Rix finding Hearts stress unbearable

GRAHAM SPIERS, Chief Sports Writer December 20 2005

Graham Rix, the Hearts head coach, is feeling increasingly stressed and isolated at Tynecastle, and yesterday was said to be desperate for the club to finally appoint their new director of football in order to divert the media gaze away from him.

Rix resembled a haunted figure following his team's 1-0 defeat to Rangers at Ibrox on Saturday, and the testimony of various Tynecastle sources yesterday made perfectly plain why.

The Hearts coach is said to have found his five weeks in Scotland "highly stressful", mainly due to ongoing media allusions to his prison sentence of six years ago, and is urging Vladimir Romanov, Hearts' owner, to get his director of football in as quickly as possible. Romanov hopes to confirm the appointment within the next three weeks.

"You are looking at a man who has been broken by the media coverage," one Tynecastle source said of Rix. "Graham had no idea it would be like this when he applied for, and got, the Hearts job. It has been an extremely tough time for him."

Jim Duffy, who worked with Rix at Chelsea and remains a friend of the Hearts coach, has also expressed sympathy over his current circumstances.

"Graham is a great lad with a lot of coaching experience, but there's no doubt that his Hearts experience has been an eye-opener for him," said Duffy. "Just on a personal level, I've told him that he should try to relax a bit more in the job, but then again, that's not so easy when you're desperate to get results."

The news that, behind the scenes, Rix is struggling to cope with all the pressure around him helps to explain the persecuted look worn by the Hearts coach following the weekend defeat to Rangers. Facing a media inquisition over why Hearts could boast just one win in five matches under him, Rix's body language was that of a wary, embattled man.

Hearts meet Falkirk at Tynecastle on Saturday and then face Celtic at home on New Year's Day. Rix desperately needs a run of good results to quell the growing disenchantment among Hearts fans over the decline in their team's form.

"I actually don't think Graham realised how big Hearts were in the Scottish context," said Duffy. "I think that aspect has maybe surprised him. The other thing is, any new coach or manager would need at least a month to assess the squad at his disposal and, to be fair to Graham, that's the process he has been going through recently. From now on, though, obviously he needs to start getting results."

Rix is said to be still wounded by the media frenzy over his prison sentence which exploded around him when he first came to Hearts. Privately, he is also said to have been aggrieved at the effect the media's coverage has had on his family life, especially that of his step-children from his recent remarriage.

Rix's wish is to step back from media duties and leave much of that to the incoming director of football so that he can concentrate almost exclusively on his players and the training ground.

Hearts, meanwhile, yesterday described reports that they wished to sell midfielder Paul Hartley as "total nonsense". The club has been angered by tabloid reports which claimed that Hearts wished to cash-in on Hartley's soaring value.

Hartley is one of a number of Hearts players who are believed to have adjusted poorly to Rix's arrival at the club. Interviewed by the media following the Ibrox defeat, the midfielder gave a decent impression of wanting to say more than he felt he could about Hearts' form, and it was an impression duplicated yesterday by defender Robbie Neilson's comments.

"We seem to be struggling and I don't know what it is," said Neilson. "I don't know if it's belief, but we're in the best position we've been in for years, so really, we should be as confident as we can be. But it just doesn't seem to be happening.

"We need to address it and try to get our heads together and figure it out. [Our form] isn't good enough.

"We set out our standards at the beginning of the season and we are failing to live up to them."

Confirming the pressure that Rix and Hearts are now under, Neilson described Saturday's match against Falkirk as "a must-win game".

Taken from the Herald