It's my way or the highway warns Laszlo

Ewan Murray

IT TOOK Csaba Laszlo a matter of pre-season days to identify the two key aspects which were missing from the Hearts squad he inherited.

Leadership and discipline had been inherently lacking at Tynecastle for too long before the Hungarian's appointment as manager in the summer. That on-field progress has finally arrived after two years in the doldrums and is intrinsically linked to Laszlo's firm stance. It is no coincidence that a document titled "Players' Code of Conduct" takes pride of place on Laszlo's office wall.

"The team spirit was not the best," Laszlo recalled. "The players had no orientation. They were maybe trying their best but they had no direction. You saw in their faces they were down, they did not know what they had to do. I had to go back to basics, the first step was to make the team feel good about themselves, not on the field but in the dressing room."

Laszlo's disciplinarian streak stems from his time as a coach at Borussia Monchengladbach. He holds a German passport, alongside the country's theory on hard work.

"You cannot bring German discipline quickly to Scotland, Africa or Hungary but you must still try to bring it. So far, it has been acceptable to the players. I like to mix the Hungarian mentality which I have in my blood, to take things a little bit easier and to enjoy life, with what I sampled in Germany; if you don't have control over a team you will go down.

"The players know how far they can go; they know that if they do their job well they can enjoy life afterwards."

It took those players, Laszlo revealed, only a short time to understand his stance. "At one stage in pre-season, in Germany, I came into the dressing room and saw people without any direction," he said.

"I told the players, 'God helped you by giving you the talent to be here in this dressing room. Think about your parents, they got up early, had a quick coffee, ran to work in an office or a factory for eight hours. They maybe didn't have big cars, never mind have time to drink coffee. In the evening, they prepared for the next day and did this for 40 years.'

"I asked, 'What do you do, my friends? Get up in the sunshine, take your big car to training, work for two hours, have a massage, speak to a journalist and then go and see your girlfriend. It is a very nice life.'

"I told them they could enjoy this for maybe 15 years, if they are good. I said that if they did as they were doing, they would enjoy two days and I would push them out to look for a new job. If I didn't see them doing what I wanted, so we can get results and improve together, they would have a big problem.

"I asked them to use their brain and the ability that God gave them. I think they realised then that this guy was not stupid. They understood me."

He may not be conventional, yet few people could argue Laszlo does not have an understanding of football if spending a reasonable amount of time in his company. He is intelligent, a sport fanatic who partakes in tennis, squash, badminton and kick boxing despite having endured eight knee operations. Rather than relax away from his work at the cinema, the 44-year-old runs for 50 minutes at the Riccarton training complex every Sunday. "I never switch off," he said. "I must always have sport in my life. It not only keeps your body fit, but your mind too. I am here for football, not to spend my time as a tourist."

Results enhance Laszlo's credentials, albeit Hearts' four straight victories have arrived against teams in the lower half of the SPL. Today's visit of Rangers is, without question, a meaningful test of progress. It must be noted, though, that Hearts already have the same number of points, 26, as it took them until late January to accumulate last season.

"I take every game seriously but the motivation is higher and the attention will feel higher this weekend," Laszlo conceded. "After winning four games, if we can win against Rangers it would be very important. We would have taken points from the team directly above us in the table. We would like to be between Rangers and Celtic. "If we were thinking we wanted to be third or fourth, this would not be the best place for me. I always want to be the best. If I moved to the Premier League in England tomorrow and took over a team in the middle of the table, I would say my target is to win the league. It is the same for me here in Scotland. Realising it is another question, but the target is to be the best, not third. It is all about positive thinking.

"If we win against Rangers, the others teams would look differently at us. We had a poor season last season, we have lost a lot of experienced players and looked at things in the summer with young players. We did not have much experience and now we are sitting in third position. Everything is possible if you are focused."

Such sentiment will be appreciated by Vladimir Romanov. The Lithuanian tycoon, whose changes in management since 2005 have, rightly or wrongly, prompted negative perceptions of Hearts finally appears content to let a manager fully control team affairs. Laszlo smiles and refuses to criticise Romanov, understandably, for errors of judgment in the last three years, saying only that "if you do not learn from the past, you cannot build a nice future."

The pair's understanding, it appears, is strong. Laszlo has already travelled to Lithuania several times in the course of this season to discuss matters at Tynecastle. "If I have time I take a flight to see him because the relationship is very important," said the former Uganda and Ferencvaros coach.

"A lot of people have a very wrong picture about Mr Romanov and his kind of work. Mr Romanov is the same as every other owner of a football club. If you invest money, you would like results and you would like to talk about your team. It is not control, it is trust. We talk about the next steps, about the team, about what we can do to be better. The relationship is perfect and we must accept that we both have strong personalities. I am an employee, I have a duty of what I must do in that role. People above me give me guarantees about going about my work normally and for that I am very happy. We can work very long together in this way."

And in that work, in which he has adamant Hearts must continue to take "small steps, not jumps", discipline will retain paramount importance. "I am not a big friend of the players, but I will protect them. I must not be invited to their birthday parties, but in the dressing room we must have unity. I do not copy anybody. I have my own rules, personality and my own experience."

And his ultimate goal? "I have never won a league, never been a champion. Now is the time…"

If it is, he may even allow himself a moment's celebration.

Coach had to pay wages out of his own pocket

Laszlo on finances

CSABA Laszlo has revealed he paid players' wages from his own pocket during a turbulent time as the Ferencvaros manager.

Laszlo revealed in the aftermath of Hearts' failure to pay their wages on time earlier this season that the Hungarian outfit had only forwarded money due to him from three years earlier, six months ago. Yet he has explained how the once "great" club's financial troubles ran much deeper.

"I had to give money for two or three players' wages at the end of every month," Laszlo said.

"You could not imagine some of the things that went on. One player, who later played for the Hungarian national team, brought his wife and child to watch us train. I asked why this was, and he told me he had nowhere to live; he had nothing.

"This was at the biggest team in Hungary. I found a flat for the player, spoke to the president and I gave him some money so he could look after his family."

Hearts' wage "glitch" back in September, he insisted, pales into insignificance. "For the last game of the league season, we had to win to qualify for the Uefa Cup against Honved," added Laszlo

"The distance between the grounds in the town is maybe eight kilometres, it is like a derby. No bus turned up when it should have. I had to stop a normal bus in the street and plead with the driver to take us to Honved's stadium.

"We got there at 2.30pm, people were wondering where we were and we turned up on a normal bus. We won the game 1-0. If you compare with this…"

After sampling what he describes as the "other side of life" in Africa as the national coach of Uganda, Laszlo moved to Edinburgh in the summer. Settled in the city with wife Mariana, the couple's two daughters, Larissa, five, and Patricia, 15, are also being educated here. It is a sign of Laszlo's much-travelled career that his elder daughter speaks four languages.

"I am very happy to be in Scotland," he insisted. "If somebody asked me ten years ago where I wanted to work, my first answer would be the UK. If I have the possibility, I want to stay here for a very long time.

"When I was young, nobody liked English football. I was the only one following Derby County, Nottingham Forest, Ipswich Town and Manchester City. I always looked for these teams; people asked me 'What?' and 'Who?', they were watching Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich.

"I don't know why, but I always preferred the football here. God has given me something small back by the possibility of coming to work in the UK."

Eight earmarked for January departure

CASBA Laszlo has set an ideal total of four players in and eight out of Hearts during the January transfer window.

The manager, who is seeking to bolster particularly his strikeforce, has identified players in the SPL as well as abroad in a bid to keep Hearts on course for a place in Europe next season. He also expects money received from player sales to be at least partly re-invested.

"We are looking for plus points in the league table and plus points in the budget," he said.

"We have a lot of professional people. I give them a plan of what I want, what I need and the board will decide if it is possible. If we sell a player and bring in money, we can get new ones which cost money; that is normally the rule in football.

"I want quick players. Players who can move very quick and think very quick. Because it is the one thing you cannot train. If a player is slow, maybe you can make him slightly quicker, but that is it. The rest, I can train."

Laszlo defended one of his summer signings, David Obua, who has struggled to adapt to Scottish football. The Ugandan, says his manager, must refine his game somewhat but Laszlo disputes the notion that African players cannot play in this country.

"For David it is not easy," admitted Laszlo. "He also has to be more professional. He has to decide at which moments to play with a little more complication, the African style, and when he must play a more European style, the simple pass. A lot of people make the wrong point about who can play in Scottish football.

"Here, they prefer to have tall, physical guys but look at the football players of Real Madrid, look at Maradona, look at Argentina in Scotland recently; they were not all two metres tall but they played perfect football under pressure."

Laszlo said his current tactics, routinely a 4-2-3-1 formation, may not be in place at Hearts for the long term if he can bring in players of the type he is seeking in January.

"You cannot bring a 4-4-2 system if you do not have the players to play 4-4-2," he said.

"I use a system which, at the moment, I can play with this team."

The manager stressed he will not take dissent from the stands to heart; his team were booed from the field recently despite a 1-0 victory over Hamilton. "I do the job that I think is best for the team. I never take it personally.

"If this season we beat Celtic and Rangers and take the team to the Champions League, some people will still say Csaba Laszlo is a very bad coach and that their opinion is different.

"You always have people in stadiums who say the coach is wrong or lucky, so I ignore it. I respect every fan and every opinion of people who come to Tynecastle and stay behind the team.

"Supporters are like my family: without them you cannot improve. I don't want to be a person who answers everybody. I must just do my best for the club."

Taken from the Scotsman