing element was George. He never turned up. Apparently he phoned the chairman that morning and said he didn't want the job. We asked why but we never found out. There were rumours he was unsettled by some boardroom division but they were only rumours. Nobody knew. It was a mystery and the chairman was livid."

In June of this year Burley resigned at Derby after leading the club from the danger of the drop to the play-offs on a budget of tuppence ha'penny. It was a feat to match his best work at Ipswich which once brought him a Premiership manager of the year award. No Derby fan will ever forget the job he did there nor, probably, will they ever figure out the exact reasons why he left. Another mystery.

Burley did not get on with John Sleightholme, the chairman. His relationship with Murdo Mackay, the director of football, was also fractious. Burley says otherwise but Sleightholme swears the issues between them were all discussed and resolved but he resigned anyway. "George raised a specific concern with the board," he said in the week Burley left. "We had a meeting and he agreed to stay. He now feels he cannot continue. We asked if there was anything we could do to change his mind. He [Burley] said there was no solution possible. The board, having satisfied his requests, is disappointed he has not made clear his real reasons for leaving."

That was June 7, close to, if the not the exact day, Robson turned Hearts down. Three weeks later Burley was unveiled at Tynecastle.

Then, as now, "the real reasons" for Burley's departure include a notion that he was negotiating a way out. Derby have misgivings about Hearts' role in Burley's exit from Pride Park and it was reported during the week that some at Hearts wondered about a link between their former manager and Aston Villa. However, like most of the rumours attached to this business, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Doug Ellis, the high priest of Villa Park, knows Burley well. But he does not have the money to pay off David O'Leary given that he has three years to go on a contract worth well over a million pounds a year.

The truth about the break-up lies beneath a cloak of anonymity. Maybe there's a big secret at the heart of it, but we doubt it. Combine Burley's unpredictability in the past and Romanov's controlling of the present and you have a toxic mix well capable of poisoning the relationship. Maybe Romanov never truly wanted Burley, Robson being his preferred choice in the beginning. Maybe he undermined him, maybe he was mean-spirited, never praising his manager in public for taking Hearts to the top of the league.

Romanov chipped away at Burley constantly. There is a suggestion that Romanov told Burley he was going to appoint a director of football over his head (the Lithuanian sees a director as essential) and perhaps Burley had flashbacks to Mackay at Derby and reacted. He wanted more of a say, Romanov refused to bend. They parted. It's just another theory in a week full of them.

"A lot of what has been written has been completely off the mark," said Anderton. "Some people are getting certain elements of it, but we have to stick by the confidentiality agreement. We move on."

They have. All of them. Even by midweek the supporters had grown weary of conspiracies. Negative energy in such positive times. They took big strides last Saturday with the win over Dunfermline and finished their grieving on Wednesday with victory over Kilmarnock. Takis Fyssas, the Greek full-back, came to see us after the Killie match. Respect to Burley, he said. But life goes on. He captured the mood perfectly.

"I'm a professional football player and this happened in Greece sometimes. You speak now with a person who changed, in one year, four coaches. I have seen a lot of things in my career. I change a lot of trainers but I keep my mind on the club I belong to. I give all my power in all the games. But I can say only good things about my old coach. I came here by Mr Romanov's choice and Mr Burley accepted me very nicely in the team. I gave everything to him. He is a good coach but, you know, football is business. We keep going.

"Now I want to go home, relax and think about the next day. I think all the time about the next day."

Taken from the Scotsman