Ivanauskas follows Romanov's lead with doubts over Webster

ANDY Webster picked up a knock in training yesterday which would probably have ruled him out of the Hearts side to play Celtic, but Valdas Ivanauskas insisted the Scotland defender's attitude would have led to his exclusion in any case. The interim manager expressed himself more discreetly than did Hearts owner, Vladimir Romanov, on the matter, but the message was the same: the club wanted players who were totally committed to the cause, and they did not believe that Webster came into that category.

"Andy Webster got an injury during training," said Ivanauskas, who was speaking through an interpreter for the first time. "It is an Achilles' heel problem and we need to see the reaction to it.

"Every player who is 100 per cent ready physically and mentally will be in the squad. Andy is an excellent player, but in this situation we need players who can be 100 per cent reliable. I don't want to say whether he is reliable or not, but at the moment we need players who are 100 per cent on Hearts' side.

"If he is 100 per cent mentally and physically ready he will play. Every player - whether Andy Webster or Samuel Camazzola or anybody else - needs to be 100 per cent sure he is on Hearts' side. Andy was rested for many reasons, including injury, fatigue or mentality."

Webster was said to have applied ice to the knock, which at present is not expected to keep him off training for too long. Whether his return to training is followed by a restoration to the Hearts team, however, is more up in the air. Romanov said earlier this week that the club would have no choice but to put the player on the transfer list, and it would appear the only way for Webster to get off that list would be to sign a new contract to replace his current deal, which runs until June of next year.

"There is no pressure on any player to do anything against his own wishes, but we want the best for Hearts and want all the players to be on Hearts' side," Ivanauskas added. The inference here is that anyone who does not wish to sign a new deal would be regarded as not being wholly on Hearts' side.

The absence of Webster may not be as big a blow this weekend as it was last, when Hearts were also without Steven Pressley and Takis Fyssas for the visit to Easter Road. With Romanov's bete noire Julien Brellier being omitted as well, Hearts were vulnerable through the middle and lost 2-1. Although Brellier may again be omitted from tomorrow's starting XI, Fyssas and Pressley are both hopeful of making it, as is striker Edgaras Jankauskas.

It was widely believed that the team selection for the derby was strongly influenced by Romanov, and that the omission of Jankauskas was on the advice of a Lithuanian practitioner of alternative therapy. Ivanauskas declined to elaborate on the nature of the medical back-up available to his squad, but did insist that the ultimate responsibility for picking the team was his own.

"Even before I was the first-team coach I gathered information from people - from medical staff to assistant coaches," he said. "But the last word is the manager's. We are gathering information from football specialists, which includes assistant coaches and high-quality medical personnel.

"Without high-quality medical performance the team won't do its best. You can ask any other club in the world about their medical treatment and they will not tell you. Every club has its own medical secrets. It's outside my remit."

Jankauskas is expected to be partnered up front by Roman Bednar, who said yesterday that beneath the apparent upheaval at Tynecastle this season ran a thread of continuity reaching back to George Burley's brief reign. "It started with George Burley and after it everybody held this vision," said the Czech striker. "Every gaffer has something different, but everybody wanted to hold the same vision.

"This is best for us. It's difficult, but we are professional and must play with gaffer, without gaffer, with new gaffer. We are still second, we can still win the cup, and we are a strong team."

Meanwhile, the SFA on inquiry into Graham Rix's suitability as an employee of a member club has been wrapped up inconclusively. The decision to call off the investigation into Hearts' former head coach was taken on Thursday by the SFA's general purposes committee, but a spokesman for the governing body said it could be relaunched should Rix return to work in Scottish football.

"The matter is now closed," the spokesman said. "We are writing to the club. It was never concluded because we had not got the information from Hearts that we were looking for when Graham Rix left."

The deliberations over whether Rix was a 'fit and proper' person to be Hearts' head coach began in December, and arose because the former Arsenal player had served time in jail for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. The committee agreed then to ask Hearts for further information about their new employee, but two further meetings were inconclusive. In March, a ruling was deferred at Hearts' request, and then later that same month the club sacked Rix.

Taken from the Scotsman