Fortune favours the latest manager

By Alan Campbell

IF carrying good fortune is one of the prerequisites of the successful manager, Valdas Ivanauskas demonstrated yesterday that he is well suited for the role of head coach at Hearts.

With club owner Vladimir Romanov watching from the main stand, Hearts gave one of their worst performances of the season yet emerged with a rare three points from their travels. That was a feat which had largely eluded Graham Rix, and was one of the factors which led to his dismissal last Tuesday.

That sacking, following on the far more controversial one of George Burley in October, has led many to conclude that no British coach will be able to work in harmonious tandem with Romanov. That leaves the 39-year-old Ivanauskas with the opportunity to make the post his own if he can keep Hearts in second place and deliver the Scottish Cup.

If he achieves both, Ivanauskas will have had 10 games to prove his worth. Just nine short of Rix, and yesterday he enjoyed dollops of luck as his side eked a 2-1 victory from a bad-tempered game.

At the end Ivanauskas walked over to the Hearts supporters to applaud them for their support. That backing had often been lukewarm as they regarded a lacklustre performance by their side, but Ivanauskas clearly has political skills. They will need to be finely honed if he is to survive in Romanov’s employment.

He has, of course, been here before. Ivanauskas won the league and cup double in Lithaunia with Kaunas, but was dismissed just over a year ago. A couple of months later he joined the Hearts coaching staff, and has since been accused of being the eyes and ears of Romanov.

Obviously a survivor, Ivanauskas was guarded to the extreme when dealing with the media after yesterday’s game.

For the Fourth Estate, this was the fifth such Hearts representative already this season. First there was Burley, then John McGlynn, followed by Rix, who passed on the media duties to Jim Duffy. And that’s not including Steven Pressley, who in times of extreme crisis has been the de facto head coach.

Whatever Ivanauskas’s qualities, garrulousness seems not to be among them. Although, to be fair, his first language is Lithuanian and he also speaks competently in German. But although his English may be halting , it was surely not a lack of knowledge of the language which caused him to disingeneously claim he wasn’t aware the club’s owner had been at the game.

Nor, apparently, had he spoken to Romanov before the game. Nor did he know if he was going to speak to him later in the evening.

Working for Romanov, the former Soviet submariner, can have the effect of having a torpedo stuffed in your mouth – but according to Jorg Albertz, the former Rangers midfielder, Ivanauskas is no pussycat himself.

The two played together for Hamburg in the 1990s, and according to Albertz: “On the pitch he was mental. He wanted to win so badly that when you looked in his eyes you saw a man on the verge of insanity.”

Given that the temporary head coach, who was capped by the USSR, was a whole-hearted player himself, it was interesting that he took off supporters’ idol Rudi Skacel after only 64 minutes.

After the game Ivanauskas stone-walled questions about Skacel’s performance, but privately he must have been appalled at some of the Czech’s antics.

Play-acting and downright cheating – just before being replaced he flaunted this by skipping theatrically on one leg after a tackle, then immediately racing off unhurt – further marred a display lacking in urgency or vitality.

The only saving grace was Skacel’s setting-up of Hartley’s first goal, but Ivanauskas showed he was prepared to put the team’s interests, rather than the midfielder’s ego, first when he replaced him with Calum Elliott.

In a game which could easily have gone the wrong way for Hearts – both their goals followed Falkirk moves which might have seen Craig Gordon pick the ball out of the net – Ivanauskas had little opportunity to show his tactical acumen.

Substitutions were an area in which Rix was weak, but Ivanauskas’s hands were tied by Steven Pressley’s first-half head injury which required stitches and may well keep him out of Sunday’s Scottish Cup semi-final against Hibs.

The captain couldn’t take his place for the second half, while later in the game Robbie Neilson was also injured and had to be taken off. Had Ivanauskas decided that Skacel wasn’t the only under-performing player deserving to be removed, Hearts would have finished the game with only 10 men.

On a day when Andy Webster was missing with a stomach bug, Ivanauskas also gave a full game to Romanov’s reported bete noire, Julien Brellier.

Read into that what you want, although with Brellier set to miss Sunday’s semi-final through suspension, the coach would at least have had an excuse to “rest” the midfielder.

The jury is out, but Ivanauskas has passed his first test.

Taken from the Sunday Herald